Woof Woof! Bacon Bit's Birthday

Someone told Bacon Bit he could grow up. I'm not sure who but didn't he read the book on being the youngest baby? He can't grow up so fast!  This past weekend Bacon Bit turned 2. Hard to believe my baby is a toddler and running all over.  Thankfully the terrible two's haven't set in yet.  Although I think I remember the three's being worse than two with the other kids.  Regardless if he followed my directions or not on growing up, we had yet another birthday to plan and that includes another cake! 

Lately Bacon Bit's interests have changes like our weather here, one day it's Bob the Builder, the next it's Diego.  Thankfully one thing has stayed the same, his love for his puppy!  This is Puppy, a well loved blankie I made him before he was born. So well loved I need to repair it again. But puppy goes everywhere with him.  So I thought that would be my inspiration for his birthday cake. After all this is probably the last one I get to pick out, next year he'll be telling me what cake he would like to make.  I love making the kids birthday cakes. Not only is it cheaper, it's fun to watch how their interests change over the year with what they want.  So off I went to find ideas on puppy cakes.

I found some inspiration on the Internet for some puppy cupcakes.  A quick trip though the pantry and then off to the store to find some supplies that would work and we were all set to go!  Here is what you need to make these cute puppies yourself:

Cupcakes- homemade recipe or from a box, just bake them up!

Then I took some of these vanilla and chocolate cookies for the face. Twist them apart and use a knife to scrap off the cream filling. Yes the kids loved that I was doing this. They happily volunteered to eat the cookie insides! 

 Next you need to dig out some of these candy pieces for the eyes and nose.  I used yellow for eyes and brown noses. These are Reses' pieces because I had them laying around. M&M or any other candies would work too.  If you don't have candies just frosting works too. 

 Then I mixed up a very small batch of black frosting and put in in a baggie with a piping tip. 

  Now it's time to assemble the cookies.  First take your cream-less cookies and break about a third of the black cookies off to make the ears.  Keep the vanilla one's whole as this will be for puppy's face.

 

 Next is all about placement. Frost your cupcake. I tinted my frosting brown for this, but pink puppies would be cute too!  Then place the vanilla cookie on the bottom of the frosted cupcake. Add the eyes and use frosting to secure on the nose.  then I added the ears to the top.  Finally I took my black frosting to make eyes and a mouth. There you have it! Aren't they just cute!

  WOOF WOOF WOOF!  A whole bunch of puppies! 

 

 Add a few candles for the birthday boy and we are set!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY BACON BIT!

Birthday Busy

 It was that time of the year again, both Bacon Jr. and Little Boy Bacon's birthdays come 4 days apart from each other in July. That means a lot of cake at the Bacon house!  This year since we've been so busy I actually thought about buying their cake from the store bakery.  That was until I glanced at the prices, $19.99!! I about fell over right there. I promptly headed for the baking aisle instead.  Bacon Jr wanted a Lego star wars cake this year.  Gosh these kids keep me on my toes with ways to wow them with my very armature cake decorating skills!  But I try to not disappoint them.  I found an idea a while back how to copy characters right from a coloring book page with frosting onto cakes that I thought I'd give it a try for this challenge.  First find our character, Bacon Jr. wanted Jedi Luke for his cake. I quickly scanned a copy with my computer scanner and got started. If it was just from a coloring book I wouldn't have scanned it, I would have just used the page but we couldn't even find a free online color picture he liked so we choose one from his book.

 Next I whipped up some homemade frosting.  Then I grabbed a Ziploc type baggie and inserted my cake tip to the inside, snipped the bag and added the other tip pieces and viola! instant disposable cake decorating baggie.  These work great for small amounts of frosting. Trust me I've tried it to decorate sugar cookies with lots of frosting and all I got was busted bag seems!  Ahh... it's the little tips that save others headache!

  Then take some wax paper and place it over your color sheet.  I taped mine to the sheet to make sure it wouldn't move as I frosted it.

Then I took one color and outlined the picture. It's a good tip to remember when you are doing this that the frosting you put on first will be the top layer of the design when you lay it on the cake. Also this will be a mirror image when it's on the cake if you're ok with that!

 Then take a new color and add that to the picture.  I filled in the body with black, mixed up some peach for the face and hand, yellow for the hair and a nice green light saber.  Normally after I outline I would have made sure to put the face on before filling in over the top, however I was working with a picture that was only 3.5 inches in size. I do not recommend this!  It was very hard to do, but that was the size I needed for the cake. The bigger the picture, the easier it is to make the fine details on it. 

