Birthday Cakes

My sister Carrie makes my nephews beautiful cakes and so I wanted to do the same for my boys...

August 2006, Alex's 1st birthday party was Curious George themed. I had an idea in my head of making a jungle with a stream running through it, but Dennis suggested the wrong type of frosting and it was like liquid, so this was the best I could do. I was not happy and promised him (myself) I would do better next year.

August 2007, Alex's 2nd birthday party was Backyardigans themed and I went a little over board making up for his first cake. I made a double layered cake (both sides of the house) and cupcakes. The cake is decorated to look like Tyrone's house.
On some of the cupcakes I used Fondant to make the character's faces. Here's Austin, Tyrone (his favorite) and Sherman the Worman. I used Alex's stuffed versions of each character as a template for their cupcake.
Here are the cupcakes of Pablo and Austin.
Here are Sherman the Worman, Tasha and Uniqua.

June 2008, Matt's 1st Birthday Party had a Winnie the Pooh theme. It took forever to make Pooh Bear colored frosting, but I finally nailed it and Matt loved it!

August 2008, Alex wanted a Cars theme for his 3rd birthday party, so I made him Lightning McQueen!
The middle of the Lightning McQueen cake wasn't flat and with the part of the cake that I cut off I let Alex help me make the "New road!" We put Lightning McQueen and Mater toothpicks and his candles on it and he was thrilled that he got to help.

June 2009, Matt had a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse 2nd birthday and I made him Toodles! I spent a lot of time looking at round cake pans on the floor of Michaels to be sure I had the right sizes for each piece. If you look close you can see an Alex sized finger dent in the green part of the cake. He got into a lot of trouble and when I got Matt up from his "not taking a nap" he took one look at the cake and stuck his finger right in the center of the left ear. There was no fixing that, so I put the candles on the cake early and used the finger hole for one of them.

A lady at Michaels was trying to help me and I told her about the cakes that Carrie makes and how I haven't taken classes yet to learn how to make the really cool stuff. She asked "Why don't you just ask her to make one for you?" and I told her "Because I'm the mom and if she can do it for her boys, then I can do it for mine." Ahhh, the true sorce of my motivation... to make my boys happy and to be as good a mom as my sister, in whatever ways I can manage.