Party Planning

Third birthday.

If I ever suffer a bout of temporary insanity and decide to have another child, I will plan for a late spring/summer baby. My sole reason for this? Birthday parties. I can’t just set up a piñata and a clown in my backyard and let the kids run off their birthday cake sugar high. I don’t have a backyard, and there’s no way I’m squeezing 10-15 kids and their various escorts into my apartment. Some people are lucky enough to live in apartment complexes with party/play rooms. For the rest of us, your options are a) no party, b) set up in a public park or c) rent a venue. So far, I’ve always gone with option a. We obviously did a dinner/cake/presents celebration with family, but never an actual party with her friends. Option b is really only an option if your kid’s birthday falls during the warmer months (hence my statement about any highly unlikely future children).

Which brings us to option c for Audrey’s 4^th birthday this year. With a mid-November birthday, outdoors isn’t an option, so I knew if I wanted to do a party for her this year it wasn’t going to be cheap. I looked into various venues (there are several options in our neighborhood or nearby) but ended up booking a party at Chelsea Piers. Price-wise, it was in line with most of the other places, and they had various packages. I chose the ‘Ultimate Tykes Challenge’ party in which the kids do various races, games etc. and get to play in a bouncy castle.

 

 

Last year's cake and presents celebration with family

But the details. Ugh. The party is at 3:30. I don’t need to serve lunch. Or do I? I either ruin their dinner appetites by serving pizza, or look cheap by opting to just do snacks and cake (well, I AM cheap but …). Are chips, pretzels and a fruit tray classy enough for these little Chelsea kids? Or should I serve organic hummus on whole wheat pita bread? Goody bags are dumb, it’s a bag of cheap toys the kids will lose within a couple days. I can skip them right? No, kids look forward to them? Great. Let me order $75 worth of crap from Oriental Trading. Can I pad the bag with cheap candy or am I a jerk for sending your kid home with sugar? The base price for the party includes 15 kids. Is it rude to politely imply on the invitation that your kids’ siblings aren’t invited because I’m paying $30/head for each additional kid? I personally LOVE the invitations that say “No presents please” but I know my kid would be disappointed so I’ll leave it off ours.

In the grand scheme of things, these are obviously not truly grave matters. No matter what I do, Audrey will be happy as long as she has kids to play with, cake to eat and people to sing Happy Birthday to her. With that said, I’m still looking forward to the age where a birthday celebration involves a few friends joining her for a movie and a sleepover …  

Grumpy Cat Cake!

I'm going to make Audrey's birthday cake myself for two reasons: to make sure I get exactly what I (she) want and because I can't fathom paying hundreds of dollars for something I can do myself.

However, the cake we want for her birthday will involve fondant, something I had never really worked with before. It's going to be something along the lines of this:

Source

The cake itself is decorated with fondant and frosting, and the figurines are store bought (I'm not going to kid myself and even attempt to make the characters out of fondant). The '3' is probably a decorated sugar cookie.

Anyway, I wanted to practice first, being a fondant virgin. We were doing a little celebration at work for a coworker's birthday. I had come across this Nerdy Nummies video a few weeks ago and wanted to try it. A grumpy cat cake was perfect, since we refer to my boss as grumpy cat. My final product didn't come out *quite* like Rosanna's, but for my first attempt at really decorating a cake/working with fondant, I'll take it.

I used this recipe for the cake, this one for the sugar cookie ears, this one for the vanilla buttercream and this one for the chocolate buttercream (on the ears).

Work in progress

 

Just another angle - after successfully transporting it to work

Because I've never worked with it before, I used store bought fondant. I didn't think trying to make my own without having an idea of the consistency and what it's like to work with was a good idea. The Fondarific brand had pretty good reviews and seemed to be the best tasting of store bought fondants. To color the vanilla buttercream and fondant, I used AmeriColor Gel Food Coloring. The fur was done with Wilton Disposable Decorating Bags and Wilton Tip #233.

Some things I learned/need to remember for next time:

• I broke this up into stages (frostings and sugar cookie dough one day, cake and baking the sugar cookies the next, and frosting/decorating/making the face the last). This was definitely the way to go. I spent hours working on it each day - there's no way I could have done it in one day.
• I cut circles out of parchment paper to line the bottom of the pan, so the cake wouldn't stick, but forgot to grease the sides. This isn't a new concept to me, I've made probably hundreds of cakes by now, I'm just bad at remembering this part. I ran a knife along the side of the pan to get the cake out, but there was some sticking, so I had to cover up some flaws with extra frosting.
• I've also insulated the sides of the pan by wrapping the pan in aluminum foil in the past, which is supposed to help prevent doming. I didn't do that this time. My cakes didn't inflate too much, but I'll remember to wrap the pans next time anyway.
• The gel food coloring is INTENSE. I put a few drops of brown into my 3-4 cups of vanilla buttercream thinking I'd get the light tan color - nope, it was light brown. I had to correct it by throwing it back in the mixer and adding more butter, sugar and cream. It was still a little too dark but I had run out of butter and didn't want to go overboard with the sugar and cream. Next time I'll start with a teeny tiny amount of food coloring and work from there.
• This is specific to this cake, but in the video, it didn't look like she did a crumb layer before frosting the sides of the cake. When I tried just piping the 'fur' right on the cake, it didn't stick to the sides very well. Adding a thin layer of frosting first made it much easier.
• I was a little prissy with working the gel into the fondant at first. I was afraid it would stain my hands and I'd have rainbow colored fingers for days. So I put the fondant into a Ziploc bag, added the food coloring and tried kneading it through the bag. Didn't work too well, so I had to just dive in. It really didn't stain though, the color all came off my hands after a couple washings.

