Lego Cake
Let me start off by saying that I am no gourmet baker. I can bake cookies and madeleines really well. Cakes? Not without the help of my friend Duncan Hines. I like to order cakes from Remo Borracchini’s in Seattle (I LOVE their frosting!!!) & I have even converted M to their cakes. The problem is Borracchini’s doesn’t have a lego cake. In fact no bakeries have lego cakes. M’s solution is to bake one. Yay! No, not really. I already know that it’s going to be me baking all those stinkin’ cakes. I do a quick google search and found these bad boys. I was able to track down the cake mould, but the ice trays are completely sold out. Bummer. Here’s my test run.
- Make Ominicom’s rainbow cake.
- Paint the sides of the mold with Candi-Quik creating a hollow lego shaped shell.
- Cut rainbow cake into squares small enough to stuff into lego candy shell. Then frost individual squares. It doesn’t have to be pretty because the perfect looking candy shells would cover up all that ugliness.
- Place candy shell over the frosted cake.
- Crack open and enjoy!
I was imagining all the kids cracking open their “lego cupcakes” and being amazed by how “cool” their cake looked. I can’t say pretty. This is a boy’s party after all. So when it came time to make 30 of these I decided to dye a bunch of them different colors with powdered food coloring. Couldn’t do all white. It would look too wedding-ish. BIG PROBLEM! When you add tons of powdered food coloring to candy coating it makes it really brittle. So when I go to pop out the shell it pops out 20 different pieces. *tear* I probably do this 3 more times before I decide that it’s never going to work. So on to Plan B. Time to make the Betty Crocker Lego Cake. Damn… What am I going to do with all these frosted little squares?
So I go and bake 2 cakes. 1 chocolate and 1 more rainbow (because the other one was cut up and frosted for the cupcakes that never were). Instead of using marshmallows as nubs for the cake. We decided to just use a small circle cookie cutter and punch out nubs for the cake. It worked perfectly. Just be sure to trim the nubs a little or they well be too tall.
Now on to the frosting. I have never tried a frosting from a tub that I actually liked. They’re nasty. So of course I decided to make my own frosting. How hard could it be? Too hard and too time consuming! To make a long story short. I spent way too much time and energy making the frosting when really I should’ve been concerned about frosting it. It’s really late when we start frosting the cakes. M starts working on the chocolate cake. She is not a cake decorator. Neither am I. I’m just saying.
Ta-Da! Don’t judge. It was 4 am when we finished. Also we didn’t have enough frosting for the rainbow cake. F**K!!! 9 am the morning of the party, after 4 hours of sleep I drive to Top Foods and buy 3 tubs of their premade and predyed frosting (which I should’ve done to begin with). I then run home quickly frost the cakes. As you can see from the earlier photo the nubs didn’t make it. They completely disintegrated in my hands. I completely forgot that the food coloring makes the cake really fragile. I frantically call M and tell her about my new disaster. She says I should just go ahead and bring the cake w/o the nubs. “We’ll use the chocolate cake as the Happy Birthday and candle blowing cake. While the rainbow cake will be hiding in the kitchen all cut up and ready to serve. Kind of like the dummy wedding cake.” I’ll have to explain that in another post.
By the end of the party there wasn’t a slice of rainbow cake left. Yay! I wish I could say the same about chocolate. Apparently some nubs fell on the table and M put them back on the cake. They literally fell on the plastic tablecloth that came right out of a plastic bag. I would’ve done them same. Ok. Not while everyone was watching. But I guess the kids felt like that cake was ruined and tainted by clean tablecloth. They eat boogers. I don’t know why they can’t eat tablecloth cake. Their lose. I didn’t eat it either. Too much food coloring for my taste.
Are you wondering what happened to all those frosted cake squares?
I made Bakerella’s cake pops! The kid’s loved them. Although, I don’t recommend rainbow cake for this. The inside kind of looked like hamburger. Gross! I have 1 more post about the party and then I might start posting past parties. Stay Tuned!
6 down 46 to go!
-Silly
Lego Party Invitations
Hey! I know I already posted a picture of the invites, but I thought it was time to let everyone in on all the details. As soon as I found out we were doing a lego party I immediately googled “lego birthday invites” and saw tons of cute ideas. Since we were inviting 30 kids! I quickly decided I wanted one that could be mostly accomplished on the computer.
I got the idea from one blog. (Sorry I am still new I need to figure out how to add links! I will figure out asap!) He used the Lego Digital Designer program (which is a free download from the Lego Website) to make his kid’s invite. I liked how cute it was and that all I had to do was arrange lego pieces to spell out the message. Super simple. Although I did decide I wanted to letters to look cute and not so blocky which is hard considering this is a lego party. When I was finally down I arranged everything in photoshop and printed them out using the Epson Picturemate Dash. It’s definitely cheaper doing it with laser printer but I was to lazy to crop them. Afterwards I mounted them on 2 pieces of primary colored cardstock, so the invites ended up being 7″x5″.