   Now that my Luke was complete it was time for him to 'chill out' in the freezer for a while. I left it in there for about an hour just because I was busy decoration the house. I'm sure 15 minutes would have been enough. 

While it's in the freezer it's a great time to frost the cake too!

 Now it's time to take out your frozen character. You can lift off the wax paper and tada! Magic right?

 Gently flip your frosting image over and place it on your cake where you'd like it. Then gently peel the wax paper away. 

 There you have it! A very happy birthday boy! I finished making the face by using edible pens. Ok so the pen isn't edible but the 'ink' is. YUMMY and FUN!

 

 And no I didn't forget about Little Boy Jr.'s birthday cake either, his was a bit less complicated.  All he wanted was a bobber cake!  He loves fish and fishing even more.  I took two 1 quart bowls and baked my cake in there, bake a small ramekin too and assemble and frost! He loved his special cake too!

 Now what is the best way to end the perfect birthday when your a kid? With a campfire you got to help build of course! Complete with blue and green flames thanks to Grandma Bacon!  Whew, it's over and I was an exhausted mama, but I had two very happy boys and two awesome birthday cakes for very little money!

Princess party!!

Wow, so much has gone on this month that I can see the dust collecting around here.  With the holidays approaching I have to say that family duties have come first. But I have not forgotten my loyal and new fans!  So as promised I am posting about our Princess birthday party.  It wasn't easy when Little Miss Bacon said she wanted a princess party but not Disney princess party.  How was I going to pull this off without breaking the bank?  Thankfully my craft skills came into play here and another thankful thing, I had most supplies already around the house.  But even if I didn't, I wouldn't have to invest much into it all.  So the planning started, and out came the pen and paper to plan a party for six little princesses! 

First the invites had to go out.  I didn't want to spent a lot of money on them, or an extra trip to town. Thankfully an Internet search solved my problem. I was able to find these super cute invites to print out. I downloaded them to my computer, opened them in the paint program and typed in the party info.  I rolled them up scroll style, secured with ribbon.  I cut out these circles and wrote each girls name on the back.  Invites ready to go!

Now to decide on cake.  Little Miss Bacon wanted a cake with a crown, humm not to hard there.  I dug though the dress up tub and found a sparkling crown.  Perfect for her cake.  I also remembered some cupcake wrapper kit I won this past spring that had princess crowns in it for cupcakes.  Cake done!

 Then we planned a few basic games, you know the good old fashioned birthday kind.  Anyone amazed by some birthday parties out there?  I've heard of bouncy houses, live animals, and much more.  We just went classic here and it paid off both in my pocket book and the kids attention!  Wonder what we all played?  Musical chairs, freeze dance, Princess says (instead of Simon), and pin the crown on the princess.  Yes I hand drew a princess on a large pieces of paper and made a felt crown for them to pin on, total cost = free! Ok so she may not be the prettiest princess out there, but Little Miss Bacon had fun coloring her in!

The final planning was the take home goodies.  I was told you can't have a princess party with out crowns.  I wanted something that wouldn't break easy, and that every girl could wear.  I opted for felt crown headbands.  These were super easy to make too, and they can slide off the headband for the girls to wear after the party as well. 

Here is what you need:
Headband
2 pieces felt (coordinating colors) 
glue gun
jewels optional

 First take one pieces of felt and cut the top part of your crown out of it. Make sure not to cut the whole crown out. 

From your other pieces of felt cut out the small crown.  I free hand drew all of these.  And I have no idea how to link to a pdf to attach my patterns to it.  It's ok to wing things, It adds to the character of it! This smaller crown you can cut out all the way. 

Next take the first crown (this is the bigger one that is not all the way cut out.  And place it around your headband.  I cut two little slits in the fabric to help make it fit better.  Make sure it is angled outward or in the same direction the crown shape is.
                        
Now is the part to work carefully with. Take your hot glue gun and glue the cut out crown to the felt.  Once it's glued down you can cut out the rest of the crown from the felt.  This makes it easy for them to be the same size once you glue them together. 

Tada! A princess crown.  You can re-glue any parts that seem like they are too lose once you get it cut out.  I also glue near the opening for the headband to slide though so it will stand up more on the girls head.  I didn't glue the headband to the crown though, I wanted it to be able to slip off so in the future the girls could remove it and just wear the headband. 

Now glue on your small crown to the big one.

And what is a princess without some gems right!  I had a packet of these stick on scrapbook gems left over from another project I made a long time ago. I used the glue gun to put a few on each crown.  Don't have gems? No problem. Use some of the remaining felt scraps to cut out flowers or hearts to glue on instead.  You know me better than to buy extra things right!

