This little girl turned 3 this weekend!

We incorporated a German tradition into our celebration, thanks to our lovely foreign exchange student.  In Germany, they set a special place at the table for the birthday girl or boy the night before.  The birthday person can’t see it until the day of the birthday.  They decorate it with candles to blow out, special dishes, flowers, streamers, balloons, whatever.  The presents are in place, ready to be opened.  Since Lydia was having a monster party that day, we used Halloween tableware for her special place.  She was thrilled.

And then, the party began.  She had requested a monster party, so we did our best to oblige.  But have you ever tried to plan a monster party in any month outside of October?  It’s not easy, my friends.  We had to stretch the imagination a bit.

The monster cake, made by my dashing and talented husband.

The monster drink: lime sherbet and 7 Up, an idea from Marie’s Monster Mania eBook

The monster party favors, a HUGE stretch.  The whoppers are “monster eyeballs,” the m&m’s are “monster polka-dots” (cuz, ya know, some monsters have polka dots on their bodies) and the twizzlers are “monster tongues.”  We also found some little monster toys and figurines at a party store and they were a huge hit.

The monster party craft: monster feet, an idea also taken from Marie’s Monster Mania ebook.

The monster activity: reading monster books.  See those smiles on the kiddos’ faces?  My hubby is a real crowd pleaser.

The monster game: “Don’t Eat Pete” with Halloween faces in the boxes.  Printable game cards and instructions are here.

All the little monsters behaved themselves and the Birthday Girl had a good time!  Happy birthday to my big, grown up girl (who informed me today that she is now big enough to drive).

Did you know?  Half birthdays do not require a lot of fanfare, but they do require a certain amount of attention.

To do a half birthday properly, wish a happy half birthday to the half-birthday girl.  Give her lots of kisses and tell her how much you love her.

Then give her a half donut (chocolate please).

If she is an adult (and I am), she can eat the other half after the toddler is asleep.

Happy half birthday to me!  (A few days late.)

And thank you to my husband for remembering and showering me with the undeserved, silly attention I absolutely relish and adore on such a silly day of remembrance.

My desire for my husband and me to become amazing cake decorators has completely fizzled away.  But for my husband, the urge to master cake decorating is still going strong.  He planned my birthday cake for weeks.  I was quite impressed with the efforts and results.  I hope he doesn’t expect the same from me, however!  Tedious icing squeezing is not my forte.

The cake blueprints:

The cake master:

The cake:

Have you been dying to know how our first cake decorating experience went?

Let me summarize: It was long.  It took two nights to make one cake!  Who knew it actually takes work and effort to make a half-beautiful cake?  And I was tired.  And cranky.  (But my sweet husband put up with me anyway).  

Some things we learned: 

Make a cake in the middle of the day when you are NOT tired.  Or maybe just be mature and quit whining to your husband about how tired you are.

Don’t add too much corn syrup to the frosting, or the consistency will be too thin and your cake will look like a gooey mess.  

Cover your cake when you put it in the fridge over night so it won’t dry out.  That way, you can actually enjoy the  moist cake you slaved over for hours instead of commenting to your spouse about how nice it would be if the cake were still moist like it was last night.

But you should see the yellow star up close.  I did an amazing job, if I do say so myself.  Unfortunately, the cake was much more than a yellow star.

So without further ado, here is our first messy cake.

The Happy Birthday is for Grandma Diane, who is 800 miles away and will be celebrating her birthday without us in a few days.

Lydia happily blew out the candles for Grandma after we sang Happy Birthday.  Wish you were here, Diane.

It’s a good thing my husband and I don’t drink, smoke or do drugs because we are pretty sure we have addictive personalities.  As much as we try not to, we become obsessed with TV shows.  Past lovers have been Arrested Development, House, CSI (until it got weird) and Seinfeld.  30 Rock is now in the lead as our current obsession.  We watch it every Thursday night when it is on.  And then we watch it again on nbc.com the next night.  When it isn’t on TV, we watch full episodes on Netflix.  Nearly every night.  We finished all the seasons in December and started over again in January.  We have even left events early to come home and watch 30 Rock. 

I know.  Embarrassing.

We’re now taking on a new project.  We love spending time together and we love developing hobbies.  So we decided Tuesday and Wednesday nights will become “Hobby Nights” instead of “Past Episodes of 30 Rock that We Just Watched a Month Ago Nights.”  We will choose a hobby and explore it for a full month.

The hobby this month?  Cake decorating.  Suggested by my adorable husband. 

The tools: Wilton Cake Decorating Tools and Caddy purchased from Robert’s (with a 50% coupon!)

The book: which came in the kit.

The addicts:

Wish us luck!  We have no idea what we’re doing!  I’ll be posting our adventures (or misadventures) as we go along.