Skip to main content

Toby's Third Birthday

We've moved house!  Just in case you were wondering why I hadn't blogged for over a month.  I can assure you that nothing hugely exciting has happened in the intervening period; we have mostly been putting things into boxes and taking them out again, and wandering vaguely round the new house trying to work out where to put it all.  The new place is substantially bigger than the rented house we were squashed into for 9 months, though, so we are appreciating the space.  Now it's at least halfway towards being a home, and a certain small person has a big birthday tomorrow (do you realise how many toys are marked "Unsuitable for children under 36 months"?  It's like the legal drinking age for toddlers!) we had to... make a cake and throw a party!

When we asked Toby what he wanted for his birthday, his one stipulation was "a birthday chocolate cake".  Further enquiry confirmed that it had to have Smarties on it.  When your mum used to be a professional cake decorator, I'm afraid it gets a little more elaborate than that.


I based it on this Hickory Dickory Dock cake from a book called 50 Children's Party Cakes, because Toby is always asking what the time is.


The design is pretty simple, just a round cake and a square cake.  Cut the two bottom corners off of the square (mmm, offcuts!) and a semi-circle from the top so that it fits snugly onto the round cake.  I substituted chocolate buttercream for the brown fondant, because it just tastes better, and surrounded the clock face and pendulum window with plenty of Smarties.  And of course, it had to say 3 o'clock.

With the food before the party
Opening a birthday card (it sings!)

Opening presents (with assistance)

We made the party a combined housewarming and birthday party, and used it as an excuse to get to know our new neighbours a little better, as well as (mostly) Derby friends and some family.  It turned into a surprisingly large number of people considering we haven't even been here a year yet!  We were really overwhelmed by how many friends came, and brought such generous presents.  Toby very quickly learned that the doorbell ringing meant something else to unwrap, and went running to greet each new arrival!  He's old enough now to get excited about the whole thing, and had a great time.  He loved having lots of people around; enthusiastically sang Happy Birthday to himself along with everyone else; blew out the candles very professionally; and was finally rewarded with a piece of birthday chocolate cake.

Incompetent lighting of matches (it took me three goes to get one to strike!)
Blowing out the candles
I did it!
It tastes as good as it looks!
P.S. The sharp-eyed among you will have noticed the complimentary bump photo in the above selection.  For those that don't know, we are expecting a little brother for Toby in February!
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Mr White Watson of Bakewell

Once upon a time, back in 1795 or so, lived a man who was always asking questions.  The kind of questions like, "Why is glass transparent?" or "Why do fruit trees grow better in that place than in this place?" or "What does the earth look like underneath the surface?"  This last question was one that he was particularly interested in, and he went so far as to work out what the rock layers looked like where he lived, and draw little pictures of them.  Now he was a marble sculptor by trade (as well as fossil hunter, mineral seller, and a few other things) so he thought it would be even better to make his little pictures in stone.  That way he could represent the layers using the actual rocks they were composed of.  Over the course of his lifetime he made almost 100 of these tablets, as he called them. Then he died.  And no one else was quite as interested in all those rocks and minerals as he was.  His collection was sold off, bit by bit, and the table...
Post a Comment
Read more

Growing things

For those of you who are interested in my attempts at balcony gardening, I thought I'd update you a little. For those who aren't, don't skip this post. You may find something else of interest. Apart from the ever-present herbs, tomatoes and cayenne peppers are on the go this year. The peppers are really on the go - we went away for a week and came back to find them twice the size as when we left. Now they're producing fruit which is growing at a similarly rapid rate, though none has ripened to red yet. I realised I should have given you some kind of scale, so I just went out and measured. They're about 22 cm long, or 8 1/2 inches for you non-metric types. I may have to find out how to dry peppers if they all ripen at once. A couple of tomato plants are looking pretty healthy and beginning to flower. A few died; one, apparently, by being eaten whole by a bird, a trouble I've never had before. I had two seedlings left so used those as replacements, b...
2 comments
Read more

Cathedrals and Minsters

Cathedrals have always been in the business of getting people to visit them. Back in the Middle Ages, saints' relics were a big draw, as was having the very latest in pointy Gothic architecture. These days, they host concerts, invite you to experience the sun or moon , and have cafes in the cloisters. moon at Lichfield Cathedral One of the latest wheezes from the Association of English Cathedrals is the Pilgrim Passport . This neat blue booklet enables you to collect stamps from each cathedral you visit. Sucked in by the idea of pilgrimage and the prospect of yet another tick-list to complete, I purchased a passport and set out. My first job was to review the list. There are 42 English cathedrals, not including Westminster Abbey (which is a Royal Peculiar) and Peel Cathedral on the Isle of Man. Wales has six, and Scotland technically has none, as its church has no bishops.  For some reason I was also interested in minsters, which is a more nebulous category. Originally the word mea...
Post a Comment
Read more