I had extra everything, so I made little Grumpy Cat cupcakes. By this point it was like 11 pm on my last night of baking/assembling and my enthusiasm was waning so these were done quickly.

I'm glad I made this. Everyone loved it and I'm definitely feeling much more confident about making Audrey's cake now.

Roman Numeral Date Ring

I LOVE this ring, found on Etsy:

 

I would get it in white gold, with Audrey's birthday. Unfortunately it'll probably be on my wish list for a while because I can't imagine having $400 to spare any time soon ... sigh.

Dinner for Two

It's usually just Audrey and I for dinner, so I've never been in the habit of making elaborate dinners. I do like to cook (most of the time), but it seems silly to make a 20 ingredient, mess of a big dinner for just the two of us. Often, I will make something on the weekends that will either leave us a couple days of leftovers or a big pot of soup. When I don't already have something in the fridge, I keep it pretty simple: pasta, some chicken and veggies, etc. Audrey is a pretty good eater. There aren't a lot of things that I eat that she won't, so dinner is usually easy.

Audrey at approx. 2 years old. Even then she was big on veggies

But she's always loved the sweets too :)

I did notice that I tend to involve her in deciding what we are having for dinner if I don't have something planned. I made a comment about it to my brother and he said he had wondered why I did that. I think this habit has added to getting her to eat most things. If I give her the option of say, broccoli or green beans, even though she likes both, she's much more likely to eat what she chooses. Teaching healthy eating habits is hard enough as it is, thanks to her persistent sweet tooth. I don't necessarily want her to think she always has to finish her plate, nor do I want to instill in her the idea that its wasteful to not eat food you don't want just because its in front of you. However, I do want her to understand that some foods have benefits - they're good for you, they keep you healthy, they help you grow - and it's important to eat those foods first rather than saving room for candy.

 

I also let her help me cook when it makes sense. Obviously, things that involve the stove or oven I do myself, but if its something she can stir or add ingredients, she's eager to help. If I can get her excited about cooking, show her what goes into her food and teach her about good healthy foods, its worth slowing down the process a bit sometimes.

I'm always looking for new recipes to add to our rotation, so I browse Pinterest and Foodgawker on my phone pretty often. Some dinner ideas to try soon: Chicken Parmesan Meatballs, Risotto Cakes, Great Greens Pasta.

Why are rugs so expensive?

I want to do a mini-makeover of my apartment soon. My brother, who has been staying with us for awhile, will move out after this semester, and I'll have more space again. So in addition to reorganizing, I was hoping to spruce the place up a bit. There's hideous carpet in the living room and my bedroom that I can't do anything about, so I was looking at area rugs. Holy expensive, batman. Even at Ikea and Wayfair the nicer, large area rugs are hundreds of dollars.

I love this one, but its almost $400 for a 5x8. Sigh. I think I'll have to deal with the hideous carpet for a bit longer. Maybe a coat of paint on the walls will help?

Hello, Fall: Halloween Events in NYC

Since we had the Florida trip scheduled at the end of September, it didn't really feel like summer was over till we returned. But we spent a couple hours in the Poconos Monday before going home, (we had landed in Allentown) and the leaves had started to change colors. So even though it was 80 degrees out, it still felt like Fall had arrived.

We have some things to look forward to in the upcoming months. Audrey's gymnastics continue every Saturday through the end of the year. Audrey's birthday is mid-November, and we have a birthday party planned for her. This will be her first birthday party with friends, opposed to the just family celebrations we've done in years past, so she is very excited. There are of course all the holidays to look forward to: Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. We will probably spend all three in the Poconos. The weekends in between will be spent hanging out in the city. Although I didn't plan out the whole season, I did find some upcoming free/cheap Halloween activities:

Hansel & Gretel's Halloween Adventure at the Swedish Cottage Marionette Theater in Central Park. Audrey has never been to a Marionette Show before, but I think she'd like it, so I'd like to try this one. It is showing several days/times a week for the rest of the month, and it isn't expensive.

Halloween Harvest at Luna Park (Coney Island) in Brooklyn. We've been to Coney Island before, but only in the Summer. The rides are still running, but they also decorate for Fall and add magicians, pumpkin picking, trick or treating, etc. Audrey would love this. The rides can get a little pricey, but it looks like an otherwise cheap activity. This one is on weekends through the end of October.

Tricks and Treats at Le Carrousel in Bryant Park. This looks like another fun Halloween/Fall version of an activity we've done over the summer. There's a magician, face painting, trick or treating, etc., and of course, the carousel. The activities are all free, and rides on the carousel are only $2-3. This one is on Saturday the 25th, at 1pm.

The Haunted Pumpkin Garden at New York Botanical Gardens in the Bronx. A huge display of intricately carved pumpkins, plus activities for kids. This one is a little pricey, $25 for adults and $10 for kids, plus its a bit of a trek for us, so I'm not sure if we'll make it to this one this year, but I wanted to keep it in mind.

Pasta

YES:

 

 

I think we'll have spaghetti for dinner tonight ;)