Paris in April

This cake was made to celebrate my daughter's birthday. She has had a love affair with Paris for several years now. So it was only fitting that we had a Paris Party. I found a similar cake online for my inspiration. The bottom layer was a 9 1/2" triple chocolate round cake. The top were 2 8" French Vanilla layers. The best part was the topper which I found at Target for $2.50. I found a similar Eiffel Tower at Michael's, which was actually a candle. But the cost and weight of the tower were considerably more.

Dinner consisted of all things French - croissants, quiche, olives, cheeses, French berry soda (which I found at our World Market), truffles, French baguette bread with cheese and nutella spreads, apples, & grapes. For breakfast the next morning we served crepes.

I created these invitations (right) and thank you notes (left) from a stamp I found at Michael's. I used water color pencils to add color to the invitations. The front of each invitation was addressed to "Mademoiselle X". I used patio furniture to create a Paris sidewalk cafe scene. Each guest had her picture taken and I am printing those off today to go in each thank-you note. I also used the stamp to imprint the Eiffel tower on plain pink napkins. To enhance the French feeling, I checked out some CD's from the library that had either traditional French music or modern music sung in French (Belinda Carlisle had a beautiful sound track).

Of course, I had to put my Cricut to work. I ordered the Summer In Paris cartridge

and found multiple uses for it, including decorations, craft project and t-shirt designs. I will post more in it later.

All in all, it was a small, but lovely celebrations almost as beautiful as my daughter!

Ultimate Batman Cake

Little Man wanted a Batman Themed cake for the big #5. To keep costs minimal (since what he really wanted was a "big boy room") we had just a couple of friends and family over to celebrate and I made the cake. Not bad for 4-H learned skills! To add to the fun, we pretended the Riddler had stolen the cake and he had to search for his cake.