A Party for Two

I thought it would be fun if, in addition to our family birthday party, we also had a bigger birthday party with friends. For some reason, Ian had a hard time understanding why we would do this, but it all seems very logical to me :). He came around in the end, and we decided to do a joint birthday party again this year with Aed’s due date buddy, Ellie. Because they get a kick out of very different things, we had a combined ‘trucks’ and ‘cute jungle animals’ theme :). It worked out really well!

(Although now that I think about it.. zebras aren't really all that jungley are they?)

I wanted to do a banner for them instead of buying one, so I painted some letters and a little truck and monkey based on the decorations to hang above the food table.

Food was pretty simple this year. Joy had just given birth to her new little Ian not quite two weeks before the party, so I took care of the eats on my own. On my own meaning.. me and the people that live with me :)

The part I most enjoyed, of course, was the cake!

It was SO HARD for Aed not to touch the cake. He hovered right next to it talking about the trucks
from the moment he saw it :)

I had a vision of what I wanted it to look like with the two themes. It didn’t quite hit the mark, but as usual, I was experimenting with things I have never tried before, so I think it came out pretty well in the end.

The animals and trucks were made by doing Royal Icing Transfers. Basically, you pipe royal icing onto waxed (baking) paper, let it harden, then peel them off and use them to decorate the cake. I thought this would be much easier than trying to decorate directly on the cake. And it was.. until it came to the putting them on the cake part.

My royal icing never quite dried, so I ended up having to get my x-acto knife out and cut around each shape and put them on the cake with the baking paper still stuck to the back :) Ian and I decided that if they had just had one more day to sit they would have dried all the way and been fine. So now I know for next time. I also know that it is very important to make extras, and keep them far, far away from the toddler’s reach!

We had a great turn out and had way too many people in our little living room :)

But it was really fun, especially because so many of these little kiddos were at Aed and Ellie’s party last year too. And four of them, including Aed and Ellie, have new siblings or ones on the way this year! I love that even though this is a fluid community, we are growing together.

Little cutie patoots!

So we lit candles, and sang to our little two-year-olds. They held onto their toys and stared while I laughed at that intimidated look on their faces.

I think this is fun.. but I'm not totally sure..

Aed talked about singing Happy Birthday to You for DAYS after the party. I even sang it to him a few extra times just for fun :)