Birthdays On My Mind

With only a few weeks left in August, the "Bers" are soon upon us - SeptemBER, OctoBER, NovemBER & DecemBER which means lots of birthdays!

Or should I say "BERthdays"?!? :)

The first one being my oldest daughter who will be turning 6 in SeptemBER. I just can't believe it already! How did that happen?? 6 years old and starting First Grade in a few weeks. It's almost too much to handle.

This one is my little party girl. She loves fancy dresses, party shoes (aka black patent leather) and BIG birthday parties. I think it's what she lives for all year long. She especially loves the cake!! Don't get me wrong, I know the presents are high up there along with the goodie bags, but really, she LOVES the cake. Her parties are usually themed around what kind of cake she wants. Fortunately for her, I LOVE cake decorating so it's just as fun for me as it is for her. I'll give you a recap of the past 5 years...

1 year birthday - this was mostly for our friends since she didn't really have her own friends at this point. This was also BEFORE I got into cake decorating but I still wanted to make my own cake.

I made it from scratch using my cousin Sarahi's Tres Leches recipe and homemade whipped cream icing. I practiced with the recipe probably around 3 times before the party to try and get it right. It's a really great cake. Remind me to post the recipe sometime. As you can see, this one was more for taste than visuals.

Sometime between her first and second birthday, I was getting a little stir crazy, so a couple of my friends and I who were also first time moms decided to take a Wilton cake decorating class at Michael's. It was really just a way to get out of the house one night a week. It probably wouldn't have mattered what we did, but this turned out to be really fun anyway. The class ended at 9 but we always ended up talking in the parking lot a few extra hours. It was our time to "catch up" uninterrupted.

2nd birthday - my decorating skills definitely improved. This year she was really into butterflies and the color blue, hence the blue butterfly birthday cake.

I used a butterfly cake pan from Wilton with buttercream icing.

I also made a separate cake on her actual birthday. I was reading a book about portrait cakes so I wanted to try one.

3rd birthday - this was when major princess obsession kicked in along with dressing up...ALL THE TIME!!! Her favorite princess was Sleeping Beauty. We even "invited" her to come to the party. For a hefty fee, of course.

To this day, my daughter still believes it was the "real" Sleeping Beauty that came over. Too cute. You're probably wondering why she's wearing a Snow White dress when her fav was Sleeping Beauty. Yeah, we couldn't figure that one out either.

Well, here's the cake...

I LOVE this one! I think it's my all time favorite cake that I've ever made. It happened to be her best party also.

4th birthday - The whole princess thing died down and now she was into rainbows. She also started to love to swim so we combined the two and had a rainbow pool party. This was pretty easy for me since it was all outdoors. Didn't have to worry about cleaning my house, which in itself was a treat for me.

This cake was just ok.

At this point baby girl #2 was a toddler which means not much time for anything except running after a toddler. Need I say more.

5th birthday - this was a really fun party partly because it was also out of the house. It was also super easy because it was at one of those bounce house places. The kids had a great time. I highly recommend it. Now, the cake didn't really go with the bounce house theme. This year she wanted a bubblegum cake. I normally don't allow her to chew gum but since it was her birthday I thought I'd throw her a bone. I was originally going to do a bubblegum machine cake but at the last minute decided to do a Candyland cake. Things were going along really well until BOTH girls decided they wanted to "help". I much prefer to do my cakes on my own, but as soon as they saw all the candy, I knew I (and the cake) didn't have a chance. This is how it turned out:

For some strange reason, this is the most viewed cake on my Flickr account. I think that's so funny. If you want to see other cakes I have made, click here.

6th birthday - well, we didn't get to that one yet but the theme this year is Barbie!! I have a design in mind that if I can pull off BY MYSELF, I think will be really great.

I'll keep you posted on that one.