5th Birthday - How to Train your Dragon... and a Ninjago Cake!

 

Recently there has been a bit of an obsession with Dragons in our household. And to be honest, I haven't minded one bit. I LOVE Toothless. I love the movies, I love the dragons, I love the music - perfectly happy to support this obsession, especially after a couple of years of Minecraft and Superheroes! And so, when my littlest decided that he was having a Dragon party, I encouraged him!

 



I am so proud of this Toothless. I made him, using this pattern. I didn't know if he was going to work until he was totally finished, and I was so scared that he didn't! But he was perfect, and made my little boy incredibly happy! :)

 

 



 

 

 The decision to have a Dragons party was made in about March; his birthday isn't until July. So I had several months to think about it, and plan it, and dream big. And dream big, I did!

 

I posted on Facebook asking for anybody to keep any big sheets of cardboard and boxes and cardboard tubes for me. The local biscuit factory saved me some HUGE boxes. And I booked out the local Scout Hall.

 

The night before the party, Adam & I went to the hall, armed with boxes and tubes and four rolls of duct tape...

 

And this is what we built!

A Viking Ship and a castle!

(And we stocked hem both with plastic balls for throwing at each other, too)

 

 

We realize that there's no way on Earth we will ever live up to this party again, but oh it was SO much fun. We had an absolute BALL making it, and the kids were just thrilled.

 

I had also spent a great deal of time in the previous weeks making Viking Hats and shields from cardboard, painting them, and cutting out emblems so the children could make their own personalized shields.

 

I took some face paints to the party too, and a sheet of pictures of the Dragon Riders' war paint for them to choose from.

 

 

Adam built a catapult, and I sourced some stuffed toy sheep from the local charity shop. They had to launch the sheep over the boat using the catapult! :)

 

And then... the food!

I had fun with this!

 
 
 

  Viking Ships - half pieces of French stick with sails in toothpicks!

 

Dragon Teeth - Milk Bottle Sweets

 

An assortment of Sheep - some were marshmallows dipped in chocolate with mini smarties for eyes & ears, and the others were biscuits with chocolate buttons for faces.

 

 Dragon Nests - chocolate Cornflake Nests like we make at Easter

 

Dragon Eggs - Grapes and Jelly Beans

 

Dragon Legs - Mini Sausages

 

 

Fireballs - Cheese balls!

 

Dragon Scales - Doritos and Plain Tortilla Chips

 

Viking Shields - Party Rings

 

Dragon Food - Fish & Chip crackers

 

Dragon Drool - Juice

 

Plus I made Viking Ship biscuits and Dragon shaped Biscuits too!

 

The piñata was a simple dragon's egg - because I filled it with tiny baby dragon stuffed toys, as well as the normal sweeties (and bouncy balls are great for a piñata too!)

 

 

The cake!

I followed this YouTube tutorial for a basic plan. My normal cake would be far too fluffy & hard to sculpt so instead I made a double cake batch, crumbled it and mixed it with frosting as if I were making cake pops, then used the resulting mixture like play doh to mould the cake into the right shape before icing. It was a very dense cake but most of the kids still liked it! :)

 

 

 

 

And of course, he needed a cake on his Birthday at home, so seeing as the other current obsession is Lego Ninjago, I thought I'd have a go at that! It was easy as anything - just a standard layer cake, with ready to roll yellow icing first, then a layer of green icing (I did have to colour that as I had run out of green!) with some extras draped carefully to look like fabric - made for one very happy and surprised little birthday boy. :)

 

6th Birthday - Finding Nemo, Fish and Ladybugs!

 

This cake was SO MUCH FUN. I was able to make the icing pieces days in advance so it was very peaceful sitting making different pieces of coral! The cake itself is just a simple two layer cake (with a second cardboard base and supports this time!) iced with pre-coloured blue frosting.

Then I just had to stick all of the decorations on and put in the fishies (which were bought plastic ones!) and that was it! Actually one of the simplest cakes I had done in a long time, but the most effective!

