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.

Now that Spring is here (and the rain!!) the busy birthday season has ended in our family.  Seems when we started having children, my sisters and I decided that all the grandchildren should be born in a three month span (years apart of course).  Starting in early January and ending near the end of March, we had 6 family birthday parties. Makes for a very busy but fun time, especially for me since I seem to be the family birthday cake maker, a hobby I love to do.

As a result, this poor blog of mine has been neglected.  I still haven’t figured out how to do it all and this other hobby of mine seems to be the first thing that gets shoved to the back burner.  But I did want to share some pics of the cakes that helped put smiles on my nieces, nephew and children’s (even my Dad) faces on their special day.

Optimus Prime and Bumblebee birthday cake

My nephew is a huge Transformer fan so I incorporated his two favourites, Optimus Prime and Bumblebee into his cake.  Turned out pretty well I think.

Next up was a Tinkerbell themed birthday cake for my daughter’s 4th birthday. Cake was decorated with buttercream icing with flower and butterfly accents.

Tinkerbell inspired birthday cake

March was a busy, busy month for birthdays.  We had 7 family birthdays, 4 of which required my services.

Strawberry Shortcake birthday cake

For my daughter’s “twin” (my niece who was born 8 days after my daughter), I was requested to come up with a Strawberry Shortcake cake.  Since I have yet to attempt to make figures myself, I relied on some plastic figures I  found at the toy store for the Strawberry Shortcake element. The cake was iced using buttercream icing with fondant accents.

Strawberry Shortcake Cake with figures

My Dad’s birthday was next and although his cake was simple, it was no less meaningful as he is a huge baseball fan.

Baseball birthday cake

Next up were cakes for my son and niece, who were born on the same day, one year apart. So far, planning their birthdays hasn’t become a logistical nightmare!

For my niece’s 6th birthday, she wanted a flowers and butterflies themed cake and this is what I came up with. Again I used buttercream icing and fondant accents. I’m not brave enough to cover the entire cake with fondant yet. Unfortunately, I had also created a flower and butterfly fondant spray which didn’t survive the trip to the party ;(

Flowers and Butterflies

We had a Star Wars Jedi Training party for my son’s 7th birthday (a post on the party details is in the works) and I decided to attempt a Death Star.  It’s not my best work, but my son loved it!

Star Wars Death Star birthday cake

Hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I enjoyed creating the cakes.