Number 10

This is always such a busy time of year for our family as it is the season of vacations, holidays, and birthdays. Daylor's 10th birthday is at the end of September. It gets harder as the kids grow older trying to pick out themes that are age appropriate and still fun. Daylor has been playing the piano for a couple of years and absolutely has a gift for it. He's written multiple songs and insists on practicing at least an hour a day. So, in light of his enjoyment of it he chose to have a piano/keyboard theme.


Now, we are not the type folks that go all out for parties. I have some friends who throw their kids AMAZING parties for their children. They make extraordinary invitations and party favors and games and decorations - every detail is thought of and it is so beautiful! Me, well, I have learned to accept that I might be in the minority of my buddies who throw birthday parties. Pretty much my kids are lucky if they get birthday hats! That doesn't mean we don't plan and put an emphasize on their birthday's because we do! Our parties are just a bit more (OK, a lot more) understated, but we still have a blast!! At our house, the party is ALL about the cake!

If you will remember this post from earlier this year about my relationship with the confection, I challenge myself each time to make something creative and beyond what I think I can do. This year I made my largest cake yet! A 3 foot 3 inch keyboard cake. Probably one of the most fun I've ever done!



I found a picture on line where someone had used Kit-Kat's as the black keys on a regular 13x9 sized piano cake, but it looked funky and off-balanced. So, I borrowed their idea and put 3 sheet pans together to make it life sized. This made the Kit-Kat keys look much more realistic. I iced the chocolate first after I marked on the cake how far to come down, then followed with the white icing. After waiting about 20 minutes for the icing to harden up some, I took a kabob skewer and using a ruler, I measured the keys one inch apart. I used the edge of the skewer to make the impressions of the spaces between the keys on top and in the front of the cake. Then, I placed my Kit-Kats down. For the decorations, I used several flavors of Tic- Tacs, upside down Hershey's Kisses, and white Mentos for blinky lights and the knobs. The volume had to be ten, of course for Daylor's age, but it took some serious self control not to bump it up one more to eleven (for those of you who have no clue what I talking about, you would have to see the movie Spinal Tap to understand. And yes, I am THAT old.).



Because we had just come home from vacation we decided to have a family only small party where Daylor got all kinds of great stuff he loved!

The cake is always a surprise for them and Daylor seemed to get a kick out of seeing his keyboard in edible form.

After gift opening and cake and ice cream, Daylor gave us a concert of some of the music he has been writing and Perri did a little interpretive dancing for the family.

Then the kids got thier worship team together and sang a few tunes to end the night out.

We had a wonderful time and Daylor had a great birthday!