We were fortunate enough to be able to have Ai-yi come down to help celebrate Jocelyn's birthday. Ai-yi played an essential piece to planning the big she-bang, as she helped me tint icing, tried to "steer" me in the right direction with placing Blue's outline on the cake and did a wonderful job with the decorations. As you can see from the cake, I didn't exactly do a good job following directions on where to place Blue's outline, as she isn't really *quite* centered vertically on the cake (I blame it on the nerves)! All in all, not too bad for my first attempt at a character cake.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that it was a vanilla and chocolate cake with chocolate ganache filling and buttercream icing. (Can you see the chocolate crumbs in the icing? Still can't figure out how to avoid that, even though I did a crumb coat and let it sit in the fridge overnight!) Yay for the piping skills I learned in my Wilton cake decorating class with my friend the cake decorator/party planner extraordinaire!
(Now I want some chocolate cake.)
Now for the lovely decorations (a clue, a clue!):
The anticipation of cake was too much. But first, the kids had to make "happy plates" (what Kayla's preschool calls an empty plate at lunchtime). Here's George's take on making a happy plate:
Jocelyn seems puzzled by the cake, while Kayla couldn't keep her paws off of it:
Finally, we all dug in:
I'm not too sure why there aren't any messy-face-covered-with-cake pictures. Maybe we were too busy eating it.
Then cards and presents from Aiyi, Ah-ma/Ah-Gong and Mommy/Daddy:
Family pictures. Yay!
The next day, Kristie so kindly met us at the mall to drop off presents from her and Jo Jo (who couldn't make it to the party because he was sick). Jocelyn got a beautiful Janie & Jack outfit, which we tried to put on her for Valentine's Day but the skirt kept slipping off her butt, so we'll try it again when she's a little bigger (THANKS KRISTIE)!
Jojo got Jocelyn a bear that talks when you read a special book. It took a few tries but we've got it figured out now (THANKS JOJO)!
And yes, that is Kayla saying, "Hey, that's the same frog card Aiyi got for Jocelyn!
Since Jocelyn's birthday was on a Sunday, I made Blue's Clues cupcakes to share with her day care friends on Monday. I had found cupcake directions on nickjr.com and although my cupcake toppers weren't nearly as smooth and pretty-looking as I had wished, Jocelyn and Kayla were excited. (The kids at day care, on the other hand, could care less about what was on top of the cupcake. They did, however, all devour the cake part.) There were extra cupcakes, so we ate the rest at home that week.
Yummy, good times. Now I really wish I had some cake to eat right now.
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