The Bowser Suit

It was my daughter's 5th birthday last week and she requested a Super Mario party. She wanted to dress up as Mario, which was simple, and we bought an outfit for her. She wanted daddy to dress up as Bowser for the party. Not so simple. Daddy agreed, and spent the best part of 6 weeks making his outfit from scratch. When he got to the body, hands and feet, my skills as seamstress were put to the test as I not only made all the patterns for the pieces, I also taught daddy how to help with the sewing. After 3 weeks of doing a bit at a time, and with a couple of hours to spare before the party started we finished it. Here is the result.

Sorry the picture is taken in the middle of a messy room, so the costume does not stand out so much, but all the pictures at the party had other people's children in them and I didn't want to post them on here without consent.

Scooby Doo Birthday Cake

I have a confession, I faked the icing on a cake. It is not like me to pass up the chance of an icing challenge, but I am trying to pace myself and not take on too much at once. I'm so glad I did it, the cake topper that I bought was fantastic, and it took a lot of pressure off an already complicated cake. I also had time to make Scooby snacks for the party as I didn't end up spending a whole afternoon icing an intricate cake design. I bought the icing topper on eBay for £3.50. Bargain.

So, the cake. I decided to try out a 3 colour sponge cake like I have seen all over the place recently. Charlotte decided on purple, orange and pink and as luck would have it my baking trays are just the right size to make an A4 cake - the same size as the icing topper. I decided to make each sponge separately (a 2 egg batch of my 5:4:4:2 mix with added vanilla), colouring the egg with my colour paste before incorporating it. I started with purple, which baked well but the colour was not very nice. I then made the orange and pink which were lovely.

I ran out of eggs, so while I was out buying more I had a re-think. Green would be easier to achieve than purple, so the 3rd sponge was a glorious froggy green. Once I had made the 3 sponges, I assembled the cake. I put home made plum jam between the pink and orange, then buttercream between the orange and green. I then put a thin layer of buttercream over the whole thing and covered it with white rolled icing.

To attach the icing topper, you have to remove it from it's plastic backing and place it on tacky icing. I slightly dampened the icing on the cake then placed the topper on top. Perfect. Unfortunately the cake was more risen in the middle, so a couple of edges rucked up a bit, but that was hidden by the piped blue icing that I put around the top and base of the cake.

I also made some Scooby snacks using my gingerbread recipe, then piping the design on top with leftover icing from the cake.

Big Georgie cake

My niece turns two tomorrow and I was very pleased to have been asked to make her birthday cake. What did she want on her cake? "Big Georgie" (from Peppa Pig) was the answer, so I trawled the internet for a Peppa shaped cake pan. No such luck, so I made a round cake and drew an icing George on it. This is only my second character cake, so was a bit daunting, but I have to say, I really enjoyed it.

I made two round sponges 10" across, then sandwiched them with strawberry jam and covered the whole thing in a thin layer of dairy-free buttercream icing. I then laid a ready rolled circle of icing on top and smoothed it down. I then used a print-out of George to transfer the image onto the icing. I did this by pushing a pin through to make a dotted outline (I did this for the other character cake, and it works pretty well as long as you cover all the holes with outline icing) and then used my icing paints to do the block colouring. I then made up icing in the colours that I needed for outlining and piped all the outlines.

It took a while, but I am very happy with the result.

Scooby Doo villain posters

The beast from the bottomless lake

It will be Charlotte's birthday next month and she has decided on a Scooby Doo themed birthday party. We started making the posters for it, to be used as part of a mystery solving game and I was very good and allowed the children to help. I am usually very possessive of anything arty for a party as I want it to be "just right", but I learned from this experience that I need to let go more often and trust the children to create with me.

Ghost astronaut

I drew up the villains on A2 card, then we all block painted them with acrylic paint, not worrying about details too much. Finally, when they were dry I used a black marker pen to fill in all the details. I have to say, the ghost astronaut and the beast from the bottomless lake look better than I could have achieved, and the girls painted these all by themselves.

Charlotte has decided that she now wants the whole Scooby Doo gang as posters too, so we need to get some more card now.

Trophy making

Yesterday, as we were unable to go out in the sun (one small person has terrible heat rash) we stayed in for the morning and made trophies. We are having a birthday party at the weekend which involves 10-pin bowling, so the girls and I made winners' trophies.

We have some leftover silver plastic goblets from Emma's party and we also used plastic balls, cardboard, an empty playdoh pot and lid, a plastic bowl, kitchen roll, stickers, pva glue and glass paints.

The girls made handles from cardboard and stuck them to their goblets with magic tape, then they painted them with gold and silver glass paints. Emma also used a variety of stickers to decorate hers.
The gold trophy was assembled then covered with a couple of layers of kitchen roll and pva. I then painted it with gold glass paint and used a sharpie pen to add the details.
The multicoloured trophy was Charlotte's. She also assembled and (with a little help) covered the trophy with kitchen roll and pva. She then painted it and after the picture was taken she added the details to hers with a sharpie too.

Knight outfit

Today Charlotte was going to a Knights and Damsels in distress party, she excitedly went through the princess dresses and chose to go as Ariel. Emma was allowed to tag along, and decided 1 hour before the party started that she didn't want to be a damsel, she wanted to be a knight. I decided that I would take up the challenge, and rifled through the airing cupboard for an old pillow case.

