Panda Party

Something that I really love to do is plan parties, especially kids birthday parties.  When you are a kid your birthday is a BIG deal.  I think my parents always tried to make mine fun and I want to do the same for my kids.  I will soon be blogging about Marlowe's past birthday parties, but for now here is a panda party I got to help with for our sweet cousin Elin.  She turned 13 and she really likes pandas, mustaches, and Adventure Time (which is a cartoon that all the kids are into.)  Her mom and I decided on a purple panda theme since that is her favorite color.  I was inspired by this panda cake, but I decided to make mine with coconut since Elin likes it. 

Inspiration:

My cake:

I was really happy with how it turned out.  I just drew a panda face on the white icing with a tooth pick, then I covered it with black gel frosting.  The ears are thin mint cookies I covered with gel.  Then I just carefully sprinkled coconut over it.  I think it turned out really cute.

One taken with my phone:

We wanted to make cake pops but someone had totally bought out all the white cake melts from Michaels.  These these mini cupcakes by Bakerella are adorable.  Mine did not turn out as good as hers, but I'm not a professional.  I think her sanding sugar was finer, mine was more coarse.  I have to get my own mini cupcake pan asap!  They are too cute!

Inspiration:

How mine turned out:  

Still pretty cute.  I think she uses flat sprinkles for the eyes, I just used left over gel icing.  Did you know chocolate chips are not all the same size?  I bought some sugar eyes to see if they would work but on the mini cupcakes they were too big.  It made the pandas look spooked.  I made some spooked ones because it was too funny, and I think Elin liked them the best.

Oriental trading has these panda lanterns, but we didn't really have time to order anything so I made my own.  Plus I was not happy with their customer service the last time I ordered something from them.  grrrr.

The ones I made:

I used Martha Stewart's party lanterns which are $15 for six at Michaels, but we used a 40% off coupon.  I liked the Martha Stewart lanterns for this project for three reasons, they fold so that it makes it easy to put the ears on, they are a good size so they make a big statement, and there are six of them so  if you have a larger area to decorate you have more to work with.  Traditional lanterns may be cheaper, but if you use a coupon I don't think you could get six for that price.  I used black card stock and cut out panda ears and faces and then glued them on.   I used a little white paint for the eyes.  If you used the more traditional lanterns you could just draw the faces on with a sharpie and use card stock for the ears.  Elin loved them and is using them in her room for decoration.

I had a blast working on these projects and I was so happy to help.  This is the first year I have been around on her birthday.
Here is the birthday girl with the mustache lollipops my husband made.  They had the mold at Michaels and we just used cake melts.  Super easy and the kids loved them!

Almost forgot!  Here is a drawing my super talented husband did for Elin.

It was a great time!