My sweet boy is now 7 years old!
As you can see, he was pretty excited about that.
We had a rocket/airplane party, as you can also see. Yes, those are permanent markers, which was a big mistake. Actually, the big mistake was not covering my table first (sigh).
I bought these planes at the Dollar Tree store, and the kids LOVED them! Hazel mostly loved to color hers....she doesn't believe in leaving anything white.
The boys had fun coloring, but they were mostly interested in testing out their plane's flying/crashing capabilities.
More crashing than flying, because we had to settle with turning our basement into an airfield (it was cold and rainy that day), but fortunately we had several extra planes and performed a lot of emergency wing replacements. The planes kept the boys happily occupied for more than an hour = awesome. It was a noisy, chaotic kind of awesome, but awesome nonetheless.
Here are some step-by-step pictures of the rocket cake: I used unglazed cake donuts and stacked them one by one on top of a 2-layer round cake. The sticks are Wilton wedding cake dowels, and they worked great to keep the donut tower stable.
Once the donuts were all stacked, I smeared frosting all over the place.
This is where I SHOULD have used fondant, but I simply hadn't anticipated the difficulty of smoothing frosting on such a tall skinny cylinder, and I didn't have any fondant on hand. The party was starting in 2 hours with my kids to pick up from school in 2 different places, and there was no time to run to the store. So please forgive the bad frosting job - not exactly showpiece worthy, but the kids certainly didn't care.
Oh - the cone shape at the top was created by frosting a waffle cone. With a LOT of frosting, since the diameter of the donuts was much greater than the cone. Next time I'll use smaller donuts.
I used red Twizzler licorice ropes - the kind you peel apart - for the lines, and donut-shaped gumdrops and store-bought cookie frosting for the rest of the details (the gumdrops were heavy, so I poked a piece of toothpick into the backs of the gumdrops before inserting them into the sides of the cake). The rocket fins were obviously graham crackers (score the crackers gently with a steak knife, then snap off the pieces), and that cookie frosting was obviously oozy and annoying. :-) Next time I'll make my own to pipe with.
Note that the rocket is sinking into the cake base...this is what happens when the cake base starts out frozen and then thaws, thus becoming squashed under the weight of all those cake donuts. Oops. Another unforseen booboo. I should have put dowels or a wedding cake tier beneath the donut tower to hold it up. Again, the kids didn't care so I didn't fret too much about it.
Speaking of rockets, I thought I'd share a cute little rocket-making activity I did for Hyrum's birthday 2 years ago. You can read more about it HERE.
You could also do a similar thing with veggies and fruit instead of sugary things....
You could use a cucumber or banana for the main rocket body, and use your imagination to go from there...peeled and sliced apples or jicama for the fins, raisins, berries, and/or dried cranberries for the details. I keep meaning to do some demos to photograph for the blog, but so far haven't had time.
So much to do, not enough hours in the day...but at least maybe this will get you started. If you have a birthday boy with aeronautical aspirations, may he have as much of a blast as mine did!
The rocket cake looks perfect--fondant is yucky, anyway. At least, I think so, and I thought so more as a kid.
Perhaps you already know that white toothpaste will get permanent marker off wood furniture? Then vinegar removes the film of the paste. I learned that just this week when one of our permanent markers got in with our regular markers and went right through the page Meri was coloring.
Your house looks fantastic, as always!
Posted by: Edith Songer | October 10, 2011 at 08:13 AM
The cake looks AWESOME and who likes fondant.....??? I also LOVE the one you made for him when he was younger that is so darn cute!!
Your home looks so beautiful and so festive!!! Once again you have an amazing talent!!
Posted by: wendi lane | October 12, 2011 at 08:58 AM
great ideas as ususal! I´m a fan of your page. congrats!
Posted by: paty aldana | October 14, 2011 at 06:45 AM
If your table is still wearing the permanent marker, try using Orange Glow furniture polish. From experience, I know it works great for metalic spray paint on good wooden furniture.
Posted by: Patricia | December 08, 2011 at 12:00 PM