Ironman Birthday Party with Ironman Themed Cake and Cookies

My little boy turns five this week so this past weekend we threw him a birthday party. FIVE is a huge milestone and it seemed like a good time to have a superhero party. Since his favorite superhero is Ironman, I decided just to focus on Ironman.

The Invitations.

We're in Redmond now so this year we had a completely new group of people attend his birthday party. We invited everyone in his new daycare class but only one person accepted the invitation. This was quite the change from last year, where everyone but one accepted the invitation. In comparison, this year's party was very calm and relaxing. I actually got to socialize a lot, which was a luxury :)

We decorated the house with lots of balloons and focused on using gold, red, yellow, and black for colors. We bought a helium tank to inflate the balloons too so that was a lot of fun. Thanks to Pinterest, we decided to surprise our birthday boy by filling his bedroom with balloons before he woke up that morning. However, we missed his reaction when he actually woke up. I couldn't believe it! Dang.

The balloons and decorations were great but we didn't exactly do what I had in mind. We totally toned it down because we didn't want to tire ourselves and we didn't want our new friends to think we're too crazy. Lol. I bought all the stuff for the decorations but when I described what I had in mind to my husband, he just laughed and said "no wonder people never want to invite us to any of their parties!" Yeah, okay. It was just a cool idea. I have a whole board of cool birthday ideas from Pinterest! But yeah, okay.

Simple decorations. It worked nicely actually.

Ironman Birthday Party Menu

Appetizers

• Tortillas, Veggies
• Dips: Spinach/Artichoke, Avocado/Yogurt

Main Lunch

• Hawaiian island fried rice
• Ham/cheese sliders on Hawaiian sweet rolls
• Cranberry Juice, Water
• Fruit

Dessert

• Ironman cake
• “5” cupcakes
• Ironman cookies

In fact, we had just the right amount of food. For once I didn't go overboard. The table wasn't even filled with food. Shocking, right?! Everyone seemed to have liked the food.

After eating lunch, we played some games. We had three games initially but then we decided just to do two. In the first game, kids had to attack the Ironman villains with their weapon of choice. I printed out six Ironman villains and taped them onto empty water bottles. We had a nerf gun, bow and arrow and small bouncy balls. We placed the bottles throughout the room and the kids had to take turns trying to hit over the villains. At least that was the idea. It just didn't happen. For the game to work, ALL the kids had to cooperate and take turns to attack. But they all wanted to attack right away and at the same time. Fail. It's too bad since I spent quite a bit of time preparing for the game. I even got my boy to dress up in costume and do some target practice days leading up to the party. Oh well. We ended up just drawing for a prize.

Ironman villains.

In the second game, we tested their super senses. We placed four objects in a paper bag and got each of them to feel the objects and guess what they were. We used lego, crayon, toilet paper, and a sticker. We also tested their sense of smell. We blindfolded them and let them smell four things and again, they had to guess what they were. We used lemon, banana, chocolate, and cheddar cheese. This game went along better and we only involved the bigger kids. Partial success and we got to give away another prize!

Then came the desserts. I had fun making the bakes. My boy had fun baking along side me too.  He used to only have patience for about 30 minutes when it came to rolling, cutting or decorating cookies. Now that he's a bit older, his attention span is longer. He was at it for over an hour. Maybe even a couple of hours. How exciting!

I used my boy's hand as a stencil. What big hands he has!

Fact: sugar cookie decorating takes time.

Completed chocolate sugar cookies with royal icing.

"Chubby" Ironman cake. But check out that GOLD!

Chocolate cake with chocolate chunks inside & topped with Nutella Swiss Meringue Buttercream.

My Ironman cake turned out alright. I should have shaped him more but I got lazy and I didn't want to waste more cake. I say "more cake" because I miscalculated how much cake I needed and made WAY too much. Oops. My husband called the cake a "chubby" Ironman. Lol. I totally agree! The cake I pictured looked better of course but in the end, it was the best I could do. I was a bit worried about things turning out since I haven't baked much for awhile and I was using a new kitchen and all. I did screw up here and there and things took me longer than I expected. There were plenty of imperfections but the taste of the cake made up for it, I think. It was my standard chocolate cake with chocolate swiss meringue buttercream, covered with marshmallow fondant. The best compliment I received was from one of the moms who said the cake tasted "awesome!" She was like "this is just chocolate cake? Nothing more? Wow." I don't think she ever ate a homemade cake made from scratch before. Lol. That totally made my day :)

Thanks to the Ironman cake, I now know how to color food gold :) I love the gold color I achieved on it. I started by adding yellow to my fondant. Then I added just a tiny bit of brown. That alone made a pretty nice gold. I took it further by spraying it with gold Wilton color mist. After that dried a bit, I painted it with Americolor gold sheen airbrush. I used the Americolor gold sheen airbrush on my chocolate sugar cookies as well and that turned out nice too. I'm looking forward to using it again next month to make my Christmas cookies shine with gold and pearl glitter!

