A Treat Idea For Classroom Birthday Parties

Growing up we lived across the street from a family with a boy who had a severe allergy to shellfish. I remember my mother having to be very cautious about what she served because his food could not even be on the same cutting board as shellfish or he would have an anaphylaxis reaction. He was the only one we knew though. Now, it seems like every class has a child with a severe allergy to something. In fact, there was just a Newsweek article about the issue. Anyway, both Spencer and Owen have several children in their classes with severe allergies and both have a communal snack for which the parents are responsible. There are lists and you can always bring a fruit or vegetable, but, for me, it is still nerve-racking.

So, for Spencer's class birthday treat I decided to send applesauce (I buy the natural applesauce without added sugar). Although not as exciting as cupcakes, it is safe for the children with allergies and he really does love it. I jazzed them up a bit with paper covers for the tops, a few stickers and some curly ribbons for the ends of the spoons and it was a hit:

Here is a link to the template I made in Word. Just double click on writing to replace Spencer's name, then just copy and paste for more and attach to the tops with double stick tape.

2 Twice

Next in the birthday line-up was Laney. We had intended to have a family party for her birthday, but she was not feeling well. The party was postponed one night and we had a small celebration with a last minute ice cream cake from Baskin Robins. Forget the Motrin, in Laney's book ice cream was the perfect fever reducer.

After one night of medication, Laney was feeling much better, so it was time to celebrate her 2nd birthday with my mom, John and my grandparents (Guagua and Popie) and the cake. At the moment, Laney loves flowers (flaw), yellow (yell-low) Elmo (melmo) and frog (fras). Let me tell you it was a bit of a challenge to incorporate all of these things into a cake, but here is what I came up with (you can click on any of the pictures to see them bigger in Flickr):

It was a chocolate cake with meringue buttercream frosting. I decided to try meringue buttercream and loved it. It was more work to make, but worth it - I will be using this recipe from now on. The decorations were made from fondant with the exception of Elmo; I bought him and covered the fish tank he was holding with a "Laney is 2" sticker. The fondant was shiny because I had to refrigerate the cake when Laney got sick - I don't think she minded though:

All Better Now, Well, Sort Of

Thank you all for your well wishes! We are finally rid of all illnesses with the exception of the mental illness that occurred from the October birthdays. October really takes it out of me. You can't imagine the number of celebrations we have had. How many you ask? Here is the list to date - we still have Spencer's actual birthday/school celebration tomorrow:

• Owen's actual birthday
• Owen's school celebration
• Owen's monster truck birthday party
• Laney's birthday
• Laney's Elmo make up party because she was sick on her birthday
• My grandfather's birthday (Poor guy had to go to a bowling alley with 12 crazy kids on his birthday)
• Spencer's crazy bowling birthday party

I know it is hard to imagine, but we are actually sick of cake around here. Here is a glimpse of Owen's party:

We went with a monster truck theme and Owen invited 5 friends to celebrate:

We needed a little extra something for the table, so I put some of Owen's monster trucks on a cookie sheet with some brown sugar to look like sand. The kids loved it.

One of the activities we had planned was for the children to paint wooden monster truck magnets. Can you imagine, I had trouble finding monster trucks to paint? I did find some trucks, some wooden disks and magnets though. 10 minutes later, we had monster truck magnets to paint. I like to use egg cartons split in half as paint trays - they work really well.

Here are the trucks Spencer and Owen painted:

The other planned activity was a pin the license plate on the monster truck game. Sam drew the truck for me, didn't he do a great job? Truth be told, it drives me nuts because I want to be able to draw. Laney helped with a bit of color on the tires every time Sam looked away. Clearly she gets her artistic talent from me and not Sam.

I got the license plate picture from the Secretary of State's web site and added the names in Word.

What is a party without cupcakes? So, here they are - mini cupcakes using sour cream chocolate cake with vanilla butter cream and, of course, orange sugar:

More parties to come...