Happy Birthday Wood Decorations

It is coming up to Birthday season at my house - my boys' have birthdays in May and June. Last spring I came across this cute Happy Birthday felt banner HERE from a local crafter's ETSY shop. Love it! I had seen these fun wood balloons and presents on other blogs and noticed that they were from a local wood craft shop. I finally had a chance recently to stop in and pick them up. A little bit of paint, some scrapbook paper, and some glitter and now I have some great additions to my Birthday decorations.

Here is a close up of each present - three sizes. Here is the small:

The medium:

And the large:

I might go back and tie on some ribbons with the colored wire (which I loved to work with - so easy and colorful!). And here are the two balloons (there were three, but I thought two was plenty for me).

And the polka dot one - can't go wrong with polka dots!

So the plan is to put these out on the mantle along with the banner for our birthdays - very festive and fun - - and easy!

Felt Birthday Banner

I've been wanting to make a birthday banner for my boys for a very long time. I've been looking all over blogland for cute ideas and tutorials. I thought I had settled on a paper one - bought myself all of the supplies even . . . . but I just never got around to it. Then I blog hopped over to AmeroonieDesigns a few weeks ago and found her super cute felt birthday banner. She even had a tutorial - so I went out and bought all the supplies to make it. Well it seems that birthdays come around much more quickly for me than they do for my boys and what do you know, son #2's birthday was coming along very fast. Too fast, in fact, for me to get a banner made. So I quickly emailed Amy to see if she happened to have one that she would sell me (please, please, pretty please!). And guess what - she did.

(Source: AmeroonieDesigns.blogspot.com)

She popped it right in the mail to me (we actually don't live very far from each other, but with varying schedules we couldn't arrange a meet and sell). And here is my new absolutely adorable felt birthday banner and son #2 on his third birthday. I am so happy with it! It will now be an official part of every birthday celebrated in our house. My boys were so excited to see it magically appear on birthday morning. Great idea - wish I had thought of it! Glad I have one to use from here on out. Even for my own birthday!

Another Birthday Cake

Last month, I posted about a website I had discovered that had great and easy-to-decorate kid's birthday cakes. Well we tried another one this weekend and loved it. Really, if we can do this, anyone can.

I always wanted to do something special (but yet homemade) for my kids' birthday cakes. This website really makes this easy. One thing to note about this Fish Tank cake - we couldn't find the green fruit chews and spearmint leaves the directions called for, so we made do with some other fruit chews that I found at the grocery store. My kids don't usually eat fruit roll-ups/chews so this was a new experience for us. Just use what you can find and make it work.

Here is the website one more time. And here is the Fish Tank cake for son #1's fourth birthday. Yes, he got a real fish tank with two goldfish as part of his birthday presents.

Great Kid Birthday Cake Ideas

I am no cake decorator by any stretch of the imagination! Therefore I have great respect and admiration for those who are great cake decorators. Hence my dilemma about birthday cakes for my kids. I want to do something fun and cute but just don't have that talent. Lucky for me we have the internet and I came across a great website that has incredibly easy, fool-proof, kid birthday cake ideas: www.parenting.com/birthday-cakes.

My boys love bugs and icky things so for son #2's recent birthday (he turned two years old) - we made this magnifying glass cake from the website. I bought a 10" cake pan - one boxed cake mix filled the pan. After the cake cooled, I trimmed up the top side so that it was even. Then slip-slapped on some vanilla frosting on the top . . . then some dark chocolate frosting around the sides. The rest of the chocolate frosting went in to a zip top bag. Three red peanut M&M's make up the ant bodies. Cut a tiny corner off from the zip bag to pipe out the ant eyes and legs. Cut a slightly larger hole in the bag and pipe around the top edge. Three Ho Ho's glued together with a dollop of frosting and you have a handle.

The boys loved it and if we can do it, anyone can! I'll be making more cakes from this site!