Summer Citrus Party

Although it wasn't a "milestone" birthday for some strange reason I decided earlier in the year that I wanted to have a birthday party this year. I don't know what was wrong with me, I had already thrown 3 parties for each of my boys, and was completely booked out with cakes but nevertheless the seed was planted in the back of my mind.
As it turns out it was wonderful, and a fantastic opportunity to catch up with old friends...and new :-)
Now my birthday falls a week into December, so I wanted the style of the party to reflect the gorgeous summer weather. I wanted it to be colourful, fresh, and summery....so I decided on a Summer Citrus Party!

I have to admit, I don't think I have ever loved Pinterest quite so much as in the past month, and it was a lifesaver for my party planning. As I mentioned earier, I was crazy busy with cake orders, so this left very little time to organise the party. It was all down to the 2 weeks prior. This is where Pinterest came into it's own, in the 3 or so months leading up to the party, I would pin various ideas and concepts onto my board while enjoying a little down time after the kids went to bed at night, then these were all called upon in those final 2 weeks, when I finally had a chance to leave my kitchen and hit the stores!

My husband came up with the idea to use Chep Pallets as the tables, which I loved, however I needed something to make them a little more feminine, so I decided to add pink to the citrus colour pallet of yellow, orange and green. I found some beautiful pink table cloths from Spotlight which featured the citrus colours, and also the same blue as the chep pallets...they were PERFECT!
I also bought some dance satin in the pink, blue, green, yellow and orange colours which was ripped into strips and tied onto some cord and used as the backdrop to the cake/dessert table.
I also found some nice tall cylinder vases from one of the cheap $2 shops which were filled with lemons & oranges. My final decorative touch was the addition of the gorgeous flowers. I bought a few little jars and bottles which were used as the vases, and filled with various roses, lisianthus and green trick dianthus (had to google these). To be honest, I had nothing to do with the flower choices, I have a friend of a friend who is a florist, and I sent her my pinterest images of what style I was after, and the colour pallet, and the rest was left up to her! 

Now the cake.....I chose this design as I LOVE the whole ombre thing that is everywhere at the moment, and I thought it was just a gorgeous, simple and elegant design. The roses were the exact same colour as my dress too :-)

Rainbow Ruffle Cake

Rainbow Ruffle Cake, a photo by Coco Jo Cakes on Flickr.

A 6 layer rainbow vanilla butter cake which mimicked the rainbow ruffles on the outside. This is such a fun theme for a birthday party, and I was so excited when my sister told me she had chosen it for her daughter's 7th birthday. I have seen this cake done several times before...especially in the pastel tones, but I have to say, I like the bright primary colours so much more!

Lego Storage

While on the Lego theme...I thought I would share our lego storage system. I got the idea from my favourite (non cake) blog iheart organizing and have basically done the same thing, but used a different IKEA cabinet. 

Firstly, I sorted the lego into the various colours: Red, Green, Blue, Yellow, White, Grey, Black, Brown & Orange. This way I could decide how big the containers had to be. The Trojan wall unit had the best sized containers for our lego collection.

We also have a container for People (and their things, like shovels, suitcases etc), wheels, instruction books, and a "half made" container, for all of the work in progress.

It is working like a treat, and my 6 year old is finding it really easy to find the pieces he needs during construction, and more importantly...maintain!

Happy building :-D

Lego Party

LEGO PARTY

This year my youngest boy started Prep, so we decided to throw him his first birthday party (not just family) and as with most little preppies he doesn't have a close group of friends, and is just friends with everyone, even the girls....so we invited the whole class.

He has always enjoyed playing lego duple, but this year has really discovered lego and spends hours playing and creating...so when I asked him what theme he wanted for his party, it was a straight out LEGO!!!

I purchased some polka dot material from Spotlight for the table cloth and backdrop, and made up a poster using a free downloaded font called Lego Thick.

THE FOOD

Big W have also recently started stocking a great range of Lego themed stationary, so I purchased two of their desk caddies and used these to hold the Lego Brick Biscuits, Marshmallow heads and stacked them on top of clear IKEA bathroom containers filled with m&m's to hold the lollypops.

I used the larger IKEA container to hold the most popular treat on the table, the lego brick cake pops. There is a fantastic tutorial on how to make these here

I also made some rainbow cake push pops and stored these in coloured crates I picked up at Bunnings.

Other food included rainbow Jelly cups, fruit skewers, cheese & cocktail onions platter, (all colour coded) and cherios.

Each child was also given their own water bottle.

THE GAMES

We hired a jumping castle - as the thought of entertaining 24 children for 2 hours was extremely frightening, but my eldest son and niece ran a few games to keep the kiddies busy.

This was a lego relay race, the children were divided into 4 teams and were all given a piece of duplo lego which they had to hold under their chin, run up to the bucket (also purchased from Bunnings), drop it in then return and tag their team mate. This was a lot of fun!

