Minecraft Cake

We decided to brave the world of making our own birthday cake for Tyler's birthday party because we are gluttons for punishment. It truly became one of those "let's make the cake, they said. how hard can bit be, they said..." 

In the end, the birthday boy was thrilled... and it wasn't a Pinterest Fail of epic proportions. 

We started off researching what we needed to make and collecting supplies. We made a 4 layer cake that started with a 12x12x2 inch cake pan... in reality, we cut about 2 inches off of it so it was 10 inches on each side and 8 inches high when it was all said and done.

To make cakes of this size, each layer required a double batch of cake... so for ours, each layer represents 2 cake mixes. We chose to do 2 layers of white and 2 layers of chocolate cake. 

We started making our cake on the Tuesday before the party (Saturday) -- on that day we only made the cakes. We let the cakes rest the night in our cube-shaped cooler that John layered delicately with cooling racks and cake pans.

On Wednesday, we made our butter-cream icing and built the main structure of the cake. We used the Wilton recipe made with shorting (we did the variation for stiff white butter-cream) because we wanted to make sure that the structure of the cake wouldn't be susceptible to falling over if it got to be room temperature while sitting at the party. It took about 3 double batches of icing to cover the entire cake. I used a pastry bag and a cake frosting tip to make this easier on myself. We also chose to dye the frosting brown so that you wouldn't see white if there were any gaps in our fondant pixels. From here, the cake was placed in our outside refrigerator.

On Thursday, we dyed all of our fondants - we ended up with 3 shades, 3 shades of brown, and gray. To cover this entire cake, we used one 5 pound box of Wilton White Decorator Preferred Fondant. John made a template (yes, we would share if asked) in Excel that told us the total number of squares we would need and then we were able to break it down by how many of each shade we would need.

On Friday, we cut out a billion and one fondant pixels. We used a cookie cutter of sorts that allowed us to cut nine 1 inch squares of fondant each time you cut. We had to use some powdered sugar in place of flour while rolling out our pixels. We placed them on sheet trays and then into the fridge for the night. We were a bit worried about the fondant falling off the cake before the party - so we opted to put them on the cake that morning. By the end of the night Friday:

1. We printed our templates and put them on our cookie sheets 
2. We put a layer of wax paper on top (starting with the top layer of the cake)
3. We filled in our pixels and made sure to stick the fondant squares together - start with the top of the cake as that is the last layer you adhere to the cake
4. Repeat with a template for the sides and wax paper
5. As each layer was finished we took the wax paper and layered them all on to one cookie sheet
6. We let the 5 walls chill overnight in our refrigerator

Saturday morning (at like 10:30 -- the party was at 12), we did the final adhering to the sides of the cake. We put our layers of pixels (one side at a time) on the back of a cookie sheet. We gently brushed it with water, and positioned them onto the cake - then we took a fondant smoother to press the sides into the butter-cream on the cake. When you adhere the top, you don't need to brush it with water - and we used an extra cake board so that we could just flip it over onto the top of the cake.

It didn't end up perfectly, but for our very first attempt at cake decorating -- it went pretty well!

Tyler's Aunt, Susan, made the Creeper, Steve, and pig for the top of the cake... he was thrilled with how it turned out. 

If you decide to make one of these on your own, please let us know and we'd be happy to pay our lessons learned forward and help you as much as we can! 

Minecraft Ghast Pinata

We chose this time to make a Ghast pinata, but you could easily make this as a TNT, Creeper, Enderman, or really anything Minecraft your child's heart desires. We got the idea from another blogger, but there are some design changes we would make when we do it again... which apparently will happen in April because James is determined to have everything Tyler did. (Don't worry friends that attended... there will be changes and some different ideas.)

Supplies Needed:
print out of the face of your pinata
1 (24pk) Pepsi or any other soft drink that has a square box
Candy and/or toys to fill the pinata
masking tape
scotch tape
glue stick
bottle of glue
wrapping paper in the color that matches your pinata (explained below)
crepe paper matching your pinata (explained below)
2 zip ties
rope

We started by letting Tyler fill the pinata with candy and little toys for all the kids. He was so funny making sure to fill it precisely in a specific pattern... even though when you move it, the candy and toys will shift and mix together.

Use masking tape and seal all the edges. We used a butter knife to split all of the seams gently so that we didn't disturb the cube shape. This is a 24 pack of Pepsi box that we used, but you could do this with any 24 pack that you can get. (I don't know if they make these shape packs for Coke.)

Wrap the box after you seal all of the seams with white wrapping paper, or use whatever you have that you can wrap the box with the design on the inside. You'll want the white on the outside so that it doesn't interfere with your design. If you do a different design - consider using the base color of your design for your wrapping paper... for instance, if you do a Creeper -- I'd do green paper; Enderman -- black paper; TNT -- red paper; and so on.

We made an excel template that had the face designs for all of our craft projects... (spoiler alert, I can email this to anyone that might be interested in making one of your own.) this template was very helpful. Glue the design onto the box with a glue stick. We put the extra gray pieces on the box but ended up covering most of them with the crepe paper.

We took the crepe paper and cut little frays into one side of the strips... for the texture. (if you look at the very bottom of the box you can see how it was cut so that you see the little fringe effect) We used a bottle of school glue and a brush to glue the top edge of each piece of crepe paper to the box. This takes a while, and we set it on another smaller box to be able to let it dry and get finished. 

Here it is all finished and drying for a bit -- we added the crepe paper to the sides and a sign to the back so that we didn't have quite as much to glue there. We found a Minecraft font and downloaded it to use for our sign, and we downloaded images from Google to use on the sign.

Here it is in action -- next time we make one of these -- we will cut some cardboard from an Amazon box or something to help strengthen the top where you attach the rope - so our plan is that we'd add a piece or two across the top inside of the Pepsi box just below the handle, secure it to the sides, and then attach the rope there because once you fill it with candy it's just a bit too heavy for the original handle to hold it up. We had 12 kids hit this thing, but with the first initial swing the handle gave way -- we were lucky it lasted through everyone getting one turn to hit it.

Fall Decor Display

Have I told y'all about how I'm basically a DIY FAIL at every attempt? Well, I FINALLY did it... I created something I'm proud to call my own! You see, I had the hay left from our fall photo session and all of the pumpkins... so I just needed a couple of small additions to make it special.

I bought two more of the $1 plastic pumpkins from the grocery store - they have these everywhere. I cut the handle off of them. If I had it to do all over again, I would have cut the tops off of them before I painted them -- but if you do it this way -- cut just below where the handles fit into the pumpkin.

I cut mine after they were painted, but I bought a can of shiny antiqued nickle or silver spray paint at Lowe's. They also had bronze and several other colors that looked like iron and other metals.

I put them out in our yard on a piece of cardboard, and sprayed them down twice, let them dry and then flipped them over and sprayed the top and inside as best I could.  

This is a close up of the first pumpkin in progress.

Here are both of them after the first coating on the bottom side of the pumpkin. Remember I cut mine after this point and it took us trial and error to find the exact amount to cut off -- it took us 3 cuts on the first one, but I made it just to where the potted flower would fit inside the pumpkin. That way I can take them out and move them after the season is over -- or when I eventually kill them -- throw them out. A green thumb, I am not. 

Here is my final display all set up.

A close up of one of the finished pumpkin planters.

Of course this was ridiculously easy -- and it didn't take much active time -- mostly time for the different coats of paint to dry. After Halloween, I will turn them around until it's time to put up the Christmas decorations! 

Let me know if you decide to make one of your own, and send pictures of what you get set up.