Sunshine and smiles 1st birthday party

This is what I've been up to this weekend, getting ready for Lexie's sunshine and smiles 1st birthday party. Rather than making the entire party yellow and white, we've thrown in some soft and hot pinks to break the colour up a bit. Besides the sun is not only yellow, look at what gorgeous colours mama sun creates when the sun comes up or sets ;-) This gorgeous party was created around Parties by Hardie's printable sunshine birthday collection.

Since Simone, Lexie's mummy, would be making the doily bunting for the party venue (all 8 metres of it!!) I decided to add some fondant doilies to the cake design. The sun topper is actually made from coconut ice (pink) and then covered in white choc fondant that I coloured canary yellow. The cake was 8' round x 10' tall "rainbow cake, so one layer of raspberry, then strawberry, then orange and then lemon to simulate the sun rising.

For the flower pieces I bought some floral sponge balls, cut a 1/4 off the bottom so it sits flat, dipped them in water and then popped various shades of yellow and pink flowers till the whole ball was covered. Not only did the arrangements look lovely but they smelled devine too, not bad for a non florist who tends to kill plants by just looking at them ;-)

Some of the goodies on the table were these cute ice cream cakes. I saw them in my Bakerella recipe book and decided to make these with the leftover lemon and orange cake I had after carving and evening out my cake. The only difference is that my ice creams were covered in buttercream frosting and then topped with chocolate and sprinkles.

Here are the goodies that I made for Lexie's party, I was one busy bee in the kitchen these past few days!

Smiling sun cookies.

Yummy raspberry and lemon cupcakes

The party was held in a communal hall, here is a photo taken just after I completed the styling of the main table. It looked so pretty once everything was in its place. Some of the other food items we had were thermometres (breadsticks dipped in chocolate then dipped in yellow sprinkles), Sunset and sunrise home made lemonade, mini cheescakes with beach umbrellas, slip,slop,slap sandwiches, sizzling sausage and sunshine jelly cups.

Since it also was a smiles party I made these smiley pops.

The hall looked stunning in the end, Simone worked very hard making decorations and creating the rest of the food. Fantastic job Simone, well done.

Vendors:

- Styling by Just call me Martha

- Cake, cupcakes, smiley pops, sunshine cookies, ice cream cakes, mini cheesecakes and flower arrangements by Just call me Martha

- All lables, cupcake toppers and printable partyware from Parties by Hardie

- Glass bottles from Bed bath and table

- The rest of the food and decorations were created by Simone Nuroo

Axel's airplane birthday cake, cookies & pops

As most of you all know I LOVE and ADORE anything to do with Kikki K, in fact my husband keeps a close eye on my credit card statements to see how many times I visit my local Kikki shop and I am blushing to say it is a lot. Well imagine my surprise and sheer delight when Kristina Karlsson, the founder and owner of Kikki K contacted me to ask if I was free to create a cake for her son Axel's 3rd birthday. So after first thinking the email was a hoax and then promptly passing out at my desk followed by some squeels of delight I went about planning for the cake, some biscuits and some pops. Kristina created the adorable invite above and said Axel loves planes, especially Qantas and since Kikki K has a kids travel - RESA range, Kristina requested that everything be plane orientated. Since I was making 4 items for the table anyway (Kristina would be styling the party and table herself) I just could not resist creating a mini airplane dessert table myself. The only rule I had was that I had to use items I already had or handmake it myself to keep costs down. This is what I came up with.

Do you recognise the backdrop? Yep, I recycled Anya's canvas frames from her polka dot party I styled in July last year, I even kept the fabric just added some felt fluffy clouds (I blanket stitched them on my machine, added some fabric adhesive membrane and ironed them onto the canvas), a felt airplane and some cute stitching (running stitch) to spell out Axel. All felts and materials used I had lying around in my sewing baskets. The "tablecloth" is actually a scrap piece of Cath Kidston fabric I had lying around, it was an exact match to the canvas.

Here are the goodies Kristina bought as favours for her guests. Cute mini suitcases from Baby's got style, (probably cleared out all their stock lol) bag tag, colouring book + pencils and pencil case from Kikki's RESA range along with an airplane cookie I made. This was popped in the "baggage claim" area of the party table.

Here is Axel's birthday cake, its a cross between Planet cake's airplane cake and a Qantas jumbo. The body of the cake is vanilla buttercake, the wings are made from biscuit covered in vanilla Satin ice, while the tail and tail fins are made from fondant. The engines were made from coconut ice since I needed somthing solid yet edible to hold up the heavy wings. In the end this cake weighed a tonne!

The mini suitcases are also something I already had, they were left overs from Imara's back to school party. I re-used them here to add hight to my items.

The cloud cookies were one of the items created for Axels' party, I thought they were rather cute. The tin is recycled I just added some striped paper I printed using the invitation as my inspiration, very simple yet effective.

The drink bottles are also recycled from a previous party, I used some blue cordial + water (called it Jet fuel) to fill them up added some blue stripy straws I had lying around (cheapie ones from Coles) and a cute airplane cutout that I printed out and handcut then fastened to each straw. The airplane cookies were for Axel's party table and favour suitcases.

Marshmallow propeller pops were another item for Axel's party, these are just plain white ones dipped in white chocolate (coloured red) with fondant propellers. The square foam stand was a spare I had lying around, once again I printed out some stripy paper to dress them up.

I had the pleasure of meeting the lovely, warm and genuine Kristina while delivering all the items and I must say Kristina did a stellar job in styling her party room, the decorations were gorgeous and the table just perfect and beautiful. I am hoping to see some of Axel's party pics in the near future, if I do I might snaffle some to pop on my blog ;-)

Now for a nano break, and onto the next party........