First, a little disclaimer here: I want my kids to feel loved and celebrated on their birthdays; however, I still want to maintain a degree of simplicity to our life/parties/celebrations/events. I'm sure this post will never go viral or be "pinned" or whatever, but I like to get good, simple ideas from you, my friends, so I'm posting this here in case you like to do the same.
Catherine's birthday cake was inspired by two things: First, her apparent love of the color red. Second, my mother-in-law had a little lady bug on a stick that was stuck in one of her potted plants and Catherine would not leave it alone. Thus, the birthday party theme was born.
I googled "lady bug images." I chose the one that was the most simple, drew it on a note card and used that as the guide for the cake and cups.
I used the chocolate cake recipe from the back of the Hershey's cocoa package. I made 2 round cakes and one small circle cake for the head (I filled it fuller so it's not two layers). The frosting was also the one from the Hershey's cocoa.
I put frosting between the layers and just enough on top to hold the toppings. I looked at my note card and put dark chocolate chips everywhere I wanted to be black. I cut up strawberries to fill in everything I wanted to be red.
I would have used black licorice for the legs/antennae, but the local grocery store didn't have any. Thanks to my sister-in-law, we didn't have an antennae-less lady bug. She melted down some chocolate chips and shaped them on wax paper to cool and harden.
In all its glory:
I used a black sharpie to draw the lady bugs on the cups for all the kid participants. I didn't have enough stamina to let the adults enjoy a lady bug cup. If we were in a bigger town, I'm sure we could have found lady bug themed things, but, as can you imagine, Nara Visa, New Mexico doesn't have a party store :)
The All-Occasion Banner
The other thing I wanted to make some form of party decoration that I could use for years to come. I wanted to make something that I could take back to China with us (ie, something that would pack easily) where cute party decorations are lacking. I settled on a banner that would be double sided. Actually, two banners that would both be double-sided.
The first banner would say "Congratulations" on one side and could be used for engagement parties, baby showers, and graduations for years to come. The other side would say,"Happy [space] Birthday [!]" (See what I did there? The space and the punctuation make the two sides have the same amount of needed flags!)
The next banner would say Catherine Sue on one side and Elizabeth Ann which also happen to have the same amount of letters, which was completely unplanned in the process of choosing their names.
I'm sure you could go to a fabric store and pick out some really cute coordinating fabrics that would work great. I however, pulled a trash bag of scraps of cloth from my mother-in-laws basement, chose the best ones, and went to cutting.
That's not true. First, I made a paper pattern which I actually used a ruler to measure accurately and make sure it was straight. (Most sewing projects I just eyeball so using a pattern and accurate measurements was neat)! I think mine were 7 inches wide at the top with an allowance for a 1/4 seam on the sides.
I needed almost 60 isosceles triangles. I needed 56 but cut 60 so I could play around with the order and design. I wanted the "Congratulations" to have colors that would match baby showers, wedding showers, and perhaps graduations. I wanted Ann and Catherine's banners to be different from each other, but both to match the "Happy Birthday."
I cut out the needed letters. For this task I was back to my normal mode of no pattern or stencil, I just free-handed them but if a letter happened to repeat, I would use the previous letter as a pattern to have at least some consistency.
Here is everything laid out after I finally decided which patterns in what order and what color of letters on which backgrounds.
Next I sewed the letters onto the triangles. Then I arranged the letters in the order they needed to be for front and back to match up (C of congratulations with ! of Happy Birthday!)
Sew inside out along the sides (not the top). Turn right-side out and press down with an iron. (I also cut as much excess off around the point as possible so that it would turn right side out better and lay flatter).
For the hanging string I used pre-folded bias tape. That's why I didn't sew across the top, because I knew it would be stitched across during this step. I just pinned the triangles spaced at the distance I wanted them and sewed along the edge of the bias tape.
Now, if you think I'm kidding about "years to come" I am not. Please expect to see this banner at every party hosted in my home from now until I die.
See the next post for how it all came together!
Current projects I'm working on: making an upholstered headboard, refinishing furniture, and lots of curtains. Maybe some of those will make the blog.
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