Birthday Cakes

This post will be in honor of Kailyn's birthday which was last Friday. (For more info check out Kailyn's Blog) It will also fulfill the first day of 5 days of blogging. We shall see how that goes.

When I was little my mom always did great birthday cakes. She was a master cake decorator - she did wedding cakes and everything. She is definitely my inspiration, however I fall very short of her abilities. I remember my favorite cakes she did were my doll cakes - cakes where the skirt is the cake and like a barbie upper body stick out of it.

The very first cake I did was for Ashley's first birthday. I remember my mom doing a cake that was round with blocks on the top. So, I thought, "that would be easy, I don't need any cake pans I just need a round cake and then you cut a cake into block pieces and frost them and stick them on top." I was so wrong. It was the first time that I was truly inept at something. I mean there are tons of things I don't do that great, but I can usually figure it out enough to be presentable. No matter what I did with this cake, cake crumbs went everywhere, I was so frustrated and promised I would never make another cake again.

I am not sure what happened, but I think my sister-in-law Jodi did a Winnie the Pooh cake from a cake pan. All you had to do was make stars all over the cake, when I found this out I thought I could probably do that. So my next cake was a doll cake - which was fairly easy.
After that, my inspiration came from 1) what supplies I had available at lowest cost and 2) what the kids want. For Kailyn's 1st birthday I borrowed a cake pan from my friend Heidi, and again all stars made for a pretty easy cake - just some time.
For Ashley's 3rd, I did a Mickey Mouse - I got it 1/2 price at Michaels the day after Thanksgiving. Again, all stars.
Kailyn's 2nd birthday we did a care bear - I think the pan was on sale at the time at Walmart.
Ashley's 4th she wanted another doll cake - of course a princess.
Kailyn's 3rd was another Mickey (I started reusing what I already had. . .)
In 2007 we took a break from decorated cakes - all the kids had cupcake birthdays and I thought it was a great idea. . .

For Ashley's 6th birthday she wanted a care bear -
For Wyatt's 2nd we did the train that I borrowed from my friend Lisa. This was very fun cause the girls could do so much of it.
And then for Kailyn's she wanted a princess - which we kind of fashioned after Barbie and the Diamond Castle. She helped me design it - even up to the bow on the back. . .

So far this is something that I have ended up enjoying and I love doing it for the kids. As soon as it gets to be too much or too hard to figure out what to do, it is definitely something that won't be hard to let go.