2 posts tagged “birthday”

Birthday Boy

Well, it's only taken me a week and a half, but I've finally got all the thank yous in the mail and am finally posting about the cool party we had last Saturday.  As you may have guessed, it was a zoo train theme (I added the zoo part in when it became clear that it would be impossible to find all the choo-choo themed partyware that I'd need and not go with Thomas the Tank).  Since Jake loves animals and choo-choos, we did the zoo train thing.  We had all his choo-choo toys out, including a small Thomas the Tank track set up on the coffee table for the kids to play with.

Yard play

Lots of Jake's friends came -- mostly girls -- if only Jake realized how lucky he was!  The lovely Anya and her mom and dad came, and we're pretty sure Jake has a little crush on her because he frequently says "Aya" for no apparent reason at all, but he clearly means Anya.  The kids had lots of fun playing on the yard toy that Jake got from his grandma and grandpa the night before.  Jake also got lots of train-themed presents (as well as other presents, all of which he loved).  It was a lot of work, especially the cake, but I think it was worth it as all the kids seemed to have a really good time playing together.

Zoo choo-choo cake

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Yes, I went a little overboard on the cake, and I definitely paid for it (well, and the party prep, in general) for the rest of the weekend and then some -- I was absolutely exhausted.  But I'm happy with the way it turned out in the end.  It definitely wasn't a professional result by any means, but it was cute and fun.  I used 2 packages of cake mix (I'm crazy, but I'm not insane enough to make the cake from scratch) and baked it up in 8 mini-loaf pans.  I then cut the engine to create the "cab" and cut the bottom off the 8th loaf to create the top of the caboose.  I used all different types of candy to decorate the cars (we now have more left over candy in the house than I know what to do with -- luckily hubby likes the real sugary crap -- and I didn't even know that Twizzlers came in different flavors and colors!).  The engine wheels are Oreos with m&ms in the middle, and the "smoke stack" is a marshmallow coated in candy beads.  The "coal" is crushed Oreos, and I got the baby animals from Michael's.  The inspiration from this cake came from this website.