WELL-DEFINED Birthday Bashes! My Well-Defined Part of Life!

One of my favorite things to do is throw birthday parties for the kids! It’s so much fun to have friends come and hang out and bring their kids to play together! It’s the best opportunity to get to see friends who might live a bit far and it’s a great time to have friends I might see everyday come over and enjoy some good food and some outdoor fun (given the weather is nice!).

I love having a ton of kids and babies get together and just play! It’s wonderful to see them just be kids in the yard!

My family also try to make some birthday trips; BB lives in Ohio (in the house I grew up in) and she made the trip last year to be here with Kali for her first birthday!

Same for my sister Kristen who lives in the East Village in NYC! A quick break from city life!

The first birthday we had for Sneaks was when I realized I LOVED throwing their birthday parties!! Fun themes, dress-up, kids and babies, friends and families!! Nico was a cute little cowboy as he turned one!

Neighbor friends, work friends, friends old and new came and some brought their kiddies! My mom and my sister made the trip from Ohio and my other sister again from NYC. The sign in the background my husband drew by hand!! FORT NICO STOCKYARDS!

What I truly look forward to is baking the cake! Here Nico had his own Dirt Bike Cake! This cake was made by his Marmar not me. She also made him a very cool Backhoe Cake for his third birthday but I can’t find a single photo… I will ask her to send one so I can share it here.

I made a Tractor Cake to go with his Cowboy theme! I am not a fan, at all, of store bought cakes. Of any kind. I just don’t like them. I think they taste terrible. Like plastic or old frozen… cake. I feel if you’re going to have sugar and everything that goes into a cake that isn’t any good for you, you very well need to do it right! To enjoy it thoroughly. Sinfully! Not just “mehhhh… It was ok for 900 calories.” So I always have homemade baked cakes at our parties. There’s just a better flavor to them, especially when the icing/frosting is also homemade. I don’t like fondant either. To me, it’s like edible play-doh. My son can make some awesome things with play-doh and I feel like that’s what some of the fancy elaborate fondant cakes are, just cake covered with some type of very easily formable edible play-doh that doesn’t taste like anything or just doesn’t taste good and therefore it gets peeled off and put to the side of everyone’s cake plate. Odd. Very odd.

So all my cakes are made with yummy good cake batter and good icing or frosting. My tractor was ok in style (tasted damn good!) but was just the beginning of putting my cake-baking skills to work! Cupcakes were available too of course! And cowboy hats. And beer!

For Late November it was the perfect rootin’ tootin’ day!

So as the years keep speeding by, each birthday features a new theme! And Nico talks about what he wants his cake to be all year long! We’ve had a Snake Cake! A Green Anaconda to be exact.

Cheat sheet here to show you how I made the cake look like a Ssssnake!!! I used a pound cake pan and a bundt cake pan!

Friends and family helped us celebrate which is always what makes it so much fun!!!

We’ve had a Clayface Cake! This one was tricky!! But I was up for the challenge!

Success!!! Adults can often be nice and say “oh yeah, that looks pretty similar” while kids… they’ll simply tell you it’s wrong. “That looks nothing like Clayface!!” But Nico approved!! He was so happy!

Hint on how I stacked it up… the great thing is Clayface’s body is made of clay so it was ok when I put the frosting on overtop the broken pieces of cake, the bits of cake chunks helped it looked like clay!

I loved this party because ALL YEAR Nico counts down to Halloween. HE LOVES HALLOWEEN! His birthday is a few weeks after Halloween so we made his birthday party into a Costume Party and everyone dressed up!

I was a lobster! Dan was a Zombie. Marmar was Rey. Nico was a Storm Trooper. All the kids were adorable!! AND the grown-ups were like kids again in their costumes!

So the tradition continues obviously for Kali! Her name is Kalina and that means flower and for her first birthday last year we did a flower theme! Lots and lots of flowers for our sweet Kalina!

The big cake I covered in frosting first and then added the flower designs.

It was fun because with the correct and corresponding frosting tube topper, it came out in different designs for different flower types!

This frosting was made with butter, confectioners sugar, madagascar vanilla extract, and a little bit of milk. I just kept mixing and adding and tasting until the flavor and consistency was perfect!

She gets her own flower cake!

So excited to be one!!!!

And then just like that… she’s TWO!!!

She loves Mickey and Minnie and also Scooby Dooby Doo!

I was thinking of attempting a Scooby Dooby Doo cake but instead I went with Mickey. I already had the Mickey Cake Pan from when we did a Mickey theme for Nico’s 4th birthday! Here’s Nico Sneaks’ Mickey Cake I made a few years ago!

This year for Kali, the kids were there, ready and willing to help me mix the cake batter and make the frosting. This time with the frosting I wanted it to be a bit more like icing, so I added Karo syrup. It made it much more runnier but I was still able to manage it while decorating Mickey’s face. It had more of a glossy finish. I only used Almond milk because we were out of regular milk. I’ve made amazing cookies with the best icing using Karo and almond extract! I would bring them into work and people would tell me I should sell them they were so good. It’s the almond extract that gives it a specific sweet flavor. And the icing hardens after a while but is still soft and tastes so good! So sugary fresh!

Taste test… approved! How do I know? She kept going and going and wanting more!!!

Nico approves as well! He’ll tell me if it’s too “buttery”.

Here’s Kali’s Mickey Mouse Cake! Pinterest Perfect! Oh… 2-dles!!!

What’d Kali think? She was afraid of it!! LOL!!! Actually, I don’t know if it was the cake or the white pan I placed it on. That morning I pulled the pan out and a bunch of other pans came crashing down on the floor right beside her and freaked her out. Or maybe she’s super Paleo and is afraid of carbs!? ; )

We sang to her with the Mickey Cake behind her out of sight.

Then Aunt Tete, who came in from the city, held her while she blew out 2 candles!!

So happy, it’s my birthday!!! (I see this pic below and so want to put “Haters gonna hate!”)

The perfect birthday pic complete with cupcakes and my niece photobombing!

Another super fun super successful birthday bash!!! These are the events and things in my life that define me that I LOVE! I never want to sacrifice our birthday bashes for anything! And I feel that’s how we all stay complete; you shouldn’t feel you have to give up the things that make you happy, even if it’s something sugar-loaded! By keeping our delicious cake-making limited to special events, it’s something we really look forward to! This is what makes me Well-Defined and very fulfilled, contributing to my Whole Well-Being!!! Happy Birthday Kali!!!