Cake Decorating: Australia

Since my brother's birthday party was postponed and other siblings wanted cheesecake or pie, I don't have to make a cake for awhile. But, here are pictures from Laura's birthday! She had an Australian theme so I had a wide variety of things to choose from for her cake. So many that it was actually hard to narrow it down. The most obvious option was the Sydney Opera House, but that seemed both a little ambitious and overdone. So instead I decided to go with a natural landmark.

Over the years my family's done a variety of odd things for cakes, but I don't think anyone's done a geological formation before. I wish I'd had a different frosting tip to do the vegetation on the top, but I think it turned out alright. This time I tried painting the fondant and it worked really well! The rocks/cliffs aren't quite what I wanted, but I ran out of brown :/ Oh well, other than that I'm pretty happy with how it looks!

The Birthday Month

Dress - Forever21 // Cardigan - H & M // Belt - Wet Seal // Shoes - Madden Girl // Socks - Marc's // Shirt - Thrifted

Why does everyone in my family have their birthday in late May or early June? Don't get me wrong, I love birthdays. Especially family birthdays. Especially when those birthdays are really close together and sometimes are even consecutive! Ok, that last part was definitely sarcasm. But come on, there are a lot of people in my family! Well, happy birthday to ... well almost everyone in my family.

Festivities on the 4th!

Outfit 1 - Dress - Adrianna Papell (Thrifted) // Scarf - Thrifted // Shoes - Hot Cakes

Outfit 2 - Dress - LOFT (Thrifted) // Scarf - Thrifted // Shoes - Payless // Sunglasses - Charlotte Russe

Well, here are the rest of the pictures from the fourth! I hope y'all had a wonderful Independence Day. I'm so thankful for the freedom we have in this country!

In the morning we went to the annual parade in Thompson. Don't you just love us all in red, white, and blue? It's kind of awesome when you get 10 people in the same family to do it. Oh and I loved all the classic cars in the parade! I tried to get pictures of some of them :) Anyways, there's a thrift store in the same square as the parade so we checked that out before heading home. I got two pairs of vintage shoes for $3. No joke. I have super wide feet so I can never find vintage shoes that fit me (or shoes that cheap!). It makes me sad when I find awesome vintage shoes, but I can't buy them. But not today!!

The 4th is also my mom's birthday so when we got home from the parade we surprised her by dressing up like this. I thought of doing this because she loves the show White Collar and they had these really inexpensive FBI playsets at Dollar Tree. I wish I'd taken a picture when everyone was still dressed up. It was so hot that a few people changed before we could get the picture. It was fun to do though and my mom enjoyed it :) ...then we changed back into our red, white, and blue outfits and had some amazing turtle cheesecake that I made for her!

Later in the evening we went to Ohio Chautauqua to see a reenactment monologue of Commodore Oliver Hazard Perry. It was really well done! Although I couldn't pay attention as much as I wanted to because I had to watch a couple of the kids and...well, they were bored :p I liked it though.

We went straight to Geneva-on-the-Lake to see some fireworks and even though we were more than an hour early we almost didn't get a parking spot! We just barely made it into one lot that had plenty of parking, but was super muddy. Right after we drove in, a couple cars got stuck and they closed the lot! The fireworks were great though and it was fun seeing them with my family. And yes, we sit on top of the car to watch fireworks 'cause we're awesome. We only live like 10ish minutes from Geneva-on-the-Lake, but in the post-firework traffic it took an entire hour! But, we did get to see another firework show from the car window while we were stuck in traffic :)

Hope your 4th was great :)

Luau!

Dress - Thrifted // Shirt - Body Central // Necklace - Walmart // White Sandals (Not Pictured) - Montego Bay

My family doesn't really do birthday parties that much. Eight kids, ya know, and that's not fun to have that many birthday parties in one year!!! Especially 'cause almost all of our birthdays are in June. If you read my blog this past month, there were a lot of birthday posts! And even some days when there was a birthday and I just didn't post about it! But, now that my dad's birthday is over we're done until July!!! Wow, that was a busy month. Anyways, back to birthday parties. Even though we don't do parties every year, we still get a couple. 6, 10, 13, 16, 18, and 21 are the years we get big birthday parties. I remember as a little kid thinking it was weird that some of my friends got birthday parties every year and I didn't. But it was pretty early in life that I actually appreciated only having a birthday party every few years. It made it more special and fun to plan. I really like what my family does with parties and I hope to one day continue the tradition with my own family! I mean, we still celebrate every year. But, it's just not a huge party.

I remember I almost had a luau theme for my 10th birthday, but my mom gave me a choice between a luau party and extra presents. ....Guess what I chose.... She was awesome for letting my make my own decision though. We had decorations left over from some other winter party so we just used those. Shows what I really was concerned with when I was 10 'cause even then I hated winter. So yeah, a winter party in the middle of winter. I loved it (not really. I mean it was a fun party, but come on... a winter theme? Really? Who wants a winter party...in the middle of winter?). But, I got extra presents so it was totally worth it.

We finally got a luau party though. My sister, Catherine, had her 13th birthday party yesterday. Honestly, I can't believe she's 13! Now we have 4 teenagers in the house. And, well I'm sad I can't be counted among them anymore. I really liked being a teenager. Back to the luau party. It was really fun decorating for this 'cause we got a bunch of cheesy decorations from Dollar Tree :p We strung paper lanterns up, wrapped some Christmas lights around the deck. And well, you can see some of the decorations in the pictures. And I made a pineapple cake! It was perfect 'cause it fit the luau theme. And...my sister loves Psych. If you don't know, there's a hidden pineapple in every episode of Psych. So yeah, this cake fit the theme very well. I know I haven't put any pictures of my cakes on my blog before, so I don't think this is particularly my best cake or anything. But, considering my time crunch, I think it turned out alright! Normally I do cakes the night before. Usually all night before. And I've had some cool ones. But, this was actually done before and even a little during the party! Yeah, very last minute!

So what does your family do for birthday parties? Every year? Occasionally? None? Have you had a favorite theme? I'd love to hear from you!

Dinosaur Dig and Yet Another Birthday

Shirt - Zazzle // Skirt - Thrifted // Belt - Cato's // Plaid Shirt - Charlotte Russe (Thrifted) // Shoes - l.e.i.

And yet another birthday today! And there are still at least 3 more just in June! Today was my brother D's 5th birthday and he had a dinosaur theme. I unfortunately forgot to upload a picture of the cake, but it actually turned out really well! I got the best olive green color gradation for the T-Rex head though! Anyways, because of the dinosaur theme I knew I had to wear my Primeval shirt. I know I've said this before but if you haven't watched the show Primeval, you must!  The rest of my outfit was inspired by Abby Maitland (a character on the show). So it fit the theme perfectly!

I don't know why, but when I decided to take pictures I just told my sister, Catherine, to put on a plaid shirt and some boots and come with me. It ended up being really fun. I should do sibling photo shoots more often! On the way to the woods we grabbed a shovel and decided to do a dinosaur dig inspired photo shoot. We only had about 15 minutes so we didn't get too many pictures, but it was fun! I wish we could have found my dad's safari hat though--it would have looked cool in the pictures. And without dinosaur bone props it could look like we're burying something rather than digging something up. But, we did have dinosaur dig in mind when we took these pictures.

Well, I'm not planning to blog over the weekend 'cause I'm in my friend's wedding. But I have a post scheduled for while I'm gone. Well I hope y'all have a great day and thanks for reading!