Simplest Kids’ Homemade Birthday Cake Ever

My kids’ birthdays are six days apart. (My husband’s is seven days after.) So we have three weeks straight of cake eating, I mean birthday celebrating in our home. It can be nice to pack it all in (the celebrating, not the cake) but it’s a bit overwhelming, too.

My daughter’s first birthday party was at a park, and we forgot most of the essentials, like forks and plates, but there were custom pink cakes for the win. For my daughter’s second birthday and my son’s first, I really outdid myself with the kids’ homemade birthday cakes, stretching myself to the limits of sanity. I don’t recommend this:

It was a safari theme. Can you tell? After that I calmly accepted that I didn’t have it in me to create two gorgeous cakes and plan a huge joint party for them. Instead, I made two of the smallest, simplest kids’ homemade cakes ever. And I was so proud of it, lol!

So here’s how you can do it, too! Resourceful parents, unite!

You can use any kind of boxed cake mix from the store or any recipe you know and love. If you’re looking for a healthy cake (yes, you heard that right😉) then I highly recommend this Paleo Vanilla Cake recipe from HonestlyNourished.com. This is my go-to recipe when I want the cake without the unhealthy ingredients. It is more time-consuming than a box mix but it’s worth it!

I’ve also tried Bob’s Red Mill Gluten-Free Chocolate Cake Mix and that is excellent, too. We are not an exclusively gluten-free family but we often try to walk that side of the line as my husband has Crohn’s disease and my daughter has Autism. Two totally separate reasons to avoid Gluten and Dairy, so we do what we can without going crazy.

So here’s the big DIY trick… chances are your house is filled with your kids’ favorite toy figures. Use them! Why spend $25 on a custom cake with cheap figures from the grocery store when you’ve already spent money on expensive toy figures? Or if you’re planning on getting them the toy figures for their birthday, like we were, it’s just part of the surprise!

Think princesses, safari animals, trains, cars, planes, boats, and Disney characters. You could even make a cake with Lego figures on it for your lego-lovin’ kid! But if you have to build the legos yourself that completely defeats the purpose of “easiest DIY cake.” Ooh, and the DisneyStore.com frequently runs sales on their figure sets, including the two sets that I used on my kids’ cakes! Check ALL of the sets out here.

On with the DIYing!

I used:

6″ Cake Pan

Vanilla Paleo Cake

Buttercream Icing from the Bakery

Toy Figures

Piping bag and #1 head

Tip: To make things super-simple for myself I bought buttercream icing from the bakery at our local grocery store. I believe most grocery stores have this option even if you don’t see them advertise it. Just ask someone in the bakery. It can be a bit more expensive than the preservative filled, yucky icing in a can, but it’s worth it. If you’ve got the time (and the will!) you can make buttercream icing from scratch.

I made two small cakes because even though my kids’ birthdays are 6 days apart and we celebrate them jointly, I am a mom that feels like both kids need an individual cake even if they’re sharing the party. Besides, we didn’t actually have a party this year. We had a small get together with friends and the two cakes fed four adults and five kids nicely.

Then I separated the icing into two bowls and used food gel dye to color them. I used blue and yellow. Two colors – keepin’ it simple – like the title of the blog.

My daughter loves Disney princesses, just like her mom, 😊 and her favorite princess is Snow White. Find the Princess set here. I used the blue icing for the base and yellow icing for her name and accents. Again I kept it simple! I’m not a cake decorator! The icing is far from perfect, and that’s okay with my kids. They were way more excited to see their favorite characters!

My son loves just about everything. I could’ve put any character on his cake and he’d be happy. But he just happened to get new Lion Guard figures for his birthday, so that’s what went on his cake! I used, you guessed it, yellow for the base and blue for his name and accents. S-I-M-P-L-E.

Voila! Pinterest-worthy, (if not for my terrible photography) personalized birthday cakes. You can see that my icing technique degraded from the first cakes 1/2 years old to 2/3 to 4/5. (And in case you’re wondering where their 3/4 cakes are, I confess, I ordered those from Publix, because it was a big moving away party and I literally didn’t have time to bake! We moved across the country two days later.)

Have you done anything like this before? What ideas do you have for simplifying birthdays?

Share your DIY cakes with me on Instagram! Tag @sense_and_stephanie and use the hashtag #senseandstephanie so I can see your creations!!!

