Birthday Baking

Lily's first birthday is approaching fast, and we will be celebrating in style I'm sure. To get the festivities underway, all of the babies in my playgroup that have August birthdays celebrated together at Stella's house. I will post pictures of that later. All of the mums who have August babies brought food, drinks, etc to contribute to the party. I said I would bring the cake.

That was the start of the obsession.

The party we all decided would have a farm animal theme since it was girl and boy friendly, and very sweet to boot. So I got online to the bakery at Publix thinking, farm animal, has to be a fairly common idea, of course there will be a cake, but no. Seems to be that the majority of kid's cakes are cartoon characters.

So then I went searching online for people that had baked their own cakes. And in my usual style I think, yeah of course I can do this, just follow people's instructions and voila. I thought, if I can just bake a rectangular cake, frost it green, and then put the farm theme candles on there, done. Then the party grew in size and I kept seeing these amazing cakes online and it turned into something a little fancier than I planned.

The Thursday before the party I had a bit of a panic attack, thinking, why didn't I just offer to bring bagels!!?? Trip to the shop and done. No, of course I insist on being the cake provider and now what happens if it doesn't work???!! No time to order one, well I suppose we will just be having some ice cream with some farm theme candles.

Anyway, luckily it did work, phew, and actually turned out better than expected. And tasted really nice!

This was the main part of the cake, it is vanilla flavor...

These are some cupcakes I used to make the silo...

This is a pound cake I used to make the barn...

This is the vanilla cake with green frosting...

Next step was to add the fence posts, made from Tootsie Rolls...

Then I made some cupcakes and decorated them with chocolate chips, marshmallows, coconut, and jellies to make pigs, cows and chickens...

These are the plates that we had picked, they are part of all of the decorations that started all this madness...

The finished product!!

Standing Up

As soon as Lily has begun to master something, she is on to the next thing. She is able to get about from A to B crawling, so instead of sticking with that, and exploring and whatever, she wants to stand and walk.

She barely tolerates much playtime unless she is standing up leaning on the ottoman, or her table toy, or being walked about by yours truly. So in the interest of saving myself some back pain, I thought we could have a little standing practice each day. She actually did quite a lot better than I expected the first time I let her go, so I grabbed the camera and this was really just next few times I let her go.

I think she'll be off and running in no time. God help me then.

Standing up from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

Dancing

While I had always noticed that Lily seems to really love music, now lately I have realized she is dancing to some of the music that comes on the tv or radio. She was very happy with the Black Eyed Peas on Friday, and sorry Max, but she seems to really love that Justin Bieber song too!

She seems to have figured out how to work the remote control too. Not as far as knowing which button controls which function, but that if you press buttons on it, things happen to the tv. Pretty clever I think. She is also completely put out if you try to give her a remote control that does not work the tv. I thought I was being clever giving her the one from our bedroom since it wouldn't work in the living room, but she was totally uninterested and unimpressed. Sigh. Anyway volume up, volume down, volume up, volume down is fun for everyone, right?

Dancing Queen from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

Dancing Girl from Rachel Sanford on Vimeo.

Why buy toys?

In our former dining room, Lily has a great play area set up. It is complete with foam mat, jumper, car bouncer, two boxes full of toys and books, the works. She starts out here when it is playtime many times a day. It keeps her occupied for about five minutes if we are lucky.

Invariably she crawls over here, and finds magazines, the remote control, a coaster, any bit of fluff (or worse) from the carpet, car keys....you get the idea. She could stay occupied for hours.

So when she is this happy...why buy toys!!