Take away loot bags for the kids.

I can't believe my boy is turning five. He's growing up way too fast! I want him to grow big and independent but at the same time I miss the little baby him. He's no baby anymore. Turning five is such a milestone because it's also the start of school. That, of course, also makes me sad because he is not in school right now:( All because we moved from BC. Had we known he couldn't start school here because of his birthday, we probably wouldn't have moved honestly. I personally feel bad having made this mistake but we can only move forward and concentrate on the positive things. I have to believe that things will get much better. Speaking of positive things, it was SUPER nice to be able to throw him a birthday party in a bigger living space. A bigger house definitely eases the pain of relocating here :)

Redmond Saturday Farmer's Market

Surprise! Although it does feel like a vacation, we're not on vacation right now. I wish this was a vacation post but it isn't. We left Vancouver and moved to Redmond, WA! For good :( Crazy, right?!

My husband got a good job in Washington State and we decided to all move. To be completely honest, I wasn't thrilled about going to the US. I still have mixed feelings about this whole thing. I really like living in Vancouver and I like Canada. But if the situation was reversed, I know I would want my husband and son to move for me. Who knows? Maybe there will be great work opportunities here for me later on too. That is, if I can get a company to sponsor me and upgrade my Visa so I can work in the country.

We're only three hours away from Vancouver but it feels worlds apart. That's because it's a different country and everything seems so different here. At least the weather, language, and biota is the same. When I moved to France after I got married, that wasn't the case. This may be hard but it could definitely be worst.

On the first Saturday after we moved here, we went to the Redmond Saturday Farmer's Market in the town center. It was amazing! It was so much bigger and better than what we were used to in Vancouver. Farmer's markets are numerous back home but they are all very small. This market had such a cool vibe to it too. The vegetables and fruit looked great and were presented beautifully. You know you are at a great market when you see this kind of quality among every vendor. It's not as great as the one in Portland but for little Redmond, I was quite impressed :)

We bought delicious peaches, apples, golden beets, green onions, corn, bunch of carrots, giant blackberries and even pizza! They had wood-fired pizza for sale and it looked and smelled so good. So good that we ended up buying a whole large pizza for an early lunch. We actually had breakfast just before heading to the market too! We chose the three cheese pizza and took it home to eat. It tasted like a pizza from France. Seriously. And just $16.

Overall, prices were a bit on the pricey side for things but then again you are paying for the quality. $3/lb for honey crisp apples and $2.50/lb for peaches. Some things were cheaper like $2 for a big bunch of beets or carrots. There was so much variety in their produce. For instance, I saw a vendor selling what looked like at least four different types of eggplant. And flowers! The bouquets of flowers were gorgeous and cheap! Huge bouquets for just $10 and $5 for simpler ones. I wonder if I can buy some flowers and take them over to Victoria. You think?

There were crafts too. One vendor sold superhero clothes such as capes, masks, and utility belts. It looked like an Etsy-type store. There were lots of people at the market. The market runs from May to October. We're definitely going to try to make it every Saturday.

Oh gosh. It's been a bit of a roller coaster and crazy few months for us. When we decided to move over here and got approved for our Visas, we sold our home in Canada, bought a home in Washington State, gave up our car and coordinated with a gaziilion people in order to make this relocation possible. It has been insane and it still will be for the next couple of months.

So there you have it! Now you know why I have been missing in action.

Back To School Chalkboard Cookies

I love chalkboard writing. I love coffee shops and restaurants that use chalk writing for their menu display. You see chalkboard writing everywhere on Pinterest for making all sorts of signs and for labeling food. You can even create your own chalkboard writing surface pretty easily too.

It would only be a matter of time before we started to see chalkboard writing on all sorts of cookies. Actually, tons of people have already done this! Of course. Many of them use a black surface. The contrast looks great and with neat writing it can make anything look formal. Needless to say, I have wanted to try chalkboard writing on cookies for awhile now :) I finally did it this past weekend.

I made some "Back to School" cookies and decided to do some chalkboard writing on a green chalkboard. For school, I like the dark green surface better. It's more natural and the green boards are what I remember from my school days. I used mainly green gel coloring and then darken it a bit using some black. So instead of your mouth turning black after eating the cookie, it would turn dark green instead. Somehow a dark green mouth doesn't seem as scary as a black mouth. Lol. For the bottom tray part of the chalkboard, I used gray and then I used a toothpick to place in the chalk and eraser. 

