It's hard to believe but I now have a 9 AND a 6 year old in the house. I swear it was just yesterday I found out I was pregnant with my son. Now my days are crazy busy. If I'm not breaking up sibling fights, making sure homework is done or taking them to their practices I'm busy running my online store, doing volunteer work or creating something. Sleep.. who needs it?!
Recently I told y'all that I was the proud owner of not one, but both of my wrists having carpal tunnel and tendinitis. Unfortunately I found this out about 3 weeks before my daughters 6th birthday. And I went into a slight panic. It was bad enough I had a few cake orders coming up that I needed to work on, but I also had my own daughters birthday to plan. I had school cupcakes and a cake to bake/decorate. I had decor to make and food to prep.
I refused to let a little thing like carpal tunnel stand in my way of giving my daughter the "Under the Sea" mermaid party she wanted. The cake was going to be the hardest thing to do since it required a good amount of fondant work. So I rested up for 2 weeks doing the bare minimum that I could not using my wrists. And let's just say that's a lot ... you never know how much you move your wrists until they're in a brace and can't move!
I started off early by making a few of the pieces needed. I made her a mermaid, mermaids tail and #6 out of gumpaste to add to her cake. I don't know if I have more fun making the pieces or coloring them!
Of course since she's in 1st grade they allow the kids to bring in a birthday goodie to share with others in their class. I found this really cute mermaid tail mold, so I ended up making 24 chocolate tails! Purple of course ;)
But of course no birthday is complete without a birthday cake! And she didn't make this easy on me! I swear each cake that I do becomes more and more challenging. My skills are being tested and I love expanding my talent. So after searching on pinterest for some inspiration we decided on the her two tiered mermaid cake. I don't like using fondant too much mainly because the taste isn't that good and it makes the cake even heavier. But in this case I needed the fondant for the scales on the top tier.
Her cake ended up being a french vanilla with a very berry buttercream icing. I added some rainbow sprinkles in the middle just for an added punch of color. Several hours of work.. and there were only crumbs left over! Guess it was a good cake?!
Add in some crushed up graham crackers for the sand, add a few large sixlets as the pearls and some seashells.. and BAM! Under the Sea Mermaid Cake is complete!
Sadly I wasn't able to make more goodies to add to the table, but my wrists could only handle so much. The various foods consisted of Gold Fish, Salt Water Taffy, Rock Candy (Coral Reef), Sour Stripes (Seaweed), Sixlets (Water Pearls) and Nilla Wafers with Icing and a Sixlet (Oysters). So its safe to say everyone left with a sugar high! 😵
I've grown tired of the "standard" goodie bags. Candy and cheap toys that break within seconds. I wanted to give her friends something they could actually use again. I found these cute milk bottles online from Amazon and glass etched each one with a mermaid and "Mermaid Squad". Then I filled them with blue sixlets and some goldfish to make them look like water! Next I bought several bows and glued on a small seashell. This way the parent could remove the shell if they wanted too. Throw in a cute little mermaid bracelet, some lipgloss and viola the perfect little girl gift bags!
Of course I can't talk all about my daughters cake and her party favors without posting a few pictures of my beautiful little girl!
Did I mention that she also lost her 1st tooth on her birthday too!!!
Dinner at TGI Fridays for the birthday girl!! The waitress was super sweet and let her choose from the larger dessert menu since it was her birthday and she lost a tooth!
XO - Beth
