Sand Castle Birthday Cake

My little girly LOVES the beach!!  She decided this year she wanted a beach birthday when she turned five.

We went on Pinterest and I found some inspiration over on Living Well, Spending Less.

It was actually pretty fun to make!  I used a chocolate cake mix and poured it in to different size round oven-safe bowls, including a pie plate for the bottom one, a medium size bowl and three cupcakes.  The "towers" are sugar ice cream cones.  The whole surface of the cake is covered in frosting and then the sand is sprinkled on top.

The hardest part was getting the "sand" to stick on the sides.  I had to push it up with a fork and pat it into the frosting.

So what is the "sand"?

I used crushed honey graham crackers and threw in one chocolate graham cracker so it looked more natural colored.  For the cones, I frosted them, and rolled them in the crumbs.

The starfish.  Oh what a fun little craft to do with the birthday girl.  Have you heard of salt dough?  Yeah, probably.  My mom said she did salt dough as a kid.  Well sheesh.  Where have I been?  Painting furniture, and walls, and signs, and little girl's toenails I guess.  Not making salt dough ornaments, for sure.

Anyways, there is a plethora of ideas for salt dough out there on the world wide spiderweb.

Here's the recipe I used:

Salt Dough

2 cups flour

1 cup salt

3/4 to 1 cup water

Check out the link for directions on the starfish HERE at Desperate Craft Wives.

As innocent and sweet as that little birthday girl looks, she sure thinks it would be the best idea ever to put some frosting on one of those salt dough starfish and tell Grandma it's a cookie...

OH.  I almost forgot to warn you.  YES, WARN YOU.

This cake was nice eye candy... but in the taste department, well.... the "sand" urgh, made it feel rather dry in the mouth.  Now I only like cake if it's good and moist, or it just ain't worth the calories.  My best advice would be to put the frosting on THICK, and then some more, so that you don't have a mouth full of dry graham cracker crumbs.  I'm sorry to all the party guests for a mouth full of sand.  

Yeah.  Lots more frosting, and then I think you should be good to go eat.  :)

Happy Bee Day To My Little Honey

Lady Bug theme for her 1st birthday, bumble bees for her 2nd... Box Elders for her 3rd?!  Maybe she won't like bugs as much as she gets older.  Right now she's quite infatuated and I have to acknowledge every. single. bug. she lays her eyes on.

I ain't no cake decorating expert, that's for sure, but I thought a bumble bee cake would be a cinch.  It wasn't.  For some reason I had extreme difficulties and my bumblee looked like a big chocolate turtle.  Even my frosting went south and I had to re-frost over almost the entire thing the next day it looked so awful.  My dad looked in the fridge and said "OH MY LANDS".  He was slightly shocked when it ended up looking cute like this (so was I!):

Just over an hour before guests arrived for the bee day bash, I convinced mom to make some bumble bee cutouts for the kids.  We just used a large cardboard box I had thankfully stored in the garage and yellow and black paper plates.  The kids were so cute as little bees!!

The Little Queen Bee posed like a sweet honey. :)  The pendant banner is just construction paper, painted with letter stencils, and strung together with white string.  Very easy!  If I hadn't waited until the last minute, I would have done some fun polka dot paper, etc behind each triangle!  Oh well.  My motto is "Keep it simple, Stupid".  

She wanted me to read each card to her!

There's gotta be SOME WAY I can freeze this little darling right at this age!
Grandma Ann found the cutest little bumble bee outfit for our little honey and I painted a black button with yellow strips and hot glued it into the middle of a yellow flower and then onto a clip for her hair.  I would have put some more detail into it, but I was finishing it up just as the first guests were arriving.  I'm somewhat of a last-minute-lady.  Drives my mom bonkers!  

 It's hard to believe two years have passed!  I am so thankful to God for blessing us with this spunky, fiesty, sweet, darling of a daughter.  Thank you, Lord!!!!

M&M Shamrock Cake for St. Patty's Day!

I signed up to bring a cake for the cake walk tonight for the school carnival.  I love carnivals and I'll never forget winning a big pink cake when I was a kid doing the cake walk!  I seriously thought the I was the most special person on earth since I won a cake!!!  Anyways, I have loads - and I.Mean.Loads - of green M&M's from when I bought out a zillion red and green Christmas ones on clearance and picked all the red ones out for Valentines Day.  (You can see my M&M Heart Cake HERE.)  The rest is self explanatory  I do believe, so I'll let the pics do the talkin' and sign off.  Happy Saint Patrick's Day!

Cuttin' the top off with floss to get it flat.

M&M Valentine Cake & how to make heart cake without heart shaped pan

I LOVE VALENTINE'S DAY!!!!!!!!!  It's always been one of my favorites.  Loved giving out valentines to all of my classmates.  I was one of those who painstakingly selected each card out for each individual kid.  I knew exactly which one I wanted the monkey one that said "I'm bananas about you" to go to.  And I'm sure they all read what the card said that I so agonizingly chose for them - yeah right!!  Now my oldest is in kindergarten and he's doing the same thing.  One certain girl had to get the one that "You're the sweetest one of all".  Seriously?!  Oh dear...  Hey, I love that he cares though. Okay, so this post is about my M&M cake!  