None of the outfit is hemmed, so it is unlikely to last that long, but in the time I had I was very pleased with my effort. I cut out a neck hole and folded the corners in to make the shoulders. I sewed a silver button on to the point of each folded corner to secure it. I then cut from the hem of the pillowcase up to just under the folded corner, about 4cm in from the side seam on the front of the pillowcase - this gave a cloak at the back and the front of a tabard at the front. I cut the front a little shorter and the back too, as Emma is quite little and I didn't want her to trip on it, then sewed a couple of lengths of chain from under one button to under the other one. I then used felt tip pen to draw the cross on the front (the fabric pen had conveniently run out). Ta-dah, one knight costume.

She wore a grey t-shirt and grey leggings underneath, then a belt of mine looped twice around her waist to hold the tabard part to her body. She made the sword and shield herself at her birthday party earlier in the year.

The big baking session begins

Cut up and ready for the cake sale.

I am on a baking mission this week. I made two banana cakes yesterday and sent one in to nursery for their snack time treat. I made a big slab of rich chocolate cake today for the cake sale at school tomorrow, as a practice for the cake I shall be making on saturday for my friend's little boy's birthday party. The chocolate cake is one I make for really special occasions, so those who get a bit at the cake sale tomorrow are very lucky! I don't make it very often as it is super-sweet and rich and uses up a lot of my chocolate supply. It is based on a chocolate brownie recipe which is heavenly in itself, I totally recommend making them too!

Rich chocolate cake ingredients

275g plain chocolate (I use these)
275g soya margarine
180g chocolate chips (white and "milk" or just "milk" - you can buy both from Plamil too.)
175g plain flour
slightly heaped tbsp baking powder
4 large eggs
1 tbsp vanilla extract
200g caster sugar
125g light brown soft sugar


Method

How the top looks when it is cooked and ready to cool.

Melt the margarine and chocolate over a pan of simmering water to melt.
Measure out flour and baking powder and set aside.
Mix together the eggs, sugars and vanilla in a large bowl, then add the melted chocolate and mix well.
Add the flour and baking powder and mix well. The mix will be very gloopy.
Finally add the chocolate chips and mix, then pour the mix into a 7" square tin that has been greased and lined with baking paper.
Bake for around an hour at 170c, don't be tempted to turn the heat up to speed up the process, as the cake will burn before the middle is cooked.

Once the cake was cooked and cooled (it takes ages to cool as it is so dense) I made up a dairy-free cream cheese icing with the following ingredients:

1 tbsp dairy-free cream cheese (available on the high street in Holland and Barrett)
1 tbsp soya margarine
2tsp cocoa powder
icing sugar to make a thick but spreadable icing.

I spread this on the cake and sprinkled stars on top before cutting it into squares with a bread knife. I started off with pieces that are much too big, I think it should be cut into 25 squares. If I had one, I'd make it in a bigger tin and have less chunky pieces.

I did not make this today, but...

My sister reminded me of something I made a while back for my daughter's birthday. She was into Maisy Mouse at the time (Charlotte, not my sister) and I made this for them to play with at her birthday party. I think the box was left over from when we had a new kitchen delivered, and not one to throw anything out unless I have to, it went up in the loft for a while. Anyway, here is the Maisy thing:

Now I shall find out if certain people are reading the blog, as they are bound to comment on this picture - the things you do when your 3-year-old niece asks you to!
The picture is acrylic paint on cardboard. I cut the face holes out then lined each hole with brown gummed paper so the kids didn't get paper cuts on their faces.

Some friends were talking the other day about how much kids love a good cardboard box, I don't think I ever grew out of it, and have to admit I have boxes full of boxes in the loft - they always come in useful.

And so it begins...

I tend to find myself thinking "I like that, I could make one of those" and so I try, with very mixed results. I am a creative type, I see junk as materials for making the next project, and often rope my children in to the process, whether they like it or not. I decided it was time to start cataloguing my making experiences, and maybe I can inspire somebody else to be a little bit more creative than they realised they could be.

I'll start with the 4th birthday party that we threw for Emma, my rather eclectic little princess. She announced that she wanted a Princess party and so I looked online at entertainers. I balked at the prices and found myself muttering "I could do something just as good for a lot less money" and things escalated from there. We hired the local village hall and hired a bouncy castle with the theme for the party being "Princesses and Knights".

We also bought a helium canister from the local party shop and blew up loads of balloons, bought a big re-useable fairytale backdrop and put together a making table:

Making crowns and shields

1. Design a jewelled goblet (bought on Amazon, but no longer available). You can always use clear plastic ones.
2. Create a crown (using stick on jewels and stickers).
3. Design a shield (I cut out cardboard ones and let them colour these in and stick things on them)
4. Colour in themed pictures, printed at home after a google search to find relevant images.

I bought loads of cheap stickers and stick on jewels from amazon and eBay, and brought crayons, pens and wax crayons from home.

My friend Karen helping with the goblets

I made simple fairy cakes and themed the icing to the party and, ta-dah! One very happy princess.