Octonauts Birthday Party

I will gladly admit that I'm not up for elaborate birthday parties with 3D character cakes for all my kids every year. Sadly, this means, the youngest one has never gotten a "cool" birthday cake. But this was his year. I picked the theme. Can you tell? Otherwise, it would be a combination of Mutant Ninja Turtles (something he knows nothing about) and race cars. We've always been a fan of Meomi's Octonauts long before the books became a show on Disney (not my favorite kids channel).  I prefer birthday parties where I can let all the kids lose out in the backyard but unfortunately, this little guy's birthday is in the winter. I thought I would make an effort at decorating this time, armed with way too many Pinterest ideas. So many in fact, I ran out of time to blow up the carefully color selected balloons and a few other details. I made Peso Penguin's medical suitcase with the Silhouette Cameo machine. I got put that thing to use to justify its cost. And, the other kids put up green twisty paper on the walls like sea grasses. I even collected some ocean-y related items from around the house to decorate the foyer and put that chest from a couple of years ago Christmas to good use, to hold a giant stuffed turtle and the favor boxes.

I tried for a tall, 8" round with a white cake recipe I found online. The cake fell and it came out with a huge crater in the middle. Not a good start. I had to do it again, so I settled for the boring, old 9" pans and made a little 6" devil's food cake from a box for the top. I was determined not to mix more than two colors of fondant, but of course, I was feeling the cake looked too poor, so I kept mixing colors. I was already keen on the shortcut of using the well-cleaned Octonauts figurines to decorate the cake. There's no way in hell I was going to model those out of fondant. I decided to add the number five at the end but had nothing to cut it out with and was not in the mood to print it and make a stencil, so I did a rather messy job of trying to cut it with a decorating spatula. In the end, I did a bit more than I was planning on and more than I was invested in effort-wise probably. I'm always striving to "keep it simple" these days.

I also made some cute star-shaped, ham sandwiches, octopus string cheese, and milk bottle beverages with the cute aqua striped straws because who can resist those. They are so cute. I did accidentally color the juice deep green though, by inadvertently squirting the blue food coloring in there instead of letting one droplet go like I was planning. Oh well, it all turned out.