I think they turned out awesome! The 'princesses' liked them as well, and that really

is all that counts right?!

 
So crowns are finished, what else does a princess need?  How about a magic wand!  I saw this idea on pinterest when I was searching ideas for the princess party. OH how I love that website. If you are looking for anything you can find it there!  I just happened to have a large bag of korked ribbon in my craft box from when I used to make Little Miss Bacon's hair bows.  I knew I was saving it for something.  If you don't already have korked ribbon (you know that cute spiral stuff) no worries. It's super easy to make!  And it will save you a ton of money on hair bows to make it yourself too.  First you need some dowels.  Any size you want your curls to be.  I bought a bunch at our local hardware store and used one of Mr. Bacon's saws to cut each in half. 

Then take a ribbon, any kind of ribbon I found will curl, grosgrain ribbon tends to keep it's hold a little better but if you find something else cute in the craft department, give it a try! Start your ribbon at about a 45* angle on your dowel.  Secure it to the dowel with a WOODEN clothes pin. This is important that it's wooden because plastic will melt in the oven.  Continue to wrap the ribbon until you get your desired lenght or the end of the dowel and secure it with another clothespin.  Keep going until all your dowels are wrapped or you have enough ribbon for your project. 

Now that you have them all secure to the dowel, preheat your oven to 225*.  Yes you read that right, you need to bake your ribbon!  Pile all the ribbon wrapped dowels on a baking sheet adn pop them in the oven for 25 minutes. Not hard to remember right, 225* for 25 min.  Easy! When they are done, let them cool and unwrap them.  You'll have curly ribbon!  So now that I have my ribbon all curled it's time to work on those wands.

Take some ribbon and cut it to your desired lenght. I think I cut these between 3.5-4 inches. Really I just guessed at lenghts and didn't measure. Mr. Bacon would say that it is quite normal for me to not measure much!  He hates watching me bake becuase I rarely use measure spoons!  Not only did I cut curly ribbon, I also cut straight ribbon for these wands too. 

Once you haev all your ribbon lenghts cut, it's time to assemble them.  I took a thin ribbon and cut it about 6 inches. (yes it's a lot, but it makes tying much easier)  Lay your thin ribbon vertically on your work surface.  Start to lay your cut ribbon horizontally on the ribbon.  How many you lay on there is your preference, the more you lay the fluffier the wand. I'd say I places between 15-20 ribbons per wand.

Once you have your nice little pile, you have to do the tricky part.  Pinch all the ribbons together.  With your other hand take the thin ribbon and tie a knot around the others.  If you happen to have a second set of hands, this will go a lot smoother!  Once you have a good tight knot you can take a look at your work. If some of the ribbons are not even just give them a gentle pull to straighen them out. 

Next its time to attach it to your dowel. For this project I did have it invest in a package of dowels for the wands. I paid a whole .96 for a pack of 16 of them from walmart.  Not too bad for the budget!
Take out one dowel and tie the thin ribbon around the end of it.  Secure it as tight as you can with a knot. 

Next take the thin ribbon and twist it down the dowel and secure with a dab of hot glue. 

Now that the ribbon is secre it's time to wrap the dowel.  Take a long length of ribbon and secure it to the top of the dowel with a dab of hot glue.

Continue to wrap the whole dowel with the ribbon, wrapping it at a 45* angle to avoid overlapping too much.  Then secure the bottom with another dab of glue.  It can be a bit tricky to wrap over the thin ribbon that is glued to the dowel, just do your best. 

Stand back and admire your princess wand!  Beautiful right! The girls loved these.

 

But if you're like me it's not over until you have a jewel. I had a few of the stick on gems leftover from the crowns so I added one to the middle of each ribbon bouquet on the wand.  Nothing says princess better than some bling right!

Each girl picked out a wand and crown as they arrived to the party.  It was a blast.  Lots of giggles and smiles, games, cake and presents.  Mr. Bacon and I were exhaused by the time it was over.  We also sent the girls home with a thank you baggie of goodies.  I wasn't going to at first, I thought the wands and crowns were enough, but I happened to hit target's dollar spot on the right day. They marked all their princess stuff down 75% off! I picked up princess note pads, purses, bracelets and added a chapstick to each baggie.  Total cost was under $2 each.  I placed them in brown paper lunch bags I had in the pantry, punched holes in it and secured it with a ribbon and another princess circle from the above website.  They were a hit as well! 

Whew! Tired and exhaused.  Sorry for all the pictures but I hope you enjoyed Little Miss's Princess party as much as we did.  So what little princess are you going to spoil!