Lego Cake and Brownies

Jayden wanted a green Lego cake.  I had seen this on Pinterest as well, along with the Lego brownies.  The Lego brownies only had icing on the top, but Dave wanted to coat the whole thing so it looked like Lego blocks.  I have a pan that makes a few square brownies that we used for the Lego brownies.  Then we cut them once to make the 1x3 and 2x3 blocks.  Whenever I cut brownies they get a huge mess!  So I figured using the pan that makes little squares and making one cut would be  a lot less messy.  I didn't want cut marks on the Lego cake stand so we put the brownies on that.  Oh, if you can't tell, we used M&M's on the brownies.  

And for the cake, I made a 9x13, cut off the rounded ends, maybe an inch from each end.  Then cut that piece in half and stacked it.  And for the top round pieces we used double stuffed Oreos.

Jayden wanted us to put some of his Lego guys on top of his cake so I grabbed a few and Dave put them on.  He sort of made the Lego guy's hold the candle's.

He was a happy boy with his cake!  He knew we were making a green Lego, but we didn't let him see it until it was time to blow out the candles.  Happy Birthday Jayden!!!!

Lego Cake Stand

I saw this Lego cake stand on Pinterest and Dave agreed to make it.  I thought Jayden would love it.

I had also bought a box of 600 Lego pieces at Walmart at Christmas time for $15.  I was there getting other things and just happen to see it.  JJ loves to make his own creations and I always wanted to buy a box of just bricks with a few windows, doors and wheels.  When I got home I looked on Amazon to see how much it cost and the same thing was $30 on Amazon.  I'm glad I happened to see it at Walmart and that I picked it up!  It's really cute.  Not only does it have all these Lego bricks, wheels and stuff, but it came with a book of instructions to build lots of different things!  You can build a a really cute shark, pirate ship, canon and I can't remember the rest.   Jayden loves it!

Here is the the cake stand Dave made and a couple action shots of him making it...

The picture on the left is the top view and on the right is the bottom view.

Special Birthday School Lunch

Jayden always packs a lunch so this worked out great, I saw this on Pinterest.  The night before his birthday I wrapped everything in his lunch!  I even put more things in then normal just so I'd have more stuff to wrap!  Dave and I also both wrote a special birthday note for his lunch box.  

After school I asked him about it and he said he just kept it closed.  He was said he was afraid others would keep asking him to see it and also he didn't want others to say "no fair."  He only showed a couple of his good friends.  And he didn't even open everything!!  When he came home his trash for what he did open was still in his lunch box (not normal) and half of it was still wrapped!  I guess he didn't want to throw away the wrapping paper of what he did open because he was afraid others would see it.  LOL!  He's so funny!  But I do believe he liked it and it made him feel a little special!

Anyway, it was fun to do and I'm glad he liked it, even if he didn't show everybody.  He's a cute kid!

Lego Coloring Book Party Favors

My son was having a small bowling birthday party with some friends from school.  He's really into Legos these days and I saw a pin on Pinterest with these cute Lego coloring books.  However you had to pay to download them.  I didn't want to do that, so I found some free images that you could download and created my own coloring books.  

I only need 10 but accidentally printed 20, I forgot there were 2 per page!  Oops!  That's what happens when I try to multitask.  So we gave some to cousins and other friends.

 You print the cover page on card stock, I used colored card stock.  And the inside pages I printed double sided.  Then you cut them in half, arrange your book and sew it down the middle!!!  How cool!!!!  You sew it!  So genius!  I love it!  I'm sure you could staple it, but I love that it's sewn!

 Now how easy is that?

We also bought each kid a little Lego figure and put them in a sandwich bag then I made that cute little topper to staple to the top of the bag.  It says "Thank you for building me up on my birthday!"  How cute, cuz you build with Lego's... get it?

Here's what they looked like all put together...

 Here is the jpeg if you want to right click and save this image.  I accidentally printed the first page too small, as you can see in the image above, 3 of them all smaller.  But I think it still looks fine.

Here is a close look at the inside of some of the pages.  I wanted that plain Lego to be last so the kids can create their own figure.

I think they are super cute and so I wanted to share them with everyone.  I don't know how to create them so you go to a website and download them, but you can right click and "save as" them.  Hopefully that works for you.  If anyone wants to tell me how to create them so you can download them in one click that would be great!  Please just leave a comment.

Here are the pages...

Birthday Plate

We didn't have a birthday plate so before JJ got on the school bus I had the two boys drawing on a plate to make a special birthday plate.  

You use permanent markers and bake it in the oven at 350 for 30-40 minutes to set the ink.  And it's hand wash only.  After I had baked it and was washing it I noticed the orange was running, so I quickly dried it and bake it again and for longer and then I turned off the oven and just let it sit in there.  I also wonder if part of it was that it was Bic permanent markers and not Sharpies.  The colored Sharpies the activity day girls used were bought with the budget  money so I had left them there at the church in the closet.   And I only had red and green Sharpies and the rest Bic, because they are cheaper and I tend to be pretty frugal.

