Happy Birthday Jillian

I know I've been gone for a while. My apologies. Claire finished school on the 19th of June and Jillian's birthday was on the 28th and the space in between has been overflowing with activities and party preparation.

When it comes to the kids, I have this strange idea that I should provide homemade birthday cakes and Halloween costumes whenever I can manage it. It's completely silly of me to put that sort of pressure on myself, but there it is. This year, I managed to convince myself to bake TWICE for Jillian. Her last day at the sitter's before summer vacation was on the 26th and I thought it would be fun to send birthday/last day cupcakes so she could celebrate with her friends. I looked on the internet and in some cook books and found an idea for ladybug cupcakes. Here they are:



They look complicated but were really easy to create. To make them I just baked regular cupcakes and when they cooled, slice the tops off level with the top of the paper liner. I then iced the bottom of the cupcakes with untinted icing. Then, I cut the top of the cupcake in half, iced it reddish, and lay them on top of the bottoms to look like wings. Then I took brown mini M&Ms (if you scoop them in bulk you can make sure you get lots of brown ones) and stuck 'em M side down on the wings. Finally, I bought (again in the bulk section) giant malted milk balls and stuck them on the front for heads. CUTE!

The sitter and other kids really enjoyed them and they even transformed Jillian into a birthday princess for the afternoon:



The ladybug clothes were a fortunate hand-me-down.

In the meantime, I was also planning the "real" party we were having at home on her birthday. Jillian loves the show "Little Einsteins" (music over there) and I thought she would like it if she had a rocket cake for her birthday party. Here's a picture of the characters in their favourite rocket ship:



When I told Jillian, she was really excited. For a few weeks before her birthday, if you asked her anything about the big day she'd exclaim "ROCKET CAKE!". If I asked how old she was going to be "ROCKET CAKE!", if I asked what she wanted for a present "ROCKET CAKE!". It quickly became essential that she get rocket cake.

One day, I was explaining my plan to my friend Kate and she asked if I was going to put the characters in the ship. I told her that I thought that would be hard and she told me that I could probably do it with rolled fondant if I had the patience. I'd never worked with fondant before but since I like fimo (and playdoh) so much, I figured it was worth a try.

I found a recipe for tasty fondant, made half a batch and put it in the fridge. A couple of nights later, Kate came over and we sat and worked on the faces.

We had all sorts of the Wilton icing colours and began mixing colours for their skin and hair and eyes. Classic colour theory sort of falls apart when there is fondant involved and we ended up with some really funky looking colours. I'm not ashamed to say that we ate every one of our failures. Before long we were both high on sugar. Then we started giggling like schoolgirls. It was really, really fun. At the end of the night we had four pretty good looking characters and two headlights. We sealed them up in plastic containers and put them in the fridge to wait a week for the party.

I had planned to use this online guide to make the rocket part of the cake. The recipe called for two oval pans. I found the Wilton oval pan set but it was really expensive so I set out to find other pans. I looked for cake pans and casserole dishes everywhere I went for two weeks. Finally, the day before I had to bake the cake, I went to Ikea. Lo and behold, there were two of the most perfect pans ever (named VICKNING in case you are in the market for your own rocket). They were cheap too!

As an added birthday bonus, Jillian's Godmother Tanya came from Cape Breton for the festivities (isn't she lovely):

On the night before the party, I recruited her to help create a rocket from cake. I made one big cake and two small ones and hobbled it all together into a basic rocket shape (the top of the cake is one and a half small cakes tall). We made the little rockets on the side using the directions from the guide I found on the internet. They required several ice cream cones, a steady hand and a lot of patience but they did work (were I ever to make another rocket, I would not make those rockets their way). As on fondant night, we ended up eating more than our fair share of icing and by the time we attached the fondant people to the cake we were absolutely giddy from all the sugar (and likely dye too).

In the end, the cake looked good (in my opinion). Judge for yourself:



This side has "Annie" and "Leo".



This side has "June" and "Quincy". They were held on with three toothpicks each (I tell you this in case you ever decide to apply bits of fondant to cake...they'll drop faster than a greased pig on a playground slide if you don't anchor it on).

On the morning of her birthday, Jillian woke up and asked for "ROCKET CAKE!". I showed it to her as soon as she got up and the look on her face made every minute of work worth it. She was super excited.

After naptime, it was time for the party. We only had two other kids (siblings) and their parents plus my brother Brad and Tanya. It was a nice time. Luckily the weather was nice and the kids spent some time in the wading pool:


Birthday girl.


Big sister.

DH made all sorts of Mexican food for the party and Jillian ate so much guacamole I thought she was going to turn green:


She stood there like that and scooped guacamole into herself until it was all gone. I had to lift the bowl and show the bottom of it to her before she would give up and go back to playing with the other kids. She's a bottomless pit.

After our taco supper, it was time for ROCKET CAKE:

(Admit it, you'd spend 8 hours of you life making cake for that face too)

I had psychologically prepared myself for the cutting and eating of the cake but poor Tanya nearly fainted. She kept muttering about putting herself between the cake and the ravenous party-goers. I just held my breath and started slicing. The kids divvied up the characters and gobbled them up. That was hard to watch:


I eatin' Annie!


Nom nom nom.

Sob.

After cake and smelling salts (kidding), there were gifts:

A new 'violin' from Tanya.


An inedible rocket from us.


A new chair from her grandparents and Mickey and Minnie Mouse from Claire. Claire and I spent almost a full morning shopping for Jillian. We went to Toys R Us and Claire didn't like one thing. She then asked if we could go to the Disney Store (she calls it Disneyland...heh) where she could get Mickey Mouse for Jillian. Because of the way they price things (1 for $19, 2 for $25), she got Mickey and Minnie for her sister. I quickly learned that she realllllly wanted Minnie for herself but we talked about how it was Jillian's birthday and not hers and she was satisfied. Lucky for her, Jillian only has eyes for Mickey and Claire gets to cuddle with Minnie as much as she wants.

It's hard to believe that Jillian is two. It really feels like yesterday that I was waiting and waiting for her to be born. I can't imagine our family without her. She's such a little sunspot and we love her more than we can say.

The party and all the planning has taken up a lot of my time lately but I've also been getting used to having both kids home full-time for the summer and tying up loose ends with work till September. Things are settling down some this week so I should be back to more regular blogging soon.

Wow! That was long-winded, eh?