NOTE: See Jack's shirt....Big W also stock a few Lego clothes :-D

Then we played a game of lego toss, each child received 4 duplo blocks, their score was added up, and the child with the highest score at the end received a prize....lego of course!

There was also pin in the missing brick, and how many lego in the jar.

THE CAKE!

I made this giant Lego minifigure cake, the feet was a dummy 8" square, the body and head were chocolate mud cake, and the arms were rice crispy treats.

The kids thought it was great pulling off his head....hmmmm?

In their loot bags, each child received their own little colouring book, some lego minifigure crayons (another tutorial here), lego brick rubber, a pack of stickers, lollypop and bag of 

fairy floss.

I have to acknowledge a few fellow bloggers that gave me so much inspiration:

http://www.andersruff.com/custom-printable-parties/birthday-parties/jeffreys-modern-lego-party-full-detail-feature/

http://taniamccartney.blogspot.com.au/2012/02/lego-party.html

http://catchmyparty.com/photos/523835

Army Camouflage Party

ARMY PARTY

This year we made the brave (or perhaps silly) decision to throw each of the boys a birthday party. The first off the rank is our middle boy who is turning 9, and has a keen interest in the military, so the theme was a bit of a no brainer. Some of you may have seen my post for his birthday last year where I made him an army tent cake, although it was just a small cake as it was only for our family.


For party planning, I spent a day googling and found some amazing parties from fellow bloggers, which provided so much inspiration. I then googled a little more for the supplies, and found a couple of great online stores which provided me with everything I needed to throw the "greatest party of all time" (according to my son!)


For the invitations I created a camouflage themed postcard style invitation on Purple Trail which I printed at home. I then used this design to make the food labels too.

For the decorations I purchased 2 metres of camouflage material from Spotlight, and my wonderful husband made a timber frame which we stapled the fabric to before screwing it onto our old timber outdoor table. 

For the food, I made some two tone green and brown jelly (lime and cola), and we had a great time giving them all fantastic military names:

• caramel shrapnel (caramel demitasse sticks) 
• camo coloured lolly pops, 
• platoon party pies and sabotage sausage rolls
• marble cupcakes (green, vanilla and chocolate),
• caramel cracker bombs (caramel popcorn)
• chocolate bombs (maltesers)
• liquorice bullets
• missile mixed lollies
• ration honey soy chips

The decorations were all things I found around the house, I had some bamboo toy boxes which we turned upside down to serve as the cake and cupcake stands, some little tin buckets to hold some of the food (I lined these with aluminium foil because we have been using them to hold our colouring pencils) and the lids of some green and black Ikea boxes.

I did purchase some ammunition boxes from our local Army disposal store for decoration, but these will go on display in the birthday boy's bedroom now!

The children all received their own ID tag, water bottle and binoculars along with their little goodie box (filled with a couple of chocolates, toy army man, tank and a couple of tattoos.

Then the cake...well this was a bit of a last minute design which to be completely honest was very much about EASY, EASY, EASY!! (I already had 2 wedding cakes, a 50th birthday, and an engagement cakes ordered for that day) I had a friend offer to come over and help, and without her I would have been up until after midnight so I am eternally grateful.

For entertainment we hired the local Laser Skirmish company who host backyard parties. He was absolutely amazing and the children had so much fun; he kept them completely entertained...it was fantastic. It was a little pricey, but as everything else was really reasonable we were able to splash out - and it was so worth the cost.

  

Thank you for reading,

Jo

Suppliers

Invitations - Purple Trail

Backdrop - Spotlight

Party supplies - It's all about kids gifts   The little big company    Ezy kids parties

Cake - Coco Jo

Laser Skirmish - Laser skirmish CQ

Paint Splat

Paint Splat, a photo by Coco Jo Cakes on Flickr.

This cake was made for an 80's themed birthday party, and the birthday girl is also a Kindy teacher, so I think the design is just perfect!
I have to admit I struggled a little with my inner perfectionist, trying to get all the splatters right, but once I let loose, I had an absolute blast.
There was icing everywhere....on the fridge, the oven, the dishwasher, even as far away as my dining room table!

Lots and Lots of fun :-)

Fondant Baby Booties Tutorial

I have been promising this one, and have taken all the pictures, so I thought I need to sit down at put it together. Here is my method of making these cute little fondant booties which can be used on baby shower cupcakes, or on a cake.

You will need:
 - fondant & cmc / or gumpaste
 - small 5 petal blossom cutter
 - toothpick
 - small craft brush


Let's get started!!


I like to make the white blossoms first, so they are a little dry by the time I want to put them on the front of the booties...so let's start there. (sorry the fondant is yellow in the picture)

Roll out your fondant until it is very thin, then use your five petal blossom cutter to cut tiny blossoms, then leave these to dry slightly while you make your booties.

Roll out balls of fondant, then flatten one side slightly. For these booties, each ball was a little larger than a pea.

