Easy Minecraft Cake

Hi Foxy Friends! It's Thursday, my "Friday" and I'm so happy about it. I swear Tuesday was Thursday...this week has been DRAGGING! I thought today I would share with you how I made Baby Fox's Birthday cake. I was originally going to make him a rainbow birthday cake, but then realized I could just as easily turn it into a Minecraft cake so that's exactly what I did!

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It's fairly simple, you get a big bang for you buck and most people think you spent WAY more time on it than you really did! Win for you. Okay let's get started:

What You'll Need:

5-6 cake pans (I use these, will make a small tall cake, if using the ones I use, then you'll have to cook 5 and then cook the last one after the others cook, as it only comes with 5 pans)

Homemade Cake Recipe (the boxed is too soft, don't use it, you won't be able to make the layers)

Food Coloring (I use these)

Circle Cookie Cutters in various sizes (I use these)

Frosting (I use a homemade one from Wilton)

Directions:

Step 1 - Make batter according to recipe (I use the something similar to this cake recipe, ignore the filling and frosting part of the recipe)

Step 2 - Divide batter into bowls, use one bowl for each color you are going to use, I did 5 colors. I would have done 6 but we started making this cake at 10pm, no one's got time to wait for cake to cook twice, else I would have done 6)

Step 3 - Add food coloring. For the Minecraft part, I knew I wanted variations of green and brown. The brown was a little harder, so for the darker one, I added a LOT of the brown color, and for the other one I added a little bit of the brown color, and realized that it was too similar to the dark brown, so I added a little yellow to change the tone, worked perfectly.

For the greens, I did the dark one, then added less green for the middle green, and for the other green I used a neon green.

Step 4 - Prep your pan how you normally would and pour batter into pans.

Step 5 - Cook, you will need less cooking time than what the recipe calls for because they are so thing and small, I start with 15 minutes, and then go from there.

Colors turned out perfect, exactly what I wanted them to look like!

Completely cool cakes before going onto the next step.

Step 6 - While cakes are cooling, make your frosting (don't really matter what kind, just not the store bought, as I think that will be too soft)
 
Step 7 - I do this part on my counter, as I don't have a cutting board, don't worry the counter was clean before starting. Lay all of the cakes out, this is somewhat tricky but not really. You're going to take 2 of your round cookie cutters, and make three concentric circles.

Helpful Tip: If your cakes didn't bake evenly, before you cut the circles, make sure to level them out at this step, also cut the edges so all cake layers are the same size. I forgot to do this, and had to use a lot of frosting to make up for the unevenness of each layer, oops!

Step 8 - I usually line each of the same size circles up and then start mixing and matching before I do the frosting and putting them back together. This way you can be sure that each of the layers will have different colors in them.

Start with the largest circle, and apply frosting on the inside ring, place next size ring cake layer in it.

 Then frost the middle circle inner ring and put the smallest cake layer in. When you're done it should look like something like this:

When they're all done, you'll have this.

You can see the white circles above from where I was applying the frosting to the inner circle.

Step 9 - Now frost your cake like normal, putting frosting between each layer, and then frosting the whole thing. With these cakes, I like to buy the small ice cream cones from Trader Joes and use that as decorations. I forgot to take a picture of the finished product, oops! But here it is when it's been cut into, the perfect Minecraft cake of the little human in your life that is obsessed.

See easier than you think right? Making fun cakes doesn't have to be hard, time consuming yes, but not hard. You got this, if you do make it, tag me in the photo or leave a picture in the comments! Good luck, you can do this!

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Unicorn Birthday Party

Hello Foxy Friends! What? Two posts in a row? I know, who am I? This past weekend was Mini Fox's 5th birthday. I know! Where did the time go? I feel like just yesterday she was this small...

And now? How did that happen?

