Pirate & Tinkerbell Birthday Party

I'm a planner.  It's probably one of the things about me that drives my hubby crazy, because he is the complete opposite, fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants kinda guy.  It works for him though because his work schedule is never final until they are actually doing it.  It changes even mid-flight too.  For me, planning has helped me with my "job" too - from planning our week, meals, errand running schedule, etc.  If I didn't have a plan, I'd always be stressed and nothing would ever get done.  How many can relate?  

Anyway....back to the point of this post.  Because I'm a planner, I start working on my kids' birthday parties weeks in advance.  This year, I've already started over two months in advance (yes, we have already booked the venue), but to not ruin the surprise, I'll talk about last year's party instead.

One of my passions is baking.  Now that I have kids, I have lots of opportunity to try something out that I never had a reason to try out before: make elaborate cakes.  I find pure joy in the challenge to design a cake from scratch, having a vivid image in my head and then being able to make my dream into reality.  And because I'm a planner, a perfectionist, and have quite a bit of patience, I'm able to do pretty much exactly what I want (especially because my hubby supports me in doing it by letting me buy the necessary tools).

Before I come up with a creation, I talk with my kids about what kind of party they'd like.  Last year, because I was hugely pregnant with baby number three, I decided to combine their party.  I know this won't work when they are teenagers, so I'm enjoying this possibility now, especially while they have some common friends.  Lucky for me, my son loves pirates and my daughter loves Tinkerbell.  

Next, I surf the web for ideas on the cake decorating.  I already have the start of a vision in my head, but I like to see if anyone else has done it already (if they have, I will modify it, so I'm not copying anyone).  This also gives me a chance to get inspiration from others with ideas of things I hadn't considered before.  Once I see what my kids like and don't like, and then combine that with my own vision, I draw up a sketch with some crayons.  I'm no artist when it comes to drawing, but it helps me translate my vision to other people and to remind me what I want to do.

After that, I design their party invitations.  This part is really fun.  When my oldest turned 3 years old, I threw him his first birthday party and on a whim came up with a cute little rhyming poem for his invitation.  I liked how it turned out so much, I decided to keep up the trend and do it for every party since then.  

Here is how their party invitations turned out:

When it comes time to making their cakes, I dedicate pretty much an entire week of my free time to doing just that.  Their party was planned for a Friday, so Monday or Tuesday I make the fondant, Wednesday I bake their cakes, make the buttercream frosting and put the frosting and fondant on the cakes.  Thursday I decorate.  Last year, I had several gum paste decorations, so I started making those about 2-3 weeks before the party date during nap time.  Sometimes my son would help, other times my daughter helped a bit, but for the most part I did a lot of it on my own.  I found that making the flowers in white gum paste was the easiest and to use the color dust to "paint" was the best solution for getting the colors the exact way I wanted. (To me, solid colored flower petals do not exist in real life, and so to make gum paste flowers as realistic as possible, I couldn't use colored gum paste.)

Because I had made several of the decorations in advance for my daughter's cake, her cake only took about 1-2 hours to decorate.  My son's on the other hand, took closer to 4 hours, if not longer.  A note about the cake toppers: I bought the Tinkerbell candle and special ordered the pirate treasure chest (with my son's name engraved on the bottom), and the goodies that went into the chest.  I made everything else from gum paste, including the palm tree candle holder.  

These were definitely a labor of love, but I had a ton of fun designing them and then making them reality!

Many thanks to Kim for taking these pictures during the party!

I have a few more pics of the food, cakes and party favors set up too, in case you are curious what that all looked like.  We had a treasure hunt for a buried treasure and the girls painted butterflies.  After that, everyone spent the rest of the afternoon and evening in the pool!

Many thanks to Pam for documenting the entire birthday party!