Birthday Preperations

With Alex's birthday just around the corner, it was time to get the party in motion. I created puzzle invitations for the birthday boy because he's such a fan of puzzles! Anna made sure they all worked before putting them into envelopes for me....what a helper!

Of course, we had to have a Toy Story themed birthday party. I decided to make Woody badge cookies and alien cupcakes for the party. Friday, I rolled out sugar cookies and made big & small cookies. The small ones had yellow sprinkles so Anna was able to help with that as well. Baking sugar cookies was a lot harder than I thought it would be. Requires very cold dough, lots of flour and a lot of patience. Does not help when both kids who are supposed to be napping are running around back and forth between their rooms.

Saturday, made the cupcakes in the morning. That night, made the frosting that would be used for the cookies & cupcakes. I made it all by myself. A personal victory as it was my first attempt! When Paul saw me making my own frosting, he thought I had officially gone off my rocker. Here, the kids are helping me assemble the badge cookies. Got a little too excited about eating the m&m's versus decorating with them so I had to place them on game duty with dad.

Next step--alien cupcakes. Splurged and got neon food coloring to color the frosting for the alien cupcakes. So glad I did. I didn't have to worry about how many drops of yellow and green to use then. Used white m&m's for eyes, green licorice for the ears and antenna (thanks to Paul for for cutting those out) and decorated with black icing. All of this again was another first for me. I don't even make my own cakes :)

Here's a picture of the assembled badge cookies. Idea called for all yellow m&m's but I didn't go and buy those so just did a primary theme instead. Finished/presented products will be shown in birthday party photos!