Anyway, birthday girl wanted a Unicorn birthday...since March...she kept talking about all the things she wanted, so we did it all! I love me a good theme. I usually do some sort of background on our wall where we typically serve food, but what do you do for a unicorn? I mean super heros is buildings and stuff, like I did here. I figured I would theme everything around flowers. I've always wanted to make paper flowers...so why not start learning right now?  This was the second one  I made, the first one was a complete disaster!

*Some of the links are affiliate links and I will  either receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you click on it or if you make a purchase from one of these links, I may also receive a commission on the sale of the product. Click here for my disclosure page.

I ended up making 5 of these, 3 big ones and 2 small ones...

The pink one fell off and I didn't retake the picture...oops.

Then I cricuted a horn, ears and cute eyes and I got this.

Then I bought these glitter banners, and added my own letters. You can't beat the price, I couldn't make that man triangles with glitter paper for that price.

I made a ton more flowers and added them to cover the tape that was holding up the banners. I like to use painters tape, which I know is blue, but it's fairly strong and can hold up your decorations without hurting the paint on your walls. So behind all of those flowers is a TON of blue tape.

I went to Party City and bought most of their unicorn decorations to decorate the tables and the ceiling.  For the food, I thought it would be fun to label, and I had bought the unicorns on a stick, so I put them in cyliner vases (bought at the Dollar Store), and then added some crinkle cut paper (also Dollar store), and added my own name on glitter paper, I stuck it to a bamboo skewer.

A friend made the cake, which turned out great. I bought these horn/ears/eyes from Amazon.

Mostly I decorated everything with the paper flowers. I did find some real flowers from Costco that were bright color daisys that worked so perfect for our theme, I had to buy them.

I printed some random unicorns to put on the window...behind. We had bought some bags for  the treat bag, and we ended up doing a pinata, so I put them out with a sticker sheet in each.

I think the pinata was a HUGE hit at the party! If you can get one, it makes doing the treat bag easier, as they just get the candy from the pinata, and the kids had a blast!

Let me tell you that thing was hard to break! Oh and a tip if you are doing a pinata at your birthday party...have extra candy on hand. We bought a bag from costco, and I also bought some suckers and ring pops to add in, plus some butterfly rings and bubbles, and it weighed way more than then recommended. I only put in 2/3 of the costco candy, but then after the pinat broke we dumped the rest of the candy from the Costco bag on the ground too, it was the perfect amount of candy. I think any less and some kids wouldn't have gotten much. So if you are doing a pinata, have extra candy to dump out. Obviously depending on how many kids, we had about 16 kids. And used probably 7.5 (ish) pounds of stuff.

Note: At Party City, it suggested we use 4 lbs of candy for our Pinata, I think ours weighed more like 5.5-6 pounds and was fine.

The last thing we had at the party was a balloon drop. You guys if you have never done one, you HAVE to do it. The kids love it and it's so cheap to do too!

Cheap thrill I'm telling ya.

So that is everything that I did for our Unicorn Party! Pretty simple decorations, nothing over the top, because this mama spent all of her time learning how to make flowers...all of which I made in 5 days...oops, I might have procrastinated a bit!

 

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Red, White and Blue Candy Bar

Hi Foxy Friends! Last week for 4th of July I was tasked with bringing a Red, White and Blue candy bar. I took my job from my cousin seriously. I bought all the candy, but wanted a cute way to display it...I decided to head to the Dollar Store to see what I could find. I knew that I wanted some sort of cups that I could make into a flag shape, with the Red, White and Blue candy in them. So here's what you'll need:

*Some of the links are affiliate links and I will  either receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you click on it or if you make a purchase from one of these links, I may also receive a commission on the sale of the product. Click here for my disclosure page.

