Battlebots and Moana Last Minute Birthdays

If there is an award for best-way-too-early or way-too-late parent, I could win it. If I don’t get something done when it’s fresh and new and way ahead of time, it simply doesn’t get done. Lucky for me, when the boys birthday’s were coming up and I had a lot on my plate, my Mom had us do a small get-together to celebrate the boys birthdays several weeks ahead of time because she would be out of town the following weeks. We decided to do it just a day or two before, so lucky for me, one trip to Michaels and I had some perfectly good supplies to make it a great birthday for those boys.
(check out those fine wrapping skills of mine right up front and the Christmas wrapping paper. I know I’m not the only one who uses whatever’s around, right?)

We are usually pretty old-school as far as birthdays go. The boys get to say what kind of cake they want, there’s usually some balloons (I failed on that part this year), and a couple of presents. We break out out the classic paper streamers and I try to throw together some decorations from around the house. Weeks ago when I asked Sawyer what kind of cake he wanted, he immediately said “Battlebots.” If you don’t remember his Halloween experience, here’s the post where I shared just a bit about his obsession with combative robotics. Nothing has changed since then, he acts like a Battlebot on a daily basis and ask me questions about each Battlebot from the show and their strengths and weaknesses and battle strategies. If you ever want to talk for an hour about why a Battlebot team chose a certain weapon or size or even name for their Battlebot, I know just the kid for you to sped an afternoon with.

Since Battlebot cakes aren’t exactly lined up in the bakery windows (although they should be. It’s pretty awesome), I had to get creative. He’d asked for a cake of his favorite Battlebot, Bombshell, but I know my limits. I have zero cake decorating experience, and I’m smart enough to know what I definitely can’t do, and building a cake that looked like a battlebot with a vertical blade or axe on the front was definitely on the not possible list. Instead of making Bombshell, I decided to make his cake a giant nut, which is the trophy for winner of the Battlebot competition. Pretty circular, so easy to use standard baking pans, some straight edges cut, I figured I could do it. Lucky for me, they sell silver food coloring spray, and problem solved, I’d have it done. It really wasn’t too hard too make the main shape and my Aunt let me borrow some of her more professional frosting tools which made it easier, plus the silver food coloring spray hid lots of my imperfections. The cake was looking so good.  At the last minute, I decided to add some words out of sprinkles using a template I cut, and it looked awesome until we rode in the car and it shook the sprinkles out of place. I wish I’d gotten a picture before we left, but it’s no matter because Sawyer couldn’t have cared less if the words were messed up. He was so excited, and that’s all that mattered.

Tell me that’s not one happy kid? He was SO proud of that cake. And can we just take a minute to appreciate my handi-work? Check out those details, my OCDness came out a little bit on the sides of that hexnut. I even measured and used a compass to make sure each side was the equal and that the points were in the right place, and used a pie server to make the screw threads inside the nut. Not that anyone cared or noticed but I had to do it right or it would have bugged me. haha. Here’s an upclose shot- It’s by no means perfect, but it’s good for me, and was everything Sawyer had hoped for.

Apparently it didn’t taste half bad either. Now, Rhett, had no idea what he wanted. He probably would have been okay with a plain cake, or even sharing Sawyer’s, but I didn’t want him to see Sawyer getting all excited and not get something special for himself, I mean, it is his birthday, so while I was at Michaels I grabbed a couple miniature figurines (they’re made for fairy gardens), some teal and orange food dye and sprinkles, and I was ready to create the best last minute cake ever, but I’m completely bragging on this one- it came out awesome! Rhett loves the movie Moana and ask to watch it every single day, so I went with a Moana-inspired cake for his.

Moana’s boat was one of the fairy garden figurines, I just added the little red Moana logo like her canoe has. You’d be surprised how hard that little symbol is to draw, I had to practice a couple times before I got it right. All of the flowers on the cake are sugar flowers they had in packages at Michaels, and so is the “Happy Birthday” words, which I think totally made the cake. Thank goodness for ready-made, easy to add supplies.

The coconut Kakamora was my favorite part to make. I just bought a coconut at the grocery store and googled Kakamora and took whatever features I liked (and looked easy to replicate) from some of the Kakamora from the movie and painted them on. The great part is there are so many of them in the movie and they all look different so there was no way to really mess it up.

Like I said, I am by no means an expert cake decorator. Most of my food taste awesome but looks terrible haha, so for this to come out so well  was amazing. Making something look like water was pretty forgiving though, I purposefully didn’t mix the food coloring all the way into the frosting so it would have some color variation, and was able to make it all swirly and not-flat and blame it on looking like water haha. The “mountain” and beach didn’t look very great until I covered them in orange sprinkles and added the shell and tree and flowers and magically it looked amazing. The Happy Birthday words were the real focusing point and made the cake look so much more professional and the little boat was a fun addition that made it obvious that I was going for the Moana theme. Most importantly though, Rhett was so excited when he saw it. His favorite part was the Kakamora and after the party we broke it open so they could try coconut milk.

Now we’ve got a 5 year old and 3 year old (and the 1 year old of course) and I am constantly on the edge of anxiety just thinking about Sawyer starting Kindergarten in the fall. I can’t believe I have a “kid” now, not just toddlers or babies. Time really does go by so fast. Rhett had a baby-face for so long and he’s starting to lose that toddler chubby tummy and it just makes me want to grab him and squish him and never let him grow up, although sometimes I feel like I got jipped on the baby and little toddler stages with him because he grew SO fast. Sawyer is 98th percentile for height and Rhett is 100th, and Rhett is only a couple inches shorter than Sawyer. For the most part they wear all the same clothes and Ford is so big that he’s only one clothing size behind them. Both sides of our families have a lot of men over 6’2”, and even a lot of women over 5’10” on my side, so it looks like at 5’8” I’ll probably be the shrimp of the family. I look forward to being the short Mom with her boys towering over her someday, but not quite yet. For now I’ll enjoy them being small enough to still cuddle up on my lap and watch Battlebots or Moana with me.