Lilli's 7th Birthday Party Mermaid Party inspired by Driftwood, the ocean and dreamy little girls

 

I have finally put together a quick post to show you the pictures of Lilli's Mermaid Party and I must mention the party was featured over on the wonderful Kara's Party Ideas which we adore.

Lilli's party was inspired by driftwood, the ocean and dreamy little girls.

As usual I made all the sweet treats. I had seen a tiered macaron tower in a wedding book which I really liked. But I decided to add my own twist and popped on some Tim Tam pearl Truffles for the top layer. Don't worry I'll be popping a tutorial up for this soon.

The cake was inspired by the ocean and was three tiers with the cake wrapped in graduation fondant. Inside the cake was flavored with Blue Haven Jelly Crystals and Italian Meringue Buttercream once again flavored with the Blue Haven Jelly Crystals. I know it's weird.....but blue is one of the birthday girl's favorite flavours. The pretty cake stand is from Sharnel Dollar Designs.

The Mermaid Cookie pops were a huge hit of course and are a vanilla cookie decorated with fondant. Once again I will post a tutorial shortly.

We also had hand dipped oreo's topped with a fondant 'pearl' and the candy and bowls are from Sharnel Dollar designs.

I've found in the past that with a complete candy or sweet buffet there is so much left. As it was sea themed and sushi is one of the birthday girl's favorite things we had Sushi 'de la mar' and 'sea' cucumber sandwiches to balance out all the sweets.

All the amazing paper pom poms were from Ah Tissue.

The mermaid dresses and tablecloth were hand made by Karen McCubbin and had the most amazing swirly detail. The mermaid fabric on the tablecloth was so pretty and is from Spoonflower. If you love fabric you must check them out, they custom print.

Invitations, party bags, party bag tags, candles and napkins were from Paper Eskimo.

We had pass the parcel and made mermaid necklaces with 'pearls' and shells with premade holes from the local discount store which the kids took home as a memento.

Every one had blue lips from the candy, sorry to all the other parent's Xx

Lovely Suppliers

Cake, Macaron and cake pop Tower, Mermaid Cookie pops and dipped oreo's by Bubble and Sweet
Pom Poms Ah Tissue
Cake Stand, Glass Jars and Green Beanies Sharnel Dollar Designs
Invitations, Party Bag and Tags, Napkins and Candles Paper Eskimo which I bought from Details Details (they were super helpful)
Wooden Scoops for Lolly Jars Polka Dot Prints
Table cloth and Mermaid Costume by Karen McCubbin
Photographs by Terri Vandermeer
Mermaid fabric from Spoonflower

Special thanks to mum for making the cucumber sandwiches, Dad for the orchid's and the lovely people at the sushi shop at Arnedale Springwood for coming in on a Sunday to make up Lilli's favorite Sushi.

Linda Vandermeer is a blogger, baker, maker and author of the cookbook ' Sweets on a Stick': More than 150 kid friendly recipes for cakes, candies, cookies and pies on the go!. Published in the US the book is available at most online book stores:

Or here at fishpond (Aus/NZ)

Xx

Owlisious O is for Owl cookies

So I haven't let go of my square cookie lovin' at the moment and I created these super easy to make Parliament of owl cookies.

I called them O is for Owl cookies because they are basically made from a O shape cutter, deep huh. It took me a while to come up with a name for them....I wanted to call them something Hootish, but everything kept sounding a little bit seedy so I gave up on that angle.

Before we get into the tutorial I'll give you some helpful hints, kinda a do as I say not as I do. I was rushing these and using left over stuff, popping out to the shop and looking after 3 kids so they were not quite as well finished as they could be.

Ok do wait for the brown branch piping to dry before you start sticking on other stuff...don't just keep on going which may result in smudgy knuckle marks in your branch.

Do make sure you cut out the correct number of owls and corresponding wings and beaks. Don't get distracted and go to the shop part way through resulting in a weird pink owl with no nose ending up in the mix.

Do mix up some nice fresh royal icing, don't use that stuff that has been sitting in the piping bag for 2 days since you made some cameo cookies and has separated. People will notice. Well ok most people won't notice actually. They will just see some cute owl cookies for 3 seconds before they munch the evidence away.

Instructions for O is for Owl cookies

Batch of square cookies 5cm (2") CLICK HERE for the chocolate cookie recipe I used
White fondant
Small amount of colored fondant (I used Red, Blue, pink, orange, yellow and purple)

Small plastic rolling pin
cornstarch
brush and water
Square cookie cutter Approx 5cm (2")
Set of small oval cutters (I used my 3 set from the Ateco shapes tin I have around 2, 3 and 4cm)
Small flower plunger
Small triangle or tear drop cutter.
Royal Icing, white, brown and green. Small amount of black for eyes (optional you could use an edible pen or just use up some of the brown)
Piping bags and #1 and #65 tips

To start roughly work out what types of owl cookies you are making, I made cookies which had 2 small owls, 1 medium owl, or the top of one large owl with a small in the background. You will need to cut out your shapes accordingly. For this tutorial I will give rough numbers for 18 cookies with 6 of each mentioned/pictured design.

Knead the white fondant and roll out to a couple of mm thick using the small rolling pin. Cut out squares using the square cookie cutter and adhere to the cookies using a small amount of water brushed onto the cookie and then using the rolling pin to gently press the fondant into place.

