A peace party and the inside of the tie dye cake..

The party is over---phew!  Now Red is off with her friend's family at a soccer game and Tom Thumb is tucked away with his blue blankie for a nap.  The party was a big hit with the kids, but I think it's the first and last time I'll do a party as the only adult.  It was rough having to do all the backyard clean up and cooking alone.  The Cobbler is working at an event right now and has been gone from 7AM until 9PM for the past few days.  That schedule is going to continue through Tuesday except now he's staying the night at a hotel too so he's not home at all.  It may not have been my most brilliant plan ever to throw a party while he's on that schedule.  I know better for next time.


So...we ate our lunch and then we ate our cake.

For those of you waiting to see the inside of the cake (I couldn't wait to see it myself!), I give you the big reveal ----

The kids were amazed by it!  Quite frankly, I was amazed by it!  So easy and yet so cool!  Everyone also enjoyed making the peace sign key chain clips, although I had to do a lot of the pipe cleaner twisting.  The best part of the whole party was watching the kids sitting in the grass playing with Red's presents wearing their peace sign hats and licking their rainbow lollipops as the party wound down.  


Now I'm off to have a huge glass of water (it's hot out there, man!) and taking a breather.  Who wants to have a beer with me later? ;-)

Peace Sign Birthday Cake

I have to admit that it feels kind of weird posting after all this time.  As an update, the Phoenician purple dye project was an epic fail in terms of actually producing a long lasting purple color on anything.  No purple fabric.  No purple pasta.  It pretty much ended up this odd lavender grey color that was anything but color fast.  Kind of disappointing, but the kids didn't care.


I've spent my blogging hiatus doing a lot of work at Red's school and not a lot of housekeeping.  Ha ha!  I can't even tell you how many loads are lurking in my Mt. Everest of laundry.  I'm just happy to have everyone in clean underwear still.  At some point, I might post a few things about what I've been up to (including painting over 20 posters with Egyptian art for Red's ancient Egypt cultural play that was performed at school on May 31st.  Oy!  I just can't say no!), but for now it's all about Red's birthday.  


Tomorrow is her 7th birthday party with her friends and she is having a peace sign themed party.  Who knows why this kid loves peace signs so much, but she is addicted!  She has peace sign decals on the walls of her room, a peace sign backpack and lunch box, and draws them on everything!  So it was decided she would do a peace sign party.  We ordered all the goods from Oriental Trading.  Here are the cute paper goods and favors.  The favor is a peace sign tote bag with a peace sign bucket hat, a peace necklace, and a rainbow lollipop.  

I found this awesome method online of making the inside of the birthday cake look tie dyed.  While the original recipe maker made the recipe fat free, I had no need to do that (my children are sticks as it is) so I just made up two boxes of white cake mix as Betty Crocker intended and then colored them.  Here are the results after coloring:

It pretty much ended up being a little over one cup per color.  Then I put them into the two cake pans in rainbow color order---red then orange then yellow in one pan, purple then blue then green in the other pan.

It baked up CRAZY tall  (I guess that's what happens when you put 2 boxes of cake mix in two pans that are only intended to hold one box) so I had to level them a bit before I stacked the layers.  

Red wanted the cake to look like a peace sign.  My solution ---> SKITTLES!  I frosted the cake with white buttercream frosting, divided the Skittles by color and then mosaic-ed them to the top of the cake.  Love the results!

The party plan for tomorrow is eating cheese pizza, veggies and dip, fruit salad, and tie dye peace cake.  Then, we're going to make these cute peace backpack clippies (another Oriental Trading find).  Here's the sample I made to show the kids:

Then, it's presents and PLAY!  Tomorrow's supposed to be sunny but hot so I'm hoping for the best.  Counting the days until school is out!