Happy 2nd Birthday Jacob!

Jacob's birthday party was short and sweet. He has a short attention span at 2 years old and it was a school night, so it worked out well. First off, I want to thank Chris Byers for the idea for the picture. I love it, and its perfect! Jacob had so much fun with many of the people he loves being there to celebrate with him. We started off the night with snacks and then birthday cake. He tried to blow the candle out, but I had to block him from spitting all over the place. It was so cute. I am pretty sure the candle was blown out with the help of Seth and Rosie. Thanks for that helpers! We ate quickly and moved right along to present opening time. He really didn't interest in opening his presents, but again he had big helpers: Seth, Rosie, and Xavier. He loved all the toys and clothes, so thank you for those. I think his favorites so far are everything. He just kept switching from one to another. We also had big helpers to open all the boxes and get the toys out: Jason, Teancum, Eli, Seth, Rosie, Xavier, and Mary. Thanks kids for helping out so much at the party!

I had all the candy and snacks left over from decorating the cake so people could eat them and decorate their own cupcake if they wanted to. I also had large and small pretzels out to eat those yummy and fun pumpkin cheese balls I made. I used soft smoked cheddar rolled into a ball, the bottoms dipped in chopped peanuts, garnished with a fresh parsley leaf, and pretzel stems. It was really funny to me that half the people there were not sure what they even were. Frosting balls? Candy? I thought they would make a fun looking truffle, but cheese it is.

The cake I made was a monster. I baked the body in a oven safe Pyrex 2.5 quart bowl, and the feet were cupcakes. He had purple butter cream frosting with donut, gummy life saver, skittle eyes, a candle nose, candy corn teeth, blow pop arms, pretzel legs, and a fruit by the foot tongue. It was fun to decorate and to look at after. This was my first time baking a cake in a bowl and I was checking on it every 15 minutes. It looked funny throughout baking, but it turned out great and was soo easy to frost. The frosting is always fun to dye too. Just as a reminder to everyone who likes to color food. Always go get the thicker coloring from the craft store because you can get many colors and it creates super rich coloring. I swear by it! Jacob picked out the cake idea from a birthday cakes for kids book I have. Of course I showed him the page to begin with, he looked through it with his brothers, but kept coming back to the monster page and saying, "Raaar!"