Zoe's Lunchbox: Happy Birthday To You!

As anyone reading should know by now, my kiddo turned 5 last week. That means that over the weekend, the official 'party' took place. First thing's first.. I have to extend my gratitude to my girlfriend that hosted the party at her house since we remain 'homeless' at the moment. Okay, not homeless. I shouldn't say that. My mom has been wonderful to have us in her home during our 'transition', but it's a little crazy around there, so having the party in a different environment was nice.

This year, the theme of choice was dinosaurs, which has been somewhat of an obsession for the kiddo. And by obsession, I mean obsession with a capital 'O' .. and 'B' .. and 'S' .. well, you get the idea. Note the dino tail from Halloween that had to get worn again for the occasion. I will also say that we have an unhealthy abundance of carnivores in our house. It can get pretty crazy if you aren't careful.

They kind of look like they were watching me, but it might just be that I frosted them at 1am. Maybe it was the lack of sleep?? What do you think?

Normally, I make a butter cookie, but this time, I tried a different recipe that required no chilling of the dough. I loved how they rolled out, baked, and tasted, of course. I even froze them to store before party time and they did great. I just decorated them after they thawed. Aren't they cute?? Then, there's cake, right? I looked to the experts again at our local Patisserie to do the baking, but I took over decorating for better or worse. The kiddo insisted on a red/orange Stegosaurus on the top of the cake, so I found some clip art, edited some things out of it, and colored the F'n thing pixel by pixel to have it printed on ~~chewy, nasty~~ edible paper for the top of the cake. Yeah, I'm totally taking credit for it. It alone took more time than it took them to bake and frost the cake, so yeah. Then, I rolled out and stamped fondant dinosaurs that I stuck on around the base of the cake. I'll also take the credit for the big knuckle print in the buttercream because of it. Damn knuckles.