Bug Cupcakes

We made these cupcakes to take to Tanner's preschool for his birthday!  Aren't they so cute?  It's another idea I found on Pinterest.

And Jayden made these 4 for our family to eat...

Mackenzie loves to sit on the counter!!!  It's so funny how much she loves it! While I was whipping the icing she sat on the counter.

My Brother's Birthday

It was my brother's birthday so I got out some of our birthday things, put the kids on the sofa and took a picture for my brother.  He lives in Florida so I uploaded the picture to facebook to share with him.

I think it turned out pretty cute!

Tanner's Birthday Cake

Tanner wanted a blue monster truck for his birthday cake.  We had some family over for cake and ice cream.  Dave hurried home from work and made this cake for Tanner before everyone came.  Isn't it awesome?

 When we sang "Happy Birthday" to him he hid his face and then popped up to blow out the candles.

Birthday Banner

A friend of mine (Cristina) had made one of these for her family and I just loved it.  What a cute little tradition to get this out for every birthday!  So I made one in time to have out for Jayden's birthday, which is on Friday.

It's made out of felt so it's super easy!

And it accordion folds so nicely!  I plan to keep it with my tablecloths and then it will be easily accessible.

I bought a 1/4 yard of all the colors I wanted and had plenty left over.  So I asked Liz if she wanted to make one too and passed on the extra felt to her.  And I bought 1 package of extra wide (1/2" inch) double fold bias tape for the top.  I thought it might be cute to make my own with cute colorful fabric, but that was too much trouble to deal with right now.  (And after I opened the bias tape I wished I had made my own, it would have been a little more perfect than the ones you can buy.  But it would take more time to make.)

You can use fabric glue to attach your letters, but I decided to sew mine on.  I have this colorful thread that changes color every couple of inches and I never use it and so I used it to sew these letters on.  I wanted to upload some close ups of letters to show you, but blogger won't let me at the moment.  Sorry!

I had also thought after I sewed the bias tape on with white thread I would use that same colorful thread to sew a train across the bias tape.  My sewing machine (which was my grandmothers) has a cute little train stitch.  But I decided I don't like sewing on the bias tape and I just wanted to be done.  Maybe one day I'll go back and do it.  And maybe one day I'll go back and spruce it up a bit too.

For the triangle, I did mine 7" wide and then 9" inches down.  I don't remember what size letter I used but I'm sure you can figure that out and do what you want if you choose to make one.  When I put the triangles under the bias tape I put them up as far as I could under the fold and I had the tips of the triangles touching, which makes it easier to fold and creates an even balance between triangles.

I was thinking on the one I left blank in between the words, that I can cut numbers out of felt or just print it on paper, and attach them to coordinate with the year of their birthday.  For instance, Jayden will be 5 on Friday so I'll print "5th" or cut out a "5" from felt to put there.

I'm very excited to hang this up for Jayden's birthday and all birthdays to come.  And I hope my kids look forward to it every year too.  Thank you Cristina for the wonderful idea!

Tanner's Birthday Cake

We were finally having Dave's family and some friends over for Tanner's birthday dinner, 2 days short of a month after his birthday.  I was up until 3 a.m. cleaning and getting ready and Dave was up until 5 a.m. putting his tools away and decorating the cake.  (We really didn't start preparations until around 6:30 p.m. and remember we were still finishing up the kitchen too.  Now all that is left to do is the baseboards and window and door trim, yay!)  Tanner loves Basketball and every time he sees one or just a net he'll say "shoot, score!"  So I googled basketball cakes and found this one.  

However, when I bought the icing I bought butter cream not even thinking it wouldn't be white, so it was cream colored.  Then around 1:30 a.m. Dave realized that we didn't have red food color, I had the red tube of icing, but we needed the food coloring to make the orange.  So he ran out to Redner's to buy some and was going to get white icing too, but forgot.  Not too mention, this was his 2nd trip to Redner's in the early morning, his first one was to get more food because he was afraid we weren't going to have enough.  So when he get's home with the red food coloring, he gets the yellow bottle out and realizes that there isn't enough yellow.  Instead of running out for a 3rd time, we decided to add a little green and make it more brown instead of peachy.  So this is how it turned out.  Dave did the decorating, he loves to do it!

Isn't is so cute?!?!

In the morning Tanner saw the picture of the one I found up on the computer monitor and he was really excited to see it and he did yell "Basketball, shoot, score!"  But when we showed him the actual cake, he didn't care too much.  I'll post the pics from the party a little later.

The Cake

It's all edible, except the wooden skewers inside the twizzlers!
Isn't it nice?

I found this design on familyfun.com and Dave modified it a little.

Yes, that's right... Dave made it.

He loves to do stuff like this!

I just think it is so cool!!!!!

The cake part is pound cake, we made it from a mix. The kind you buy is just so greasy. The digger part is a twinkie.

The cupcake is supposed to be a pile of dirt. Oh the dirt is crushed oreo that had fudge in the middle instead of the white cream.