I used a dark chocolate sugar cookie recipe and the contrast was lovely :)

After the cookie was fully dried, it was time to paint. I used white food coloring and a bit of water and painted in my messages. If it wasn't neat or if I wanted to change the message, I just used water and a paper towel and removed it from the cookie surface using my brush. As a result, there would be a bit of white chalky residue left behind but that was great because it made it look even more realistic :)

My 4.5 year old had a play date with his best friend and I wanted to make them both "Off to School" cookies since they are both starting Kindergarten this September. I created simple messages and simple math equations for them. His best friend has an older sister who is maybe 8 years old. I decided to give her cookies with more complex equations on them. Instead of "Off to School," her cookie read "Back to School." I don't know if the kids noticed any of this but it doesn't really matter because I know and that's what matters :) I'm not really interested in eating the cookies at all. I just like having a little fun designing and creating them.

Equations created using mathicando.com

After taking photos of the cookies, I realized I messed up the value of g, gravity on earth. I couldn't believe it! I had to remove that cookie from the gift bag and save it for us. Don't tell my Physics teacher! Lol.

Equations created using mathicando.com

What a Foodie Eats While Camping

A few weeks ago, we went on a camping trip to Porpoise Bay on the Sunshine Coast. It was our first time camping with our 4 year old and our first time over on the Sunshine Coast. It was so much work preparing and planning for this camping trip that we made it a three night and four day trip. That's a lot of camping for people who don't like to camp! I mean I loved camping as a kid but back then my only responsibility was to have fun and discomfort didn't bother me nearly as much. As an adult and especially as a parent now, camping is just a heck of a lot of work. Too much work.

We actually had a great trip :) From Vancouver, it was just a short ferry ride over to the Sunshine Coast and then a short drive to the provincial park. Large campgrounds, hot showers, flush toilets, playing fields, and just a few minutes to walk to the picnic areas, playground, and beach. The weather was 22-23C the entire time we were there. We went with my sister and her family so our 4 year old had his little cousins to play with. We hiked, played at the beach, had a scavenger hunt, roasted marshmallows and made s'mores, and drank hot chocolate. We even watched bats fly by the field at dusk. Overall, I thought it was a good first camping experience with the kids. My husband would probably agree but then tell you that he's done with camping! Lol. He really doesn't like camping. I don't mind it and I know my 4yo loved it!

When it came to dining at the campsite, we ate like Royalty. Honestly, it was more glamping, than camping. When we first decided to go camping, I thought we could just survive on Kraft dinner, Hamburger Helper, Lipton noodle soup, Campbell soup, Quaker instant oatmeal etc. Then I realized it would mean three days of eating processed food. Um. One or two meals I'm okay with but three days worth of food?! I just couldn't do it. If I ate like that, I might actually get sick. For the past several years in particular, my body has adapted to eating more nutritious homemade foods. Okay and I'm a huge food snob too! So what? :)

A couple of days before the camping trip, I started to prepare food. I baked graham crackers and then dipped them in chocolate, I baked and sliced bread, I chopped various vegetables and put them in individual Ziploc bags, I prepared a flour mix for vegan omelets, I boiled quail eggs, I made tomato sauce, pistou soup and so on. I kind of went crazy. I even made haupia at my husband's request. I made mint chocolate truffles the night before and rolled and dipped just a dozen balls to bring to camp to try. We bought the most amazing chocolate mint at a local farm here and I just couldn't resist making truffles with them. It had to be done since I wasn't sure the mint would have survived after I returned from camp. As you can see, it was quite urgent :)

Homemade graham crackers.

We had to come up with breakfast, lunch, and dinner for seven people for three days. My brother-in-law is a foodie too so I was coordinating with him using Google Docs. I stuck with the list but he brought extra stuff and and as a result we probably had enough food for an entire week. Lol.

Lunch: Pasta with mushroom tomato sauce, grilled chicken/peppers & salmon/shrimp salad.

Breakfast: Salmon egg scramble with turkey sausage.

Some of the dishes and food I contributed:

• Vegan omelets
• Pistou soup (made & then frozen to a block for cooler)
• Pasta with chicken breast in fresh tomato sauce (tomato sauce made & frozen to a block for cooler)
• Tuna sandwiches
• Assorted green bean salad
• Israeli couscous stir fry with kale, chard, and Italian sausages
• Avocado/onion/tomato salsa & condiment
• Dutch oven bread
• Cantaloupe, mangos, papaya
• Drinks: guava juice, teas, hot chocolate, soy milk, water, wine (ahem)
• Snacks like coconut chips
• Haupia, chocolate truffles
• S'mores with homemade graham crackers

All the meals that I contributed were homemade from scratch and had plenty of vegetables, protein, and fiber. My sister and brother-in-law bought most of their food but it wasn't of the camping sort either. They brought mahi-mahi filets, salmon and chicken burgers, turkey sausages, smoked salmon etc. They bought a portable barbecue grill for the trip so we were able to barbecue food every day. We even barbecued our french toast and regular toast when we had eggs for breakfast. Well, we didn't have a toaster! And eating plain room temperature bread was dull. Hahaha. My sister would be like "what kind of camping is this?!" I told her it's glamorous camping or glamping! :)

Breakfast: Vegan omelet (or more like vegan scramble).

