Happy Birthday Little R!

Life at Feathers and Fingerprints has been crazy busy!  I have so many crafty things waiting to be shared!  First on the list is a birthday celebration for my son!

A couple weeks ago Little R turned 3!

Being the lazy busy mom I am, I sent out an invitation via email.  Some family came to town to celebrate so we kept the party super small.  That makes an email invitation acceptable, right?  I made this invite using the iPad app Red Stamp.  If you don't have this app you must go download it now!  It is a wonderful app for making and sharing cards for every occasion.  Red Stamp will even print and mail your cards for you!  How sweet is that?

Transportation Theme Birthday Cake

This was Little R's first birthday as a VanZant.  I was so excited to finally get to make a little boy's birthday cake!  We chose a transportation theme and bought a new dump truck and back hoe for the cake.  Little R kept pointing at his cake all morning wanting to play with the trucks!

Construction Theme Birthday Cake

I sent my husband to the store late the night before to get small trucks for the cake.  He brought these home, not realizing they have batteries and make noise.  No big deal, except when I washed all the icing off I must have gotten the inside of one of the trucks wet.  After everyone was asleep that night I kept hearing BEEP BEEP BEEP rumble rumble coming from the living room.  (Imagine the beeping noise of a truck backing up and the rumbling of heavy machinery.)    Did I mention the broken truck was hidden somewhere under the furniture and only sounded when I was out of the room?  I didn't find the crazy thing till the next morning...

Overall, Little R's birthday was a big success.  I'm looking forward to many more little boy birthdays!

Happy Birthday Little R!

A Rainbow Birthday!

My sweet little Bean just turned three!  How did that happen?  Time is going too fast!  Lil Bean requested a blue cake for her birthday.  I thought that was a little boring, so I showed her a picture of a rainbow cake, and, well, she was sold!  

I enjoyed mixing the colors into the cake batter.  When the cakes were done baking I trimmed off the golden brown edges to show the pretty colors inside.  Then I iced the top and left the sides exposed!

Rainbow Birthday Cake

Rainbow Birthday Cake

This cake was so pretty.  And so easy!  Hands down the easiest birthday cake I've ever made for one of the kids.

To celebrate Bean's big day, we had our toes done with Grandma 'Zona.  What a treat!  Bean was a little nervous, but Monkey is counting down until her birthday so we can go again!

And, no birthday would be complete without taking treats to school!  The kids got a kick out of these rainbow cupcakes.  I kept them simple and put just a little icing on top.

Rainbow Cupcakes

Happy Birthday to my Little Bean!!

Tangled in a Good Time

Monkey's Tangled themed birthday party was a success!  Her little friends arrived in princess dresses (or prince attire- we did have a prince in attendance!) and spent about an hour running around the house and playing princess.  I got a little caught up in the craziness and didn't get the best pictures, but you'll get the idea.  :)

The "cake" was actually 4 layers of cake at the base, rice crispy treats, a large blueberry muffin, and a waffle cone.  A dowel rod through the middle kept everything upright.  All I'm going to say is this cake was my husband's idea...

The finished tower.  Sorry it's blurry!

Rapunzel Tower Cake

Rapunzel Party

My sweet little princess!

Rapunzel Tower Birthday Cake

This is the only picture I have with the Rapunzel braid hanging from the shelf!  Like I said, I was a little caught up in the craziness!

Happy Birthday Monkey!

A Baker's Dozen

Today is my father-in-law's birthday!  Happy Birthday Jan!  We are also planning and preparing for Monkey's 4th birthday which is coming up in a few days.  So I've got cakes on the brain.  Won't you join me on a walk down memory lane?

Once upon a time I took a couple of Wilton cake decorating classes and learned a few things about icing and fondant.  I also watched Ace of Cakes religiously hoping to soak up some new techniques.  How's that for a resume?  ;)

This is the cake I made for Jan a few years ago when he was in town celebrating with us. 

This duck was Monkey's 1st birthday cake.  We had about two dozen rubber duckies floating in our pool for her party.

Fast forward one year.  This time I made one cake for Jan and Monkey to share.  This was my first attempt at marshmallow fondant.  Hey, ya gotta start somewhere.   