What  You'll Need:

Red Candy -

Swedish Fish
Red Vines 
Kit Kat (Picked out the red and white striped ones) 

other red candy that we did not use (too spicy for kids)
Cinnamon Bears
Hot Tamales

White Candy -

Hershey's Crunchers (this was a favorite, and I really only bought them because it was white)
Circus Animal Crackers (yep picked out all of the white ones)
White Fudge Pretzels
White Kit Kat
Yogurt Covered Raisins

Blue Candy -

Hershey Kisses
Nestle Crunch Bars
Kit Kat (Picked out the blue ones) and used the red and white striped ones for the Red

All three colors -

Patriotic M&M's  (didn't have time to find these, but wanted to get them)
Red White and Blue Snickers  (I separated the colors)

Containers (I found them at the Dollar Store) - I did use taller containers for the red vines, and put those towards the back, all the stripes were shorter circluar containers, and the stars were used because they ran out of the containers I wanted, but I think it worked out well.

Optional: A cheaper option would be to buy red plastic cups, blue plastic cups and white plastic cups from dollar store (so $3 for all of them)

Directions:

Step 1 - Wash all of the containers.

Step 2 - Arrange jars in flag shape

Step 3 - Separate candy and use red and white candy for the stripes, with Blue candy used as the "Stars"

I loved how it turned out, even if the little kids were too short to realize that it was in the shape of a flag. We all know they just want the candy. Enjoy making your Red White and Blue Candy Bar!

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3 Tips How To Throw A Surprise Party

Hi Foxy Friends! Over the weekend we actually pulled it off and threw a surprise party for my aunt who was turning who was turning 60! I can't believe we did it, seriously, she has her house on serious lock down! Has the Ring doorbell and everything, so there was no way she was leaving the house for any amount of time for us to get the house ready. So without anyone to host the party nearby...we did the next best thing...snuck in and decorated her whole house WHILE she was getting ready. That's right folks, we snuck into her house while she was getting ready to go out (what she thought was to a neighbors house for dinner) and we decorated.

So we did have one advantage, the way her house is laid out, her house is in the back bedroom in the way back of the house, and she usually keeps the TV on really loud so she can listen to the news while she is getting ready. So we had that going for us. As soon as she went back to take a shower my uncle texted us and we were there within seconds, unloading our car. The main decoration was all of these flowers. Since we knew we only had about 30 minutes to get everything set up.

So all that being said here are some tips on how to throw a surprise party.

| TIP 1 |

Don't stress too much about the surprise part. It's nice if it happens the way everyone envisions, with the guest of honor walking in on a dozen family and friends yelling surprise! But you know what? Even if there is just the people setting up yelling surprise it's still a surprise to the person coming.

Like I said, my aunt has her house on lock down, so we snuck in and decorated while she was getting ready. We got all of the flowers out, and the food even came 30 minutes early, and we had all the food out too, so it was even more of a surprise to have a huge buffet full of food set up.

I ended up making a pallet sign for her, and decided Saturday morning to have everyone sign the back. It ended up super cute.

| TIP 2 |

If your guest of honor is home when you are there, less is more. We went big with the flowers, but if you have more time, these 5 steps on how to throw the best party are helpful. I would have loved to go big with a ton of decorations but I knew our limitations and was aware of it.

| TIP 3 |

Enjoy the process, go with the flow, in the end you're doing something super nice for the person you love and no matter if they find out, like my sister did when I tried to throw her a 40th surprise party and she was going to back out of going to the "dinner" I had planned, and ended up telling her. It was still a surprise at the moment and she was thankful in the end I made her go.

Now go out and plan the perfect surprise party! It will be worth it!

 

Linking up with Ashley & Erika for...

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Under The Sea Backdrop

Happy Thursday, today is my last day of work this week, woo hoo! Seems like this week lasted forever, anyone else? I'm going to go ahead and blame an Easter hangover. I decided today is the day that I am finally getting around to tell you how I made Mini Fox's Ariel under the sea background from her birthday party last September.  

*Some of the links are affiliate links and I will  either receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you click on it or if you make a purchase from one of these links, I may also receive a commission on the sale of the product. By purchasing through Foxy's Domestic Side, you're helping me to continue creating fun things for this space.