As always, thanks for reading! ❤️

Stephanie

Do more. Oh My Goodness, I’m Turning Thirty!

Did you check out that awesome Ariel birthday cake from my sixth birthday? I so wish I could still have Disney Princess cakes! I digress.

I’m going to be forty!!! In ten years, that is. As I approach my 30th birthday tomorrow, Meg Ryan’s voice from When Harry Met Sally keeps ringing in my ears. I’ve always approached birthdays with excitement and I’ve celebrated that I’ve been blessed with another year of life. But when June hit this year (out of nowhere I might add, I had no idea it was coming up so soon) I was surprised to find that I did not feel ready to celebrate turning thirty. All of a sudden I realized that three decades of my life were over, and I’ll never get that time back. I’ve been looking back over the last thirty years in my mind and trying to figure out what I’d change and what I want the next thirty years to look like.

So I’m making my lists of things to do better or more of or less of or for the first time. I’m also taking stock of just how far I’ve come as a human being.

Evelyn

Liam

Mom Skills

I’m pretty proud of my mom skills most days but parenting better will always be on the list. My children are growing up waaaaaay too fast. They’re not babies anymore. I promise in the next ten years I will finish their baby books. I just want them (the books) to be perfect, but the time really does go by so quickly and I know that pretty soon I may not remember everything as clearly as I’d like. That’s a scary thought in itself.

Read more to Evelyn.
Do more puzzles with Liam.
Give them more grace and patience.
Give myself more grace.
Introduce them to more vegetables.
Be more active with them.
Cuddle with them more.
Help them to be independent, strong, confident, and full of faith.
And on and on it goes…

Health

For years I thought it was “my battle,” but in the last two years, I have had a “healthy-living” enlightenment. I’m fighting for health instead of against myself and my personal demons.

Learn more about good nutrition every day.
Be a nutrition and fitness lover, and be okay with that being a part of my identity. I am not the overweight girl I used to be.
Exercise regularly. For a purpose. Not because I have to, but because I get to.
Stop reaching for a number on the scale. Reach for taking more pictures with my family without being self-conscious.

Self Worth

Value Myself. When I was about 11 years old, there was this very pretty girl, (you know the one,) she was popular and perfect in my eyes (most other girls were, I was the only weird one) and one day at recess I literally went up to her and asked her, “Are you my friend?” Can you believe it! She said yes, and I just didn’t believe her. Somewhere deep within me, I was sure she was lying to spare my poor, fat girl feelings. Maybe she was. Maybe she wasn’t. I’ll never know. But I was so embarrassed by myself that I don’t think I ever spoke to her again. I just could not believe that someone like her could ever be friends with me.

I was a very insecure girl. Over the years as I made new friends my confidence grew, but the insecurities never truly disappeared. Participating in choir and theater in high school gave me a creative outlet and an escape from family troubles.

That little girl is inside me still, full of doubt and insecurity. There is still a piece of me that wants to ask people, “Are you my friend? Do you really like me?”

Find value in my own self-worth.
Learn to appreciate myself and the gifts I have to offer. And offer them.
Be confident despite fear of failure. Or the fear that people won’t like me.
Speak my truths and censor myself less.
Advocate for things that matter to me.
Invest in my relationship with the Lord more. Focus on my faith.
Value my worth as a mother and a wife.

Do More

The sky is the limit. I hope that in the next thirty years I will do more. Go more. See more. Appreciate more. Prioritize better. Follow through. Set goals, achieve goals, repeat. Volunteer more. Help more. Learn more. Forgive more. Love more. Be more open and honest. Share more. Give more. Listen more. Be a better mom. Be a better wife. Focus on my husband, appreciate and value him as my best friend, partner, and other-half, always. Be a better daughter, sister, and friend to others.

Let’s get this party started, Thirty, because before I know it, I’m going to be forty!

P.S. We are half way to Christmas. Woot woot!

Happy 3rd Birthday, Princess

Last week, I wrote about my Charming Stunt Man turning two years old. Today I get to write about my Princess turning three years old tomorrow!

I wish there was a nicer term than bookworm for book lovers. My daughter especially. My little two… er, make that… three (choking back tears) year old loves to read books. Constantly. She wants to read from the moment she wakes up until the moment she goes to bed. Occasionally she will take a break to watch Frozen or Snow White or Dumbo (her favorites) but she’d honestly prefer to read the stories. And the best place to read them is in my lap. Or your lap. Anyone’s lap will do really. But it’s always best to share the book.