Dinner: Grilled mahi-mahi with assorted green bean salad & grilled garlic pita & eggplant.

The last half of the trip we started to realize that we had way too much food left and we had to eat more so we did. Yikes! It felt like Thanksgiving. It was the same story at every meal. We were so stuffed it was actually hilarious. We would eat so much at lunch only to find ourselves having to cook again just a couple of hours later. Lol. After lunch one day, my husband and I both fell into a food coma in our camping chairs at the beach and seized to be parents for an hour or so. Our 4 year old was off playing with his 6 year old cousin and when we saw them later, they were both soaked in water and covered in sand from tip to toe. Oops. We're totally blaming the food for this!

We ate too well and we totally over did it but it was all delicious. The best camping meals I have ever had! Glamping actually made me feel sorry for the other campers. I saw a couple of girls at the water area washing their dishes with a bar of soap and a pine cone. Wow. People are so resourceful! We just brought along our dishwashing liquid and sponge from home. In fact, our car was packed to the rim. But there were seven of us and we had two tents and a lot of camping chairs. And a barbecue grill with a full tank of propane. That makes us glampers, right?

It's actually quite funny. At night when it got busy by the communal fire pit, I was actually a bit embarrassed to go there to roast marshmallows. Everyone there was roasting their white marshmallows on twigs they found nearby. Then we came along with our fancy plate full of homemade graham crackers pre-dipped in chocolate and store bought long s'more sticks with colorful marshmallows at the tip. We couldn't stop laughing afterwards. We didn't mean to show off. We just like nice things and we like eating good food.

S'mores on home baked graham crackers.

Thanks to all the planning and organization, we didn't spend a lot of time cooking at camp. There are plenty of things that you could do beforehand to save you time and allow you to pack a good cooler. Here are some of my tips:

• Cook some of the harder meals at home and then freeze them right away. Your frozen block of food can go right into your cooler to help keep things cool. I did this for my pistou soup and tomato sauce. On the third day, these were still slightly frozen.
• Freeze bags full of water and lie them flat at the bottom and sides of your cooler. I didn't use loose ice in my cooler. I didn't want the mess. It was kept cold by frozen foods and frozen bags of water. The bags were big slabs of ice and they thawed very slowly. Afterwards, you can drink the water.
• Chop vegetables for the various dishes you plan to make and store them in Ziploc bags. I kept the dry vegetables together and I had a separate bag for chopped tomatoes since they were wet. The bags will allow for you to fit more things inside your cooler.
• Prepare flour mixes and store them in bags. These bags don't need refrigeration. This is great for things like pancakes. I made mine for a vegan omelet mix. When it came time to cooking, I just had to add soy milk and mix it in the bag.
• Prepare sandwich spreads like tuna mixes at home. It's nice to have simple meals like this, especially if you plan to go hiking. You could make this quickly for your packed hiking lunch.
• Use small containers and only bring the spices and condiments you need for the trip. This will save you a lot of space. For instance, I brought mayonnaise, hot dog relish, Provence herbs, salt, pepper, vegan margarine, and balsamic vinegar all in small containers.
• Freeze water bottles and put them in the cooler.
• Pack all the frozen and big things at the bottom of the cooler. You want to be able to find things easily.
• Do all your baking at the last minute so that everything is as fresh as possible. I baked and sliced my bread at home, the night before.
• The cooler should be the last thing you fill and pack before leaving the house.
• Dry foods that you'll need together should stay in the same bags. For instance, I put all my baked chocolate dipped graham crackers in a tin right next to the marshmallows and s'more sticks.
• Buy more ice for your cooler after a day or two. If you have access to a nearby town, you may want to get more ice if your cooler is not cool enough. I never had to do this for my own cooler.

Do as much as you can. I didn't want to bring along cans of food so I either opened them at home or avoided those foods. I didn't want to make a mess chopping vegetables at camp so I did them at home. I pretty much devoted a day and a half on and off cooking and preparing food for packaging. It was pretty insane. But knowing me, if I had to do it over again, I would probably only do more. But that's just me! Lol. It was a delicious camping trip and it was worth all the work :)