Fun Bday party :)

  Kaya bounced around from one idea to another on her cake and party design. We always make her cake (excluding her very first), come up with a neat party and we always let her select the theme. After all it is her special day. First she went with LalaLoopsy. I was excited..super easy and lots of ideas. Then it went to Mario Brothers. Ok...little harder but doable. Then Tom and Jerry...near impossible to find and do. Then Princess...which she changed herself due to she had a cousin just have a Princess party. Then she settled on Minions from Despicable Me but wanted to do a beach scene.
   The idea came together great and with the 3 of us...Steve, me and Kaya...pitching in we had a great party.
  Kaya and I mixed up and baked one funfetti white cake. After it cooled I put it on a cake sheet (To be honest I used a cereal box that was headed for the recycling bin and put several layers of aluminum foil onto it to stiffen it up...worked like a charm!). I iced it in a crumb coating with white then iced it all over with  vanilla icing. For the sand I used brown sugar and made my "beach". For the water I used blue icing then topped it with zig zag lines of sparkly blue icing. Simply took a small spoon, used the back of the spoon and worked the "waves" into the water. Toy Minions from the Surprise Bags were used for toppers. Along with gummy sharks in the water, gummy sea turtles venturing all over the cake, a life saver candy for the water toy and umbrellas meant for drinks became sun umbrellas :)
   To round out the party we made and decorated 57 cupcakes (chocolate and yellow cake) with half of them done in blue icing to look like the ocean and topped with gummy turtles or sharks. The other half we did in white icing, sprinkled brown sugar on to make sand and then made candy crabs for the tops. I LOVED the crab idea Steve found online and it came out great.
   

We used candy orange slices turned with the bend down (so it formed sort of a U shape). Then we cut 4 toothpicks in half. On two toothpicks we put orange Dots (a gummy candy) then used icing to stick candy eyes onto the dots. These made the eyes of the crab. For the pinchers we cut peach gummies in half, trimmed them down and stuck them to toothpicks..one on each side..and pushed them into the orange slices. The kids loved them.
 We also did jello cups of "Sea water" with white surf and Minions playing in the water :)
 

Simply make blue Jello, put a decent amount into a clear cup. After it sets up and right before the party add a bit of Reddi Whip or cool whip to the top of the jello. Then we stuck in a Minion honey gram. Instant Minion fun. We also decided to make a plate of Twinkie Minions simply because..they are cute lol We used a Twinkie, glued a candy eye or eyes on with icing, traced around the eye(s) in black icing and did a tiny mouth smiling. We even used purple spray icing for the wild Purple Minion :)

How the party table looked
 We even did a small fondue pot of yellow chocolate that the kids could dip marshmallows into to make mini minions. We cut up sweet bread too for dipping.
 The party was awesome but most important wasn't Kaya's cake and table, gifts or anything like that..it was hearing her say "Of course I'm excited for gifts I'm a kid. But I'm excited for my family to come!!"
  She was doubly excited when her gift came a couple days later from her Uncle in Cali. It really made her day to know he sent a gift "from waaaayyy out there...all the waaaayyy herre!" :)