Avery's 1st Birthday - Final Update!

 

I've missed posting so much over the last couple weeks!  Unfortunately, the work that has kept me away isn't done so it's likely my posts will continue to be sporadic for the next while.  However, while I had a little time tonight I thought I'd show you how things turned out.  I don't have many pictures and the ones I do have aren't great quality - but they'll do :)

Boys' Favours

I was excited to find more metal buckets (like the ones I used for Easter) and thought they'd be great for the boys.  Originally, I was going to spray paint them a taupe colour and add their initials, but as I was standing in Home Depot looking at all the options I saw chalkboard paint and had an 'aha' moment.  A friend of mine had some extra so I borrowed it from her.

Last week when my sister was here she helped me with a lot of little projects after the kids went to bed.  One of them was painting the buckets.  To prepare them - I washed them with warm soapy water then I scuffed them with some sand paper.  After that I found some leftover primer and gave that to my sister with a small foam brush.  She diligently painted on one thin coat of primer and then followed with four thin coats of the chalkboard paint. 

After they dried I still wasn't 100% happy with the finish.  I should have known it was inevitable that with a brush it would be too streaky for me.  So bought a can of chalkboard spray paint and did a coat on each bucket to even out the surface.  Perfect! 

The afternoon before the party, I added a chalk initial to the front of each bucket.  Then I filled them with a box of coloured chalk to use on the buckets themselves, sidewalk chalk (for the older boys) to use outside, a book and either a small stuffed frog (for the babies) or a bug box (for the older boys, the kind you put bugs in to look at)  with some wiggly rubber bugs inside.  I figured the bug idea would be a satisfactory substitution for flowers & butterflies but somewhat in the same vein ;)

The Cake

I think it's fair to say that my vision for the design exceeded my skill set.  Again.  A little frustrating but what can I do.  I should know better!  In any case, it was fine.  Just not quite what I wanted, but I learned a lot with this one if I'm looking for a silver lining!

You'll notice that my final version has elements from the original cake design I posted but also my own mixed in.   I used the frilling technique for the larger flowers to create a more realistic effect.  I also tried out my brutal piping skills to create the white butterflies.  I used metal cutters to cut the polka dots, butterflies & flowers.  And even though you can't tell from the pictures, the flowers and butterflies (on the lower part of the cake) were dusted with platinum luster dust to give them a shimmer.



Side/Front view of the cake

For the inside of the cake I made an 8" chocolate cake with orange chocolate buttercream, an 8" carrot cake with cream cheese icing, and a 6" white chocolate cake with a raspberry white chocolate buttercream.  I don't know which one I like best - they were equally moist and delicious!  And the nice thing about making more cake than you'll need is having leftovers for ages.  Yum.



Back view of the cake

Hope it was worth the wait!!!!  I loved every minute of it.

- Jacs