 

We decorated the hall with hanging crepe paper and balloons, and some home made jellyfish and some blow up sea creatures from eBay.

 

Once again I had a bit of fun with the food!

 

I hollowed out a watermelon to make a shark for Shark Berry Salad :)

 

Kathryn loves fresh veg so I've got a Veggie Reef (and dips!)

I made some Nemo & Dory biscuits but didn't have time to ice them! :(

We also had life rings (party rings!) and Fish Bowl Jelly (with the extra pack of blue jelly left from Alexander's birthday earlier in the year!)

Gummy Fish were a simple extra too!

 I cut out some of the scooped out watermelon into star shapes, for Watermelon Starfish (also because Kathryn doesn't like watermelon so I didn't want to put it in the Shark Berry Salad!)

Some Fish & Chip crisps, some Cheesy Goldfish and some Dolphin-shaped Sandwiches (I have a sandwich cutter that does exactly that for me!) finished off the feast!

 

We made sock fish as a party craft - a simple idea for little ones. It's just a sock with a couple fistfuls of stuffing and a wee bag of plastic pellets (or beans/rice!) that I had pre-prepared, then an elastic band to hold it tight closed, cut off the leftover, draw on eyes and voila, a sock fish!

They had lots of fun throwing the sock fish through the holes for different points.

 

And the piñata was a jellyfish -super simple to make - I just made a few layers inside a bowl, then once it had dried I removed it from the bowl (I recommend lining the bowl with clingfilm first for easy removal afterwards!) taped on a cardboard base and carefully added a few more layers of paper mache before decorating with tissue paper and crepe paper for streamers.

 

 

 

Now, since her big brother had a lovely fruit cake at school for his birthday, Kathryn wanted something similar for hers. Unfortunately she doesn't like watermelon, as I said, which is the base for my fruit cakes! As a solution, I made her some ladybirds out of cherries (with seeds removed) and strawberries, stuck together with some melted chocolate, and some raspberry and blueberry ladybirds too, where I just stuck the blueberry inside the raspberry! The bottom layer is a blueberry stuck on the end of half a tomato, with coloured Philadelphia Cheese. :)

And of course, she needed a cake at home too on her actual birthday. :)

 

I made the spots by making cake balls (with a mould) first and then putting them in the red cake mixture before cooking (in a dome shaped cake tin!)

 

5th Birthday - The Gruffalo!

This was a HARD cake. The head fell off while I was icing it - thank goodness I caught it and minimal damage was done to the cake (although my nerves were a different story!)

His head is made out of rice krispie square, but I still had a fair bit to learn about building cakes vertically! However, he stayed intact for the birthday girl, and she was over the moon. :) 

I had a LOT of fun with the food.

These are the goodie bags:

 

 

Owl Ice Cream (chocolate ice cream sweets)

 

 

Poisonous Warts were handpicked blue, green and yellow mini smarties. Mouse droppings were raisins covered in chocolate, and I didn't want scrambled snake as they had that for the party food so I just wrote "And away snake slid..." for the gummy worms. Although there wasn't a huge amount in the goodie bags, the kids loved the theme!

 

 

 Instead of a traditional piñata I made a pull string one, which I had never done before. I found instructions on Pinterest somewhere, but it's actually incredibly simple to make and doesn't involve any paper machè!

 

But the party food... ahh the party food was my favourite bit!

 

 Chocolate rice krispie treats became Knobbly Knees.

Pizza - Roasted fox!

Mini sausages became Gruffalo Toes

 

 

We had grapes that were Poisonous Warts

Quavers were Terrible Tusks

Oranges with eyeballs drawn on the peel, for Orange Eyes

Cheese Cubes became Terrible Teeth

I made some ladybird crackers too for my little ladybird girl, and rolled up wraps with ham in them and toothpicked to a piece of cheesestring became snails - still on the forest theme!

 

We had some jelly with gummy worms for Scrambled Snake

And the favourite was Gruffalo Crumble - a mix of chocolate breakfast cereals and other chocolate goodies, and broken up biscuits!

 

 

The little birthday girl! <3