Turning 3

On Tuesday it was Alex's 3rd birthday (where on earth did that time go)! He goes to preschool on Tuesday mornings which was a bit gutting but at the same time quite nice too, they sang to him and another girl at the end with a cake and he came out so happy and excited. We purposely didn't give him his presents before preschool as I don't think we would have got him there otherwise! I had a midwife appointment and blood test in the morning and the weather was pretty awful so we wouldn't have been able to get up to much had he not been at preschool anyway.

This year Alex has really got into Toy Story, probably helped along a bit with our trip to Disney Land earlier in the year-especially coming back with a big Buzz and Woody!

I had asked him quite a few times what he would like for his Birthday cake, but I never really got much of an answer so just sort of went with a Toy Story theme for it. James bought Alex the RC racer car and Rex anyway for birthday presents (obviously the car was for Alex and not him to play with...so he tells me anyway but who played it first ;)!

As always I had a good look on Google and Pinterest for ideas and only pinned a few as most were amazing and well out of my budget/skill level/time & effort needed, but here are a few: cakes and party ideas.

I made two Victoria sponges (each a 3 egg recipe) sandwiched them together with vanilla butter icing and then used the same icing to cover the whole cake but added blue food colouring to it. 

I then spent about an hour trying to make the royal icing the right colours for the top of the cake-especially trying to make the red and blue dark enough!  Eventually I got to a place where I was happy enough to stop/was getting fed up and tired. I copied the style of the Toy Story writing on the front on the DVD case but changed the words to 'Alex is 3', and placed these on top without stressing out/throwing things when it went wrong.* I had borrowed some Toy Story figures that James' Mum has used many times for decorating the boy's cakes and placed them around the edge too. 

Here's the finished result:

Alex was very pleased and excited about the cake which made all the hard work worth it, and I have been told that it was very nice too...I'd have to agree as I have probably eaten the most of it ;)

 I had a really good idea to make all the food themed for his party too, I had even made the signs up like these on the computer:

Unfortunately our printer seems to be playing up with the wireless at the moment and the colour ink seems to have faded even though we have barely used it so didn't end up using them, and to be honest with my low energy levels I thought it was a bit of a wasted task for a family party (perhaps next year)?! I was also going to do a pin the tail on Bullseye or Sheriff badge on Woody but I did just run out of time on that one too!

As it was only family and only 3 youngsters I did sort of use that as an excuse not to have to do those things a bit (oops) but at 8 months pregnant I don't think anyone was going to complain about it!

The ideas I did have for the food (just in case you wanted to do something similar) were:

-Pizza planets (in a pizza box with the pizza planet logos)

- Slinky hot dogs

-Al's Cheesy puffs

-Hamm's bacon crisps or Hamm's rolls (sausage rolls)

-Stuffed potato heads

-Sheriif sandwiches (shaped as stars)

-Lime jelly in clear cups (stick 3 eyes on front and draw mouth with pen to make the aliens)

-Buzz's planets (popcorn and/or rainbow drops)

-Rex's biscuits (the dinosaur chocolate animals)

*I totally got stressy and threw things after 2 hours of cake decorating!

Linking up with the PinAddicts challenge this month too-it's been a while since I have joined in!

Check out all the links over on the blog.