Roll out pink fondant and press out a bunch of flowers (around 18) using the mini flower ejector. Repeat with the purple (24), orange (6) and yellow (18)fondant.

Place the brown royal icing into a piping bag with a #1 tip and pipe on some wiggly branches. I drew some squares on paper first and decided where I wanted the branches and owls to go, then I practiced piping the brown over the paper before I started on the cookies. You will need 6 cookies with a branch near the bottom for the medium owls, 6 cookies with a branch at the bottom and a smaller branch in the top right corner for the small owls, and 6 cookies with a small wiggly branch just over half way up on the left side for the cookies with the large owl (eyes only) and small owl in background.

Roll out the red fondant. Cut out oval shapes and then place the bottom of the oval cutter onto the top of the oval fondant shape and press out a small semi circle shape. See the picture example. The remaining shape should resemble a simple owl. Cut out 3 medium red owls, 9 small red owls and 3 large red owls. Use a sharp knife to cut off the bottoms of the large red owls, use your original drawings to determine where to cut.  Repeat for the blue fondant cutting out the same number of owls in blue.

You will also need to cut out the thin wing shapes, use the oval cutters to do this as well. I used the offcuts from the tops of the owl.

Take the excess fondant and cut out a thin wing from each side, so you will end up with 2 wings for each semi circle. The large owls will not need wings so you will end up with 6 medium red wings, 6 medium blue wings, 18 small red wings and 18 small blue wings.

Roll out the remaining orange fondant and using a small tear drop cutter or triangle and a sharp knife cut out a beak for each owl.

Pop your white royal icing into a piping bag with a #1 tip. Using your original drawing or my cookie pictures as a guide, stick the owl cut outs onto the cookies with a little royal icing. Add on the owl wings and beak and then pipe some eyes onto each owl. Adhere the small fondant flowers decoratively around the branches and then pipe a small dot of white royal icing into the center of each flower.

If you find that bits of the royal icing squish out use a small stiff clean brush (you have only used for food purposes in the past or new) to brush away the excess

Fill a piping bag with green royal icing and a #65 small leaf tip. Pipe some leaves around the branches by holding the piping tip on the branch applying pressure and then pulling away.carefully. (practice on some paper first if you like).

Once the eyes have dried pipe on a tiny amount of black royal icing into the center of each eye, or you can use brown royal icing, or an edible pen which ever works best for you.

Also Don't forget the Handmade Wedding Giveaway

If you haven't already entered the Handmade Wedding Book Giveaway pop on over here to check out my review and enter.

and finally here is the link to preorder my book Sweets on a Stick from Amazon, its due out in December. Did I mention I took some pops I made using the chocolate cake pop recipe to kindi the other day for Sweet's birthday and the next day the teacher told me in amazement it is the first time every kid has eaten up the whole treat. I'm taking that as a winning endorsement.

Handmade Wedding - Book Giveaway and Review

I received an early copy of Handmade Wedding over Forty Gorgeous Projects to help you style your wedding your way published by Penguin Books Australia in my mailbox the other day.




Handmade Wedding is a charming book full of gorgeous colour photography that beautifully portrays the finished projects, along with a host of other inspirational pictures.

The book is a collaboration of a host of well known and well respected bloggers, stylists and talented artists and is divided into sections such as Before the Wedding, Getting Dressed, Ceremony, Table, Party and Details.

There are detailed step by step instructions on how to make all the pretty projects, including templates where required and the Party section includes a few recipes including macarons (by Macaron cookbook author Alison Thompson), truffle pops and cookies. I did notice that the macaron recipe recommended a few trial runs before the wedding, so I would say the book offers pretty sound advice as well.

I fell in love with some of the diy craft projects and the day the book arrived found myself ordering items to make the super cute cupcake toppers from the Party Section. Sooo totally in love with them! Many of the 48 projects in the book would be easily transferable to any fabulous soiree you might be hosting, and are not just wedding specific.

I had hoped to floor you all with my super crafty skills and show you all some pictures of the amazing things I had made from the book (hello cupcake toppers) but sadly my stuff is still in transit somewhere.

Anyhoo to round up I guess it says a lot that I was willing to attempt some projects, cause although I'm ok at dipping cakeballs and baking macarons I'm not the craftiest gal around and after reading the book I was pretty confident that I could attempt quite a few of the projects.

Giveaway - Win A Copy of Handmade Wedding

I have the precopy of Handmade Wedding to offer as a giveaway. Just leave a comment here by 12pm Monday the 15th of August and I will randomly choose a winner. Any comment will do, just say Hi if you like. If you would like me to contact you and let you know that you are the winner make sure you leave your email address in the comment as well, otherwise I will announce on Tuesday here and on the facebook page the name of the winner and you can have until Friday to contact me before I redraw.

Good Luck!

Oh and here is my everyblog announcement about my book, which is by the way totally not related to the book I reviewed above......In case you haven't heard I have a book coming out in December available for preorder. It's a US release and is aimed at cooking with kids specifically sweet treats on a stick and has lots of recipes for cake pops, cookie tutorials, pie pops, candy and more.

Here is the link to buy my book Sweets on A Stick by Linda and Vandermeer at Barnes and Noble :)

WINNER  update

Random Org came up with #6 so the winner is Karla

Thanks everyone who entered