Did I mention she loves Snow White? She dressed up as Snow White for Halloween and absolutely loves her dress and wears it as often as she can. She even requested to wear it to church a few weeks ago.

Don’t worry, she loves all the other Princesses, too! I always joke that she looks like Merida, reads like Belle, sings like Aurora, loves purple like Rapunzel, is as sweet as Snow White and as kind as Cinderella.

She has come so far in her three little years. I’m amazed every day at how strong and capable she is becoming. I had many fears in her first two years about her health. Now those days seem like a distant memory–which is difficult in itself, where is the time going!?

She has been in Physical Therapy, Speech Therapy, and Occupational Therapy for nearly two years and today was her last visit to all three. It was bittersweet. We were so blessed to have the Early Steps program which helped cover the cost of her therapies. Without it, Evelyn wouldn’t have had the help she needed for the last two years. I’m so grateful for all of the therapists that helped her grow, learn, and thrive. In all honesty, they helped me, too. They gave me guidance and reassurance that my little girl was going to be okay and I’m so thankful for them. Now we will venture into new experiences and will be looking into preschool for Evelyn in the fall.

She is a reluctant big sister. I would love to be able to say that she adores her little bro the way he adores her but I wouldn’t be telling the truth. It’s easy to see that she loves her little brother, but most of the time she really wants him to settle down and just let her read her books in peace. Some of their most precious moments together are reading books or when they’re side by side in a shopping cart and are forced to spend time together in close proximity. I hope that the closeness in their ages will help them to grow closer over the years. She certainly takes charge and acts her part as the oldest sibling, always telling him when he needs to go to time out or say he’s sorry.

She still loves to sing. She knows all of the Disney Princess songs as well as many songs from the radio. She does an awesome rendition of the alphabet song, too.

She’s talking up quite a storm these days. We are actually starting to have conversations! Of course they usually go something like:

Evelyn: “Mommy, can I read in my room?”

Mommy: “How about we read in the living room with Liam?” (Otherwise Liam will tear your room apart.)

Evelyn: “Mommy read me Wishes & Dreams” (her favorite Princess Look n’ Find book)”

We read the book and two minutes later….

Evelyn: “I sit on Mommy’s lap and read Wishes & Dreams again?”

I wish I could write all night about my little girl. But I suppose I should go to sleep so that I can spend all day tomorrow in awe of her third birthday. Once again, I ask, can this next year go a little slower, please? Here’s to another year of more music and books with my darling Evelyn Rose.

Happy 3rd Birthday, my sweet Princess!

My Charming Stunt Man

My sweet ‘Charming.’ Next week he turns two years old. I can’t fathom how quickly my children are growing up.

Liam really is charming. He’s sensitive and sweet. Every night when I tuck him in his crib he blows me a kiss. Sometimes several. He melts my heart. When we watch Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, he cries and runs to me for comfort when he thinks the Huntsman is going to hurt Snow White and is visibly relieved when she gets help from the forest animals. He makes an awesome cup of pretend tea and always sets out the saucers and tea cups by color. He makes sure the teddy bears get to try the imaginary tea, too. Very considerate.

When I put him in time out (yes, that does happen) he immediately says, “I’m sorry!” and throws open his arms for a hug. He worships his big sister. He does everything she does, the good and the bad (“We do not throw cups…”)

He loves to help me with laundry and dishes, and wants desperately to vacuum on his own.

He likes order and routine. If Barkley tries to sit on the couch instead of in his recliner Liam will grab his hand and attempt to pull him off the couch. Then he’ll point to the recliner as if to say, “That is your chair. You sit there. Always.”

He is a ‘Stunt Man.’ That’s his other nickname. He climbs ladders on playgrounds and somersaults off the couch!

He has the best giggle, especially when being tickled. He loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse (the tv show.) He has a Mickey Mouse that he sleeps with every night and absolutely adores. He loves to snuggle under lots of blankets. And sometimes he sleeps with his bottom in the air… Cutest thing ever.

My little cuddle bug that entered this world screaming like a peacock (not a joke, literally a peacock) two years ago is growing up. And I am so proud of the young boy he his becoming. I hope he never loses his sensitivity and charm or his happy giggles and cuddly warmth. I’m looking forward to watching him grow and change over the next year, all I ask is, can it go a little slower?