Birthday PAR-TEE

centerpiece

For my husband's birthday I wanted to make a cake that reflects something he enjoys. Golf is one of his hobbies, and I've been thinking about this golf course cake for a little while. Put it together with our Monday night class in our home, and bang, you have a golf themed birthday party! There were lots of golf related foods and play on words.

"woods and irons" and "chip it in"

Full view of the dessert table and dinner table (delicious BBQ on our new grill!)

We had a cute little game- guess how many tees.

I saved the best for last. Presenting the birthday cake!

I learned more about golf preparing for this party than I ever thought I would. It was so much fun to plan. Now on to Chanukah!

Birthday Time

It's birthday season in our family, so get ready for a few fun cakes. Here's one to start with, made for a student. I love doing flower cakes!

Garden Party

Last week was our Big Move, so I apologise for not writing a any posts. I also missed last week's parsha, unfortunately, but as you can imagine it's been very very hectic. Besides that, I hosted a melave malka (yes, 3 days after our move!). The party was beautifully set up and arranged, so I'd like to share it with you. I had so much fun planning it, it's such a pretty, sweet theme.

 

 

Salad bar buffet: Everything, from the dressing to the veggies to the croutons, was in various sizes flower pots and planters.

It's very monumental; our first party in our new home. We hope to be able to host many more happy occasions, and to use our home for reaching, teaching, and giving.

Parshas Lech Lecha: Like the Stars and the Sand

For this week's parshah we made star cookies, and we sprinkled them with "sand". Even Big Brother Jr. understands why: there are so many stars that we can't even count them!

Here he is rolling out the cookie dough. His older brother was at a friend's house, so he got the be the "star" of the show, without fighting. He really, really likes to eat raw cookie dough and cake batter though, ugh.

I tried out this sugar cookie recipe. It came out excellent- very easy to roll, baked nicely, and tastes good too.  The sand is brown sugar and cinnamon.

Any ideas for next week's parshah dessert? Post in the comments below, I'd love to hear from you.

Rosh Hashana Cards

This is a little out of order but it can't hurt to show what we did for Rosh Hashana. Originally I planned on buying plain cards and sending them out, but I realized that I could make it into an activity. Stamping with apples is not a new idea - I think every preschooler has done it at least once in school for Rosh Hashana! - but we still had a lot of fun. It was nice to send people a personalized card, but most of all I was so happy to have a way to entertain the boys for a few hours!

Paint is a child's dream, and my nightmare. For some reason I am very hesitant to use paint. I once did finger painting, a while ago, and in less than 5 minutes it was one big mess of colored mushed together, all over the place. I tried so hard to be clean- I taped down a plastic tablecloth, covered their clothing, and just gave them a little of each color on plastic plates. But somehow they needed complete baths afterwards - there was paint covering their hands and arms, on their sleeves, in their hair... and the whole thing took 10 minutes! Maybe that's where my fear of paint came from.

Now the boys are a little older, and  it wasn't "finger painting", so this time was more of a success. They did mush the colors together at the end, but at least we got some nice card.

A few tips: The apples need to be sliced perfectly smooth, otherwise you won't get complete prints (ours weren't perfect). Also, I used a plastic knife instead of a popsicle stick, because I didn't have any. The apples were too big and slippery for my boys' little hands to grasp.

Parshas Noach: Rain and Rainbows

We've had a rainy week down here, both outdoors and in the house as well! For Parshas Noach and Chodesh Cheshvan I put together a lot of water related foods.

There are so many rainbow ideas floating around Pinterest and Facebook for Parshas Noach, and they're all beautiful. I chose to do something different for a cake, since we had all these other fun rainbow foods. (Honestly, I'm a little scared to try a rainbow cake. I'm just not ready for it yet, maybe one day!) These are what I call Puddle Cupcakes:

I know, I know, the animals aren't supposed to go in the water. But I just could not think of a way to make a teivah out of food, so this was the next choice. The kids helped me with these, and they got a real kick out of it.

BB Sr.'s "pair of giraffes" ("Pair means two, Mommy")

Now you're still wondering where the puddle is. Well....

It's hard to tell in the picture, but there are blue sprinkles in the white batter that make it look like raindrops splashing into a puddle. I also made blue jello with gummy fish, sorry no picture.

I will try to post what I make for the parshah each week. Keep checking!

Fun with Foam

Who ever thought that such a simple thing as foam could have so much potential? When foam gets wet it sticks to the wall. One of those "I knew that" ideas, but I never would have thought of it on my own. Here I cut up shapes so the kids could make faces on the windows, but this could be done with any shape. We actually did this activity in the bath a whole bunch of times, using the plain rectangles from the package that I bought. The boys had so much fun even with that. In a way it might have even been better, because they got really creative with decorating the bathtub walls. I think this is great - a cheap way for the kids to be entertained, be creative, and have fun with water, and to top it off, the mess is minimal!