Remember when I bought all the 66% off after Christmas clearance candy??  My sweet boy helped me sort all the red from the green M&M's.  Now we just need a big Saint Patty's Day party, right!

And here's how you make a big heart shape without having to buy the heart pan!  Pour half the cake batter into a square pan, the other half into a circle.  Cut the circle in half and put one chunk on either side of the square.  Nifty, huh? 

Okay so here' a little trick to get the cake flat across the top - use floss!  Works great and your kids will love the "scraps" of cake for a little treat.

Yes, it took forever.  No, I probably won't do it again!

But it looked pretty cool!!  And the kids LOVED it!

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Etsy

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Easy Kitty Cat Cake for Lilly

Split cake batter - chocolate of course - in two round cake pans.  Bake. When cool, flip them out upside on a plate.   Cut out a piece from the top to make ears, and round it out.  I cut out the ear shapes from the butter paper and cut around them.  Which as you can see, I also did for the mouth area.

Elbow your son's big noggin' outta the way while he tries to sneak frosting or just be a pain in the you-know-where.  I used Karly's awesome froster thingy-ma-bobs from Pampered Chef.  I need to get me some of those.  So much easier than the 20 year old cake decorating set I have.  They're plastic and accordion type things that you squeeze.  Nifty.  Lots less to wash!  Tobin, seriously now.  Get OUTTA THE WAY!

For detail stuff, I like to put the frosting in a zip lock bag and clip a corner off.  Better control, my fair one.  To get the dark brown color, I usually add some cocoa, but Karly didn't have any so we melted four chocolate chips, and dropped in 2 drops of blue food coloring, 2 drops of red, and 1 green.  I think that was the combo anyway.

And since you have another blank round cake, use your imagination and do something fun.  I did polka dots to match her birthday plates.  :)

And here is my beautiful little niece, Lilly, who turned ONE!!  (And she wouldn't even eat her cake!  No worries, my daughter ate it for her.)

Rawrrrrrrr! Eat Some Dino Cake!

My hubby said I couldn't do it.  Just do something easy, who cares?  You can't do that.  Well that clinched it of course, I was going to do it.  I was going to make a 3D dinosaur birthday cake for my boys' birthday party. I'm not a cake decorator.  At all. It makes me nervous. I googled in "dinosaur cake" and found a picture of how someone had cut the pieces and arranged them so I printed it out to use for an idea.  I baked two round cakes.

Here's a great tip: use dental floss to slice the top off flat!

I sliced one circle right down the middle and stood them up next to each other to use for the body.  Then cut out the rest of the body parts.  The extra pieces got tossed to my kids who were standing around me like ravening wolves smelling blood.

The "spikes" going down his body are chocolate graham crackers, and I just mixed a little cocoa in with the remaining frosting, put it in a plastic baggy with the corner clipped and wrote the words. I also edged the graham crackers with the chocolate frosting to give them a more finished look.

Five years old going on 15 and 3 years old who can't remember if he's 2 or 7.

A little post party fun with Mommy........ :)

We are getting CLOSER to giving away the Applebee's gift card!  29 more people to "like" Kammy's Korner on Facebook and we can have that drawing!  Tell your friends! :) 

Ladybug Party For a Little Lady

It's a Party!  Tori Turns One!!  (I threw those together around midnight, so they're nothing special!)

"Mommy, can I pleeeeease paint?"  "Why, yes, yes you may, Tobin!  We need ladybug rocks for the party!"

Trying to keep her occupied while I frosted the cake.  She was occupied!! :) 

Our lady bug rocks made cute decorations around the cake!

I am NOT a cake decorator.  I was nervous to do this myself, because I've never done one without help, but I figured it was about time I step up to the plate and be a "good mom"!!  I mean, don't all good mommy's out there decorate their kid's cakes??  (I'm only joking of course....)

Since I'm a professional procrastinator, I waited until two days before the party to look for some plastic ladybugs.  I wanted them to make a special hairbow for Tori and a matching one for Mommy.  All I could find was a plastic bag of bugs, which contained one awful looking ladybug.  So I decided to use the bugs in the bag, and make my own.  Now if you're an entomologist, you might be horrified.  (If you think I actually knew the technical term for a "bug studier" you'd be wrong.  Google and I are tight). 

Happy Birthday my feisty, sweet, darling daughter!!  Grandma Ann brought her the cutest ever little ladybug dress!  I'm sooo counting on the "spray n' wash" to take the lasagna stains out!!!

Tori got the one and only ladybug in the "bug bag" for her hair clip.  However, I had to add 2 black spots, make the head black, and add the black line.  Man, don't they have ladybugs in China?  I thought about going around my house and collecting them in jars for center pieces since I have such an abundance of them that I don't even bother to kill them anymore.

Now for the next party....  my boys will be 3 and 5 in June.  They've been hinting at a "bug" party....  And no thinking about it, if bugs are the theme, there WILL be real bugs in jars for center pieces!!