A Pirate and a Birthday

Dear Youngest Son celebrated his 9th birthday this past week and we had a big friend birthday party for him on Saturday.

His cake turned out magnificent, and tasted wonderful too.
I got the ideas for this cake from here
I covered the top of the cake with m&m's so that I could put some non edible items on top of the cake without them touching the icing. The kids loved the m&m's, too!
The inside was 2 funfetti cake mixes baked in a half sheet pan and then divided into 3 layers.
The chocolate icing recipe was from here and the white buttercream icing is my grandmother's recipe. She decorated cakes for over 40 years.

Grandma's Buttercream Icing-makes a large mixers worth

1 cup powdered milk
1/2 cup plus 1 teaspoon water
1 cup shortening
1/2 teaspoon salt
2 1/2 pounds powdered sugar
2 large egg whites
or
1 teaspoon meringue powder
1 teaspoon clear vanilla

Beat powdered milk and water til thick and then add shortening, salt and beat til creamy. Add sugar. Beat until heavy consistency adding more or less if necessary. Add egg whites and beat til good and fluffy. Add clear vanilla extract. Store unused portion covered and refrigerated. Will last a long time in the refrigerator.
For our meal we served BBQ chicken wings, hot dogs in a blanket with katsup and mustard, potato chips, and root beer in the bottle.

We all dressed up like pirates, including mom and dad, and several of the guests put on tattoos. We had eye patches, swords, belts, and tattoos for all the children.
It was a blast of fun!

Oldest son, daughter and I send youngest son on a treasure hunt. The most important thing he wanted at his birthday party was a pinata...so the great find at the end was a treasure chest pinata! Some of the clues included things like...Shiver me timbers,me ship can be freezin' if we had one of these, it'd be mighty pleasin. This clue was taped to the fireplace. We found most of the ideas from Birthday Party Ideas.

Here is youngest son dressed in all his pirate garb. Yesturday at church, one of the other boys that was at the party came up to me and said, that was the best party I ever been to. It truly was a lot of fun. I even had a good time. It was so much fun to use all the pent up creativity especially to bless my family.

May you your mates have a blessed day, Suzie