Sunday, August 19, 2012

Rainbow Ruffle Cake

Rainbow Ruffle Cake by Coco Jo Cakes
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!


Monday, August 13, 2012

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

Sunday, August 12, 2012

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