My nephew T is now a six year old. Six!!! I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that since my daughter’s six birthday is not far behind.

Anyway, this year he decided he wanted Lego Ninjago to be the theme of his party. Now if you know my sister at all, you know that she loves to buy paper goods, particularly those found in a party store. So just imagine how she felt when she discovered you could not buy Lego Ninjago themed party goods. The horror!

What do you do when you can’t buy what you want? You make it. We scoured the Internet for ideas, although there weren’t many and managed to come up with some ideas that made the birthday boy very happy.

It was my job to create the birthday banner and cake. First I found a good template of a Ninjago Mini figure and used the head for the banner. This is what I came up with:

For the cake we decided to do a cake / cupcake tower combo.  T’s favourite Ninjago character is Kai, so I based the cake portion on him and my husband created a Japanese Torii to go on top.  The cupcakes were simple with the faces of Kai, Jay and Cole. I was very happy with the way the icing colours turned out, especially the black!

My sister also got crafty and created some Ninjago balloons using yellow balloons, tissue paper and photocopies of their eyes. Awesome aren’t they!

Last but not least, she also created some themed cups and loot bags.

The kids had a great time, the birthday boy was extremely happy and maybe, just maybe I may have cured my sister’s addiction to party good stores. Well a girl can dream can’t she.

This fall has been such a whirlwind of activity that I have neglected my little space here on the internet.  I vow to change that but for now here is a sample of what I have been up to. I recently made these cupcakes with matching cake, for my niece’s Baptism.

Chocolate cupcakes with buttercream icing and candy molded chocolate cross

Two-tiered chocolate / vanilla cakes covered in buttercream with strawberry buttercream filing and fondant accents

These were so well received that I have been seriously contemplating starting my own cake business.  What do you think?  Would you buy any of these?

Last week was a busy one around here.  Not only did we have the usual extra curricular activities to attend (soccer, ballet, school assembly, recital etc.) but I had my very first big, non-family, cupcake order to complete and we said goodbye to my son’s best friend and his family.

In fact the cupcake order and the goodbye were related.  Just before Christmas last year, my friend S told me there was a possibility that their family would be moving to Holland, if an opportunity for her husband panned out.  Well as luck would have it for them, it did and takes them away from Ottawa for a year!!

Fast forward to a few months ago, and my friend asked me if I could come up with a Holland themed cupcake. She wanted to have a little goodbye party in each of her son’s classes at school and thought it would be great if the cupcake somehow reflected the country they would be temporary residents of.  Well the parties were last Friday, so I spent my week making chocolate tulips, to go on top of 4 dozen cupcakes.

4 Dozen cupcakes waiting to be decorated

Chocolated, molded tulips

Finished product

Needless to say the cupcakes were a big hit (who doesn’t like cake!!). DD and I attended the goodbye party in my son’s class (she’s going to miss Z as much as my son) and were treated to not only cupcakes, but a short video as well. My son’s teacher is brilliant and found an age appropriate video on Holland, so the kids could familiarize themselves with the country their classmate would be calling home for a year.

So now the parties are over, the goodbyes have been said and Z and his family have arrived safely in Holland to begin their new adventure.  Meanwhile my son and I are learning to adjust without our friends and are thankful that technology will keep them close, even though they are so far away. Oh and we are counting down the months until their return