Then I got the idea to make a minifigure look-alike of little dude from the other blog. We used this minimizer program. They allow you to choose their faces, hair, clothing, etc… This was tons of fun too. Lil’ Dude wanted to have a mohawk. I told him he doesn’t have a mohawk so we couldn’t use that for the invite, but he could make his own when I was done and he was alright with that idea. I used the updated version, the older one is truer to real legos. There’s also the kid friendly version which omits the boobies (trust me kids will want theirs to have boobs, hopefully they aren’t smart enough to make them skin colored ). Afterwards I made a screenshoot of my image and then saved it in photoshop. I gave M the image and she did the rest. She honestly writes the BEST invites ever! She always knows the cute and witty things that people love to read. I on the other hand would just include the basics like who, what, when & where. After M was finished we printed them from the laser this time then cropped them and slapped them on the back. I love them! But the fun doesn’t stop there because I decided that something was missing.
And that something was Lego confetti. Honestly what was I going to do with all of those scraps? I used my versamarker and made dots on strips of extra cardstock. I then sniped them in various lego sizes. It feels good to use scraps. My idea for the confetti was to add them to the envelopes so when everyone pulled out their invites some confetti would fall out and it would look like this.
So cute! It’s too bad I wasn’t able to add any confetti into the kid’s invites, but I was able to make some in time to send them out to Lil’ Dudes family. We also used extra as table decorations, but I’ll get to that in another post.
5 down 47 to go!
-Silly
Lego Party
Oh man, this week went by fast! I didn’t even realize that I needed to post something tonight until I was in the middle of making some crispy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. (I am eating one right now and they’re delicious!)
We had the Lil’ Dude’s Lego Party this past sunday. Check it out.
It was Crazy, Loud & pretty much Awesome. I’m glad it’s over with. I’ll have to fill you in with the details later. The Lil’ Dude gave me a cold and I must nurse it with yummy oatmeal chocolate chip cookies. I am editing photos now so I can post all the details next week. I PROMISE.
4 down 48 to go!
-Silly
Nanny/Party Planner Extraordinaire
I guess I should tell everyone what I actually do for a living. Currently I am a full-time nanny and part swim instructor, who likes to throw parties on the side. I work for the most amazing family ever. I almost feel like they’re my adoptive family. It was through them that I rediscovered my love for all things crafty. Right now I’m watching one 7 year old boy. Let’s just call him Lil’ Dude. He’s so funny and smart. Everyday is an adventure with him.
His mom ( I think I’ll just call her M) is the one who got me hooked on scrapbooking and throwing parties. I remember the first year I started working for them and M asked for help planning Lil’ Dude’s pirate party. She wanted me to put together is invites. I was like “Sure should I pick some up at Party City?” M then informs me that she always has “homemade invites.” After a day of google searching and another 2 weeks of tea staining and paper ripping. I finally had some homemade invites. Now with 2 birthdays under my belt and several other parties I have invitation crafting down.
This years party is Lego themed. I think these have to be the easiest invites so far. It only took me a day to put them together. What do you think of them?
I’ll tell you how I put them together in my next post. But I wanted everyone to have a peek at them now since I promised I was going to do a post about it last week.
3 down 49 to go! Yay!
-Silly
Blogging…
Oh man… A week has gone already gone by and I still have zero idea how to do this whole blog thing. Trying to start a blog is so much harder than making my myspace page way back when. I don’t like to toot my own horn, but my myspace page was pretty awesome. I still love it even though I haven’t been on it in forever.
Back to this blogging business. I just don’t understand any of it. I know I’m going to regret saying this, but what the heck are widgets??? I’m suppose to use CSS style sheets to edit how my blog looks??? I think I can hear crickets in my head. There’s just so much to learn and at my age my brain is at capacity. Ok, ok… 25 isn’t old. But I’m feeling pretty dumb. Everyone and their mom has a blog and their blogs are cuter than mine.
Also don’t get me started on trying to google how to blog. All the results are just about how to make money blogging. Honestly, I’m not trying to make money blogging. It would definitely be awesome if I did, but I’m being realistic here.
Ok, that’s enough ranting for me. I am wondering if there are any bloggers out there who are willing to share their wisdom with me? Any advice would be welcomed (as long as it is constructive and not douchey). I think I need all the help I can get.
2 down 50 more to go!
-Silly
P.S. I know I promised Legos this week, but I only have 15 minutes before my deadline is up for the week. As soon as I finish this post I’m going to add photos to my brand new flickr account. Then I promise I will get started on my lego blog post.
New Years Resolution.
Happy 2010 Everybody!
My New Years Resolution for 2010 is to start a blog (see I’m off to a good start).
The plan is that I have to blog at least ONCE a week. Now, I know good blogs post something (almost) everyday. Yikes! Since I am the queen of starting things but never finishing them. I think not being too ambitious from the get go will be my ticket to success. I just have to make sure I post this before midnight and I should be good. 1 down 51 more to go!
My last goal for the new year is to actually complete 1 scrapbook this year. Trust me it’s not that easy.
Oh well… Wish me luck!
– Silly
P.S. Fun Lego projects next week.
Candy Is Good For You 