Let Them Eat Cake

So between the chaos of Christmas and New Years, in our house there is Flynns birthday. Oh yea, poor boy had the misfortune of being born in that no-mans land week between parties, which means he pretty much gets all his presents in one big go and is devoid of the pleasure of unwrapping for the rest of the year.
However, though the presents might be the important part to him ( even just turning 2 he already knows the excitement of " ooh - presents!! " ), the important part of the day for me as mama is the cake.

Or, should i say cakes - this year Flynn daycare " mum " ( he goes to family daycare, and i dont like just calling her a "carer " or babysitter... ) asked if they could have a little birthday bash for him on the last of care for the year ( Dec 23rd ) so i had the pleasure of making two lots of birthday cakey goodness this year. And i say pleasure because although i did stress a bit about how they would turn out, i actually enjoyed thinking of a cute idea and then making and decorating the cakes

I decided for daycare it would be nicer to do cupcakes, that way each little kid on their own piece, all the same size, no arguments. But i didnt want them to plain old cupcakes, i wanted some kind of theme, something Flynn would like. So i thought a bit and came up with " ooh- Sesame Street! The boy loves Sesame Street! " So for daycare Flynn got these:

Can you tell that theyre supposed to be Cookie Monster? Vanilla cupcakes with blue coconut icing, mini marshmallows for eyes and mini choc-chip cookies jammed in where his mouth would be ( because what else would Cookie Monster have hanging out his face ? )
And for the official day i had to do a proper birthday cake. One that caused me a bit of anxiety as to how to make it. One like this:

ELLLLLLLLLLLLLMOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! This was the stressful one - how do i make the eyes? How do i make the nose? What shape should his mouth be? In the end i went with the semi-circle mouth carved into the cake, eyes made of chocolate biscuits, the nose from a Monte Carlo and everything iced the appropriate colour. I need not have stressed though - Flynn was amazed by the whole Elmo cake but he didnt actually eat any! ( he was too busy playing... )

So how do you think i went? And are you a home-made or a store-bought kind of person?

An Anniversary

" Happy Birthday to me, I'm one hundred and three.... "

Well, no, not exactly. It IS my birthday, but didnt turn 103. I'm only one quarter of the way there - today is my 25th birthday. Yay for me! Its been a good day ( yes, despite the fact that i had to go to work ... ), although now that its winding down the weather has decided to turn all hot and sticky, which wont make for a good nights sleep.

But hey, I had a couple of belly laughs today ( at J's expense... ), two- count 'em, two! - birthday cakes ( one at work and one at home with my family ) and got approximately 5 birthday hugs ( the best one from my neice H, she's my favourite hugger ). I didnt get a whole swag of presents, but at 25 its not really the point - but what i did get was nice ( especially the " Happy " by Clinique that I had hinted about to my sister. Good listening sis! ).

And that is all. I didnt do anything spectacularly interesting so i'll make this a short post. Hope everyone else had a good day too!