A 1st birthday party for a little farm boy

I still can not believe my baby boy just turned one year old. Time really does fly, everyone says it, but I still find it astonishing how true a statement it really is. It seems like yesterday we made our mad dash for the hospital. One of the few down sides to living in a truly rural community is the lack of health care options. With labor and delivery no longer available at our local hospital, area women must drive at least 45 minutes to the next closest facility. Having a background in medicine, I knew the average second labor last 8 - 12 hours. My poor father worried himself senseless that we wouldn't make it to the hospital in time. I reassured him over and over that wouldn't be a problem, women only had babies in less than two hours, "in the movies." Well, like everything in nature, nothing is predictable, especially babies.



Baby Jack and I



So, after making a 1.5 hour drive in about 50 minutes, my husband and I made it to the hospital with minutes to spare. Four minutes to be exact! Our sweet baby boy made his escape in grand style, throwing all the Saturday morning nurses into overdrive, right at shift change. His precipitous exit left no time for registration, IV's, pain medication or even a hospital gown. Out of all that ciaos came a chubby, beautiful 9 pound 1 ounce baby boy.

 Kudos to those women who choose to endure all  natural, epidural-free labor and delivery by choice! My daughter was born under much calmer circumstances. Aside from my water breaking at Wal-mart, which sounds like the set up for an awesome redneck joke, she came along after a peaceful, pleasant, epidural present labor. I had planned for the same birth with my son. I am in favor all things natural...except labor pains! Good ol' Mother Nature had a different birthing plan in mind. And looking back I am glad I did have that "all natural" birthing experience. His delivery gave me an even deeper appreciation for all of our farm animal mommies. Each year they bring new life into our farm and I love them for that.

Since baby Jack was the first boy born into our family in SEVENTY years it was a huge deal. My fathers only sister had one daughter, who now has three beautiful girls. I am my fathers only child, my husband and I welcomed our daughter Taylor (which is my maiden name) a mere 14 months before our sweet baby boy came along. Two babies under two...what was I thinking?!?



Barnyard theme party wares



When Jack's first birthday rolled around I had the perfect theme in mind...a barnyard theme of course! I found adorable plates and napkins online at www.birthdayexpress.com. The cups even had optional sippy lids, great idea for all the little ones. They offer birthday t-shirts, party favor gift boxes and lots of extras, it's a websight worth checking out. On a side note, the same company has Halloween costumes as well. Taylor and Jack were Little Bo Peep and a sheep. I ordered the Bo Peep from them and it was pricey, but excellent quality. I found the sheep costume in a thrift store for five bucks.

I love to design and decorate my own cakes and have been doing so since I was a kid. I am the official "cake maker" for our family and friends. Even though they are far from bakery quality artisanship, everyone seems to enjoy their one of a kind creation. For Jack's birthday a barn was in order along with some cupcake animals. I used box cake mix and my homemade icing, recipe below. This icing is super delicious and easy to make.



The barn cake



For the barn, I used a 14 inch square pan. The silo was a regular loaf pan, each pan took one box of cake mix. A note on box cake mixes, I replace the water with whole or 2% milk and it really makes a better cake. I turned the square cake out onto a large wooden cutting board that I used for the serving plate as well to avoid having to transfer the cake later on and risk it breaking. Another idea is to wrap a cutting board with thick wrapping paper to go with your party's theme and use that to serve your cake.  Once you have allowed them to cool, cut the top corners off of the square cake at a slight angel to create the slope of the roof of the barn. Place the loaf cake on the side of the barn and using a sharp knife, round the top edge to create the "silo" roof. It's okay if your cuts are crumbly, just dust away the crumbs, icing is a great cover up. Completely cover the barn and silo front and sides with red icing, except for the top of the silo and roof of the barn. Once I had a good thick layer of icing on, I used a cake icing spreading knife to pull continuous vertical lines down the front of the barn and silo to look like boards. The back of a spoon could be used to do the same thing. I then covered the roof of the barn with a can of store bought chocolate icing. The top of the silo was covered with white icing, as was the trim for the barn door and window. I used the grass tip to add green grass to the bottom of the barn. Green food coloring mixed with shaved coconut could be used to make grass also.

It is difficult to dye icing any dark color, hence the can of store bought chocolate for the roof. I recommend using the Wilton paste color as opposed to regular liquid food coloring, which is what I had to use because I was out of red paste, which is why my barn is more pink than red.

The piggy cupcakes where made using strawberry cake mix and frosted with pink dyed icing. I found large pink marshmallows at Walmart and used kitchen shears to snip them in half vertically and used one of the halves, cut side down, to create the snout. Two small dabs of icing create the nostrils. The other half of the marshmallow I cut in half again, at an angle, to create the ears. I used a can of pink Wilton cake spray to create the extra pink shade for the inside of the ear on the cut side of the marshmallow. Cake spray is like edible spray paint and super fun to use, I found it at a Micheal's craft store. The eyes are two large dabs of white icing placed just over top the nose. Push a chocolate chip, flat side up, into the icing to create the pupil. The large sized chips by Nestle look better than the normal size chocolate chips.

The sheep cupcakes where white cake mix and frosted with white icing. I used the same method for their noses and ears, only I used large white marshmallows instead of pink. I then added a touch of the pink cake spray to the ends of the noses and inside of ears. Spray the noses and ears before putting them on the white sheep. The eyes were done the same way as well. I used a Wilton large round decorating tip to create the tufts of wool on the sheep and to place the dabs of icing for the eyes. Mini marshmallows stuck onto the cover frosting would create a similar look. Check our www.wilton.com for lots of decorating and icing tips. If you don't have any cake decorating paraphernalia, a heavy duty zip lock bag with a tiny bit of one lower corner cut off can double as a decorating bag and tip.  



 Jack in his party hat with Mommy



Hey Mom...Whatcha making?

Butter cream icing...yummmmmy!

1 cup white Crisco baking stick, cubed

1 cup (2 sticks) butter at room temp, good butter, not the cheap stuff

2 tsp clear vanilla extract





2 lb bag of confectionery sugar, + more for desired texture

4 Tbsp milk

Cream butter, Crisco and vanilla. Slowly add WELL SIFTED sugar. I sift it 2 cups at a time onto a paper plate then fold the plate to make a funnel like shape to pour it into the bowl without spilling it everywhere. Icing will be dry. Slowly mix in milk. You can add more sugar or milk to get the consistency you need to make the icing hold its peaks for the sheep's wool and grass around the barn. I set aside a few cups to make thicker by adding more sugar for my decorating needs and leave the majority of the icing a bit smoother.  A thinner icing spreads much easier, like what you will be covering the barn and cupcake base coats with. It took about 5 cups of red to make the barn. Color more then enough red icing the first time to avoid trying to match the color later if you run out.  

Makes 6 cups of icing, I doubled this to make the barn cake and 20 cupcakes. This recipe is based on Wilton's butter cream recipe,  found at www.wilton.com.