Roll out your fondant into a long snake, then cut two pieces just under 1cm long. (the thickness and the length of these will change depending on the size of your booties. Using your paint brush, paint on a tiny bit of water to adhere the two pieces together.

Using a balling tool, the end of a chopstick, or even your little finger press down to make an indent.

I used a cutting wheel tool here, but I have made these booties again, and used the toothpick (which worked better) to make little indents around the "sock" part of the booties.

Now use your toothpick to make little dots in a u shape around the front of the booties.

Paint a tiny bit of water onto the centre of your bootie, then glue on your blossom.

And here they are....6 pairs of little booties :-)


Happy caking!!

Pink Christening Cake

This beautiful pink Christening cake was for a pink, white and brown themed Christening Day. The design of the cake was kept fairly simple, with the quilting design on the bottom tier, and the tiny blossoms on the top of both tiers. Each blossom was individually piped into place, then the centres of the flowers were piped in. I counted over 200 blossoms while piping the centres...then kind of lost count, but it was somewhere in that region :-)
For the blossoms I used the 2 smallest of the PME Blossom cutters - as shown here.

As you can see the little blossoms have a little indent in the centre, this is made from the ejector cutter - but I will do a tutorial on how I make and dry my little blossoms very soon....you can also see in the background I have a few larger cupcake toppers drying on my baking tray - I will do a tutorial on how to make these too....lots more to come, so click on FOLLOW to stay up to date on my postings, or like me on Facebook.
Thanks for visiting,

Coco Jo

Ruffle Cake

I am in LOVE with all of the ruffle cakes that are around at the moment....they are so pretty, so I have done a little collage of my favourite ruffle cakes....ENJOY!

 Cakes by Lynz Coco Jo 

Maisie Fantaisie Magpie's Sweet and Saucy

Well I have done a slightly different version of the usual buttercream ruffle, this look is usually achieved with layers and layers of fondant frills, but this little beauty was very quick and easy to achieve. I did vary the colour, from white through to a pretty pink colour, which was quite simply achieved by doing a couple of frills, emptying the piping bag, adding a drop of colour, piping a few more frills, and so on and so on. I would like to do this again on a taller cake so you could get a beautiful gradient going.

Hot pink and Black

This glamourous birthday cake was created for a Black and Pink themed cocktail party. Inspiration for the design came from the dress that the birthday girl was going to wear which was pink with black lace. This is only my second topsy turvy cake, and I am really happy with the result.

I had free reign over the entire cake, which was lots of fun....I was originially planning on airbrushing the tiers to create a gradual gradient from a lighter to darker pink, but decided to go with a two tone instead....or three tone, as the icing on the board was a darker pink again.

The paisly style shapes were created by using my frangipani flower petal cutters, along with a few tear drop shapes in there too. Finally the design was finished off with some black royal icing dots and cachous to give it the must have "bling" factor.

I tested out a couple of new flavours too (well not new, but new for me), with the top tier I went for a cookies and cream mud cake, and the bottom a chocolate cherry ripe mud cake.

Thank you for reading!

Three Blind Mice

This little vanilla butter cake was made for a gorgeous little boy's second birthday. His favourite book is of the nursery rhyme "Three Blind Mice", and the icing figures and decorations were based on the cover of the book. I love making little figurines...especially the animals - they are so cute!! HAPPY BIRTHDAY SEAN!!!

Latte Wedding Cake

I fell in love with this couple when I first met them....and their wedding was everything I would want if I were to do it again (not that I am planning anything...I am VERY HAPPILY MARRIED!). The cake design, was something I had seen in a magazine and fell in love with, and was thrilled when they chose it to base their wedding cake from. Now while I was in love with the cake, the couple, the venue, and everything else, this was by far the most stressful wedding I have ever made the cake for...so far!!!

The cake baked and covered beautifully, but those darn Bride and Groom figurines were an absolute nightmare! I made them without too much drama, but this last week has been raining, and when it hasn't been raining, it has been so muggy and humid it was a nightmare!!! All of the fellow cake decorators out there will understand completely!

Now, we have air conditioning, and my wonderful husband discovered that they have a "dry" mode, which removes the humidity from the room.... you would think that this would solve the problem...but no, every now and then, I would go into the room to discover the figurines so shiny and sticky that I was afraid they were going to melt completely and give the wicked witch from the west a run for her money. Thankfully, as shiny as they got, they never lost their shape, and in the end I think they look remarkably good!

As I mentioned above the cake design was based on one found in a Wedding Cakes Magazine, but we made a few alterations to make it our own. For the bottom tier, we liked the double height cakes, but thought they were a bit extreme, so I suggested rather that doubling the height, we just increase it by half. So the bottom tier is a triple layer caramel mud cake with white chocolate ganache. It stood approximately 14cm high. The top tier is a toblerone mud cake, with two layers filled and iced with dark chocolate ganache.