Here's a falcon cake for my hunky falconer husband.  I used the Wilton 3D duck pan but re-positioned the head and propped it on a cake perch.

The sandcastle cake was Lil Bean's 1st birthday cake.  The graham cracker crumbs looked so much like sand that she wouldn't eat it.  Whoops.

Sand Castle Cake

The castle turrets were baked in coffee cans.

This was Ryan's most recent birthday cake.  I experimented with the filling rather than the design this time.  Inside is a layer of peanut-butter filling.  It was delish.  I used a Paula Dean recipe, and really, how can you go wrong there?

Peanut Butter Filling Cake

Then there's Dora's Backpack for Lil Bean's 2nd birthday.  She still gets excited when she sees pictures.  The kids ate every bit of it, including the marshmallow fondant map. You can see how much my fondant skills have improved!

Dora's Backpack Cake

Here are some cakes I made for class.  My hubby surprised me by enrolling me and a friend for the class as a birthday gift so the first cake was dedicated to him.  If you've taken the class these cakes will look very familiar.  :)

Wilton Rainbow Cake

Wilton Rose Cake

Rose Cake

This cake was for our volunteer luncheon at school on St. Patty's day.  I used some of my newly learned skills. 

Shamrock Cake

These are my Wilton fondant class cakes.

Wilton Fondant Bow Cake

I love this one.  I don't think we even ate it.  There is only so much cake we can handle in a short period of time.  But it sure was pretty.

Fondant Flower Layered Cake

Now I'm gearing up for a Rapunzel cake.  Hopefully I'll have some amazing pictures to post next week!  {fingers crossed} 

Happy Birthday Ryan!

Today is my husband's birthday!  

This morning to celebrate Monkey and Lil Bean helped me bake a cake.  Turns out they are excellent pan greasers! We made two 8" chocolate cakes.

Monkey is wearing her apron that I showed you in a previous post here.

The cake is in the oven!  While baking, we made a peanut butter filling.  You can find the recipe here. 

I used my cake leveler to even out both cakes.  Then I loaded on the peanut butter filling.  Can you tell I used crunchy peanut butter?  

OK, so maybe too much filling...

Topped with chocolate icing and all the candles I could find.  We can pretend he's only 21.  ;)

Happy Birthday Daddy!

I'm adding this peanut butter recipe to my collection.  It was so yummy I'll definitely make it again!

By the way, the balloon wreath was a project Amanda and I worked on a few months ago.  You can find a great tutorial over at How Does She.

Have a wonderful evening!

Sweet on Volunteers

Every year we have a volunteer appreciation luncheon at school.  This year the theme was "We are sweet on Volunteers."  All of the teachers chip in for door prizes for the volunteers that come.  I knew I was going to make a cookie bouquet to go with the theme.  Who doesn't like cookies?  But as I was wandering through Hobby Lobby looking for a cute basket or tray to put them in I saw very cool chalkboard flowerpots.  However, they were $20 for a small pot.  I'm cheap.  So I got a can of chalkboard spray paint and a $3 pot instead.

I took the pot into the garage and gave it two coats of paint, allowing time to dry in between coats.  As the paint dried I got busy making sugar cookie dough and marshmallow fondant.  I used the same cookie cutters on the cookies and fondant.  The cookies rose just enough to make them the perfect fit.  I also tried to put the fondant cut-outs on the cookies while they were still hot.  OK, so I didn't really know what I was doing but it all came together alright!  This was my third time ever making marshmallow fondant.  I had forgotten what a challenge it can be!

After the cookies cooled I used decorating gel to decorate.  I chose this gel because I'm lazy and didn't want to get out all of my icing bags and tips.  And I didn't want to make icing.  Or clean it up.  Plus, the little gel tubes are super easy to use.  Rookie mistake!  Gel doesn't harden all the way.

The final product turned out alright!  I stuffed some crumpled up paper under the cookies, but the weight of the cookies was enough that you couldn't see too many of them anyway.  I spread out the decorated cookies on the top to keep the gel from getting smashed.  It was a hit and one lucky volunteer was thrilled to get cookies!

How do you show your appreciation?