9th Birthday - Three Cakes - Fruit, Pinata and Lego!

So the time finally came that my biggest boy was too old for a 'themed' party. :( However, after the success of his fruit cake last year, I thought I would surprise him by making one on his birthday this year and taking it in to school for his class to share at snack time. :-)

 

He is an absolute fruit-a-holic so nothing made him happier than this cake! <3

 

Of course we needed a cake for home too.... so I thought I'd try a piñata cake, filled with smarties!

And finally, he did have a small party on the day after his birthday; we went swimming then back to the house for pizza, party food and some TV or video games or something like that with 3 friends. He didn't give me ANY ideas for his cake at all so I went with a lego theme.

First I baked the cake, but I needed a hollowed out cake so I put a silicone baking loaf tray in the middle of my cake while baking it. (The cake is two types marbled, that's what the lines are)

 

Once baked, I covered the exterior with chocolate lego pieces (I bought a mold on eBay then coloured white chocolate for the top pieces) and bought some cheap minifigures to decorate.

Blue Jell-O (sourced on eBay as you can't get it in UK stores!) for the water (which I had set in the silicone tray used for the mold when baking, to get the right size)

 

It was a hit, and the boys loved just helping themselves to the pieces of Lego and jelly! :)

8th Birthday - Marvel Superheroes!

This was my first true themed party. I had done the themes before but this one I really, REALLY went all out. We had a superhero themed scavenger hunt as soon as everyone had arrived, did a superhero themed obstacle course, and I got an Iron Man themed Velcro dart board thing which the boys had to shoot nerf bullets at, instead of a pin the tail on the donkey type game...

 

We played "throw the parcel" instead of pass the parcel because big boys of 8 are apparently too grown up for pass the parcel. My husband managed to get a bunch of comic book posters for free so we used them as a gift in each layer of the parcel, with an extra thing in the last layer of course. The boys were delighted with them!

 

 

 

These were the goodie bags - I ordered cups (from the US - not a cheap way to go about it once you add in postage to the UK!) and put a couple of bits in the bottom, bought cupcake pods and made these cupcakes to put in the top - they were a huge hit!

 

 

 

 

The piñata of course had to be Loki. Couldn't very well beat up Captain America or Iron Man, so went for a baddie. And we made a Thor's Hammer for hitting it with for added fun!

 

 

And my masterpiece.... by FAR the most complicated cake I had every attempted. I got the figures from eBay - they're imaginext ones I think. The towers are made of rice krispie cakes but still they were a huge gamble and it DID start to collapse ever so slightly while at the hall during the party! I had to do a last minute repair, and you will notice my hand in the second photo, holding it just in case it fell again haha!

 

He absolutely loved it, though - worth every drop of sweat!