 

I had bought this bulletin board paper for a super hero backdrop a few years ago, crazy that was a few years ago. I pretty much have been using that paper for all of my backdrops the last couple of years, check the different ones out here and here. I realized that the back side of the paper was white, so I knew I could use that for my under the sea back drop. I always start with a plastic tablecloth. Do not get the 99 Cent or Dollar Tree ones, I tried that and they pretty much ripped the first time I tried to lay them down. Spring for the Party City ones, they are thicker and are easier to work with. Okay let's get started.

What You'll Need:

Plastic Table Cloth from Party City, color of your choice (I started with the 99 cent store one and they are too thin)

Bulletin Board Paper 

Spray Paint (I used Pink, Purple, and Dark Green)

Fish/Sea Horse (You can cut these out freehand or use a Cricut Explore or Silhouette Portrait)

Birthday Banner
Things to Decorate the Banner with (I used my Cricut for this and also bought some from Party City, like this and then I took the pictures off the end of the streamer)
Spray Adhesive

Can you tell Party City is my friend. I also buy a lot of things from Oriental Trading company, if they have free shipping, they are the same price as Party City, so if I can save myself a trip, I use them.

Directions:

Step 1: 

I decided that I wanted Pink and Purple coral and some green seaweed on my background. I layed out the Bulletin Paper, white side up, on the garage floor. I did two of these, one for the purple and pink and one for the green. I didn't know how much seaweed I would need and how many mistakes I was going to make so I wanted to have more than enough.

For this part there is no right and wrong. I used 1/3 of the paper for green, 1/3 for pink and 1/3 for purple. I knew I wanted it to not be solid but spec-illy, hence the spray paint, it seemed like it would be more authentic. I randomly started spraying away, trying to not make it uniform, but thicker with spray paint in some parts but not others.

The marbling that you see, is me just spraying parts of the paper more than others. There really is no right or wrong to do this.

I knew I only wanted a few corals so I was only going to do at most 2 of each color.

Let dry, this took about 15 minutes.

Step 2:

Here is where your inner OCD cannot come out. You just have to cut (because I knew I spray painted way more then I need I had some liberty to make mistakes to see what worked. I probably cut about 20 or so seaweeds but only used 13. I randomly cut out the seaweed in tall strips, making sure that they weren't the same height, because we all know seaweed is not uniform. I knew I wanted some with leaves and some without, so the ones without leaves I made a little thicker and the ones with leaves a little bit thinner. I also cut out leaves, just randomly, no stencil, just cut leaf-ish shapes. In the end you are your own worst critic and most people won't know if the leaves aren't uniform.

Of course I thought I had taken more pictures, but for the life of me can't find them...anywhere. So annoying. So you're going to have to imagine it. I looked up some cartoon seaweed and coral reef on the internet and tried to copy that.

I did cut some and put them down on the blue background to see if I needed to go taller or shorter on the next seaweeds.

Step 3:

I did try to use a glue stick, then wet glue (like Elmer's) but those didn't work, that's how I ended up with the spray adhesive, because everyone has that laying around right? I did spray outside on the grass, one because the smell is pretty strong and because the strips were so thin I didn't want spray adhesive all over my floors.

Note: Use some gloves if you don't want to be picking off glue from your fingers. I made that mistake and it took forever to clean up the glue off my hands, then when I went back to finish I used some of my gloves I have for handling food to finish (I buy mine from Costco), it was a little trickier because the paper would want to stick to the gloves, but it worked out better to have a little more trouble placing them then to have to clean off glue from my hands.

Step 4:

Finish off by putting the fish/sea horses or any other finishing decorations you want. Then hang on the wall. I almost always use blue painters tape. It does take several layers, but I know that it will stay and it won't ruin the wall paint when I take down the backdrop.

That's it, pretty easy,  between using the cricut to cut out the shapes and the banner, it took me about 3.5 hours to complete. 2 hours to complete the cutouts (including the birthday banner and all of the fish/sea horses and sand dollars and star fish) and another 1.5 to complete the spray painting/cutting/gluing.

If you want to see more of the party details, click here.

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