Anthony's birthday

I have so much to write about. But true to the name of my blog, life has just been getting in the way and I really haven't had time. I have to write about my first time ever hosting Thanksgiving, I have to write about Anthony needing ear surgery, I have to write about Christmas, I have plenty I need to dump on you guys, because I know you just love reading about it.

I'll start with Anthony's birthday. My little, tiny, newborn baby turned four years old last Monday!! Can you believe that?! As you know, I decided I'd be Martha Stewart and make everything. For some reason. Shockingly, (even I was surprised) I managed to get everything done. Every single thing I told myself I would make, I did. The week leading up to his birthday party held quite a few late night crafting sessions but it got done. So I win.



Her beer is in a wine glass so she could feel fancy.
I had actual wine, because I AM fancy.

It started with the happy birthday banner. I downloaded this font called Batfont and used that for the letters of the banner. I bought some black poster board, some grey card stock and some yellow scrap book paper that had small yellow dots, sort of resembling comic book dots. I cut out the letters, glued them to the grey paper then cut the grey paper to the same shape as the letter. Then glued the letter onto a piece of the yellow paper that had been cut into round edged squares. Then glued all of that onto the black card stock, which was then cut into squares with pointy "bat ear" type edges. So each letter meant four pieces of paper that had to be cut, shaped and glued together. There are 13 letters in the phrase "happy birthday" and 4 pieces of paper per letter meant 52 pieces of paper that had to be cut, shaped and glued, plus two more for the center bat signal, giving a grand total of 54. Then they had to be tied together with ribbon, that had to be cut. Thankfully I had help. I bribed a friend with promises of beer to come help me cut out letters and my mom cut the ribbon and tied it all together.

We started essentially the same way on the center pieces. I went and got pictures of Batman in action off the internet. Got a few bat signals, got a logo, and printed the number 4 in the batfont and we got to cutting and pasting and more cutting and pasting. In my inspiration for the centerpieces, the lady used small plant pots that she had painted black. I didn't care much for that idea so I got some glass bowls from the dollar tree and painted them black. Then I shaped some of that awful green foam stuff that made a giant mess and stuffed that into the glass bowls. I glued the characters onto skewers and stuck the skewers into the foam. Ta-da! Centerpieces.

The cake was my biggest fear. I decided, similar to how I did with making the skirt, that even though I had never in my life worked with fondant, that I was going to make Anthony's cake. I wanted to lay yellow fondant over the
cake, have a black bat signal in the middle, and have a city along the side. I planned on using pound cake, because fondant is heavy and can make a normal cake sink. But for some reason when I cooked the pound cake it didn't rise enough and it came out hard, so it went into the trash. THANK GOODNESS I had a box of chocolate cake mix in my cupboard. Yep. I cheated and used cake mix but there was no way in hell I was going to have enough time to make ANOTHER cake (because cake #1 was now in the trash)  if I made it from scratch. I mentioned that I was more afraid of laying the yellow fondant than I was of making the bat signal, remember? I was wrong. Laying the yellow was SO easy. All I did was roll it out and kept rolling until it was smooth and mostly even then layed it on the cake. Smoothed it out, cut off the excess and BAM. Done. My plan for the bat signal went wrong though when I forgot to print out a template, so I was trying to form the batsignal by hand. When its 1am and you've been baking and forming fondant since 6pm concentration isn't really your strong suit. I fought it trying to form a batsignal for about an hour until I gave up. I had one mediocre one that I would use in the event that I couldn't get one done in the morning. First thing in the morning I asked Brandon to try his hand at it. I was ridiculously tired (remember that whole 1am thing??) and was really in no mood to fight with it again and somehow he got it done on like his second try. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't clean, it was missing two dip thingys on the bottom, but it looked like a bat signal and that was good enough for me. My city on the side also didn't have windows because I ran out of time and wasn't going to stay up until 2am just so I could cut little tiny yellow squares. My Gotham City doesn't have windows, deal with it.

The cupcakes were far easier than the cake was. I bought a bat signal shaped cookie cutter online, and used that to cut little tiny bat signals out of the black fondant. Then I frosted the cupcakes with plain cream cheese frosting mixed with yellow food coloring, then plopped those little black fondant bat signals on there. Those were probably the easiest thing I made.

I'm one of those really annoying people that likes to incorporate the theme into EVERYTHING. Can you tell? Well I had to have my food themed too. I used my bat signal cookie cutter to cut cheese into bat cheeses, which were layed out with crackers. We had a block of gouda that was named "Ra's Al Gouda" after the bad guy Ra's Al Goul. We had some jokers laughing gas juice, which was just some green kiwi strawberry juice. We had "Two Face's Coins" which was these Oreos that are chocolate cookie on one side and white cookie on the other. I didn't even know that Oreo made such a product, but it was totally perfect for what I needed. I had some goldfish that were "Penguin's fishy friends" that one was totally a stretch, I just needed some more bad guy themed food! I really wanted to have out some bugles and call them cat woman claws but apparently those hard to come by. Until you don't need them anymore, then you see them everywhere.

All in all the party made me seriously sleep deprived but it was awesome. It was definitely a success. Anthony loved it, everyone had fun. Everyone ate. Everyone was happy. I couldn't bring myself to throw away the banner or the centerpieces. Anyone want them??

Let me finish by saying happy birthday to my favorite Anthony on earth. I was only 21 when I found out he was coming but he couldn't have come at a better time. My life has changed so much and I don't know where I would be without him. He taught me what it really is to live and love, and how valuable life is. Thank you so much little man, for making me grow up and for giving my life meaning.



I found out I have a laminating machine at work and MAY have gone overboard laminating the food labels.