...My two boys & lots of babble...: Happy 3rd Birthday Leland!

The BIG 3 Today!!

"Sponge Bob Style"

Today was Leland's 3rd Birthday and he was excited and really had no idea what it meant to have a birthday. All he knew was, he got to have cake!

We started the morning off with Birthday Waffles! Fully loaded with sprinkles.

Then it was off to make the cake!

I got this little cake trick from the "cake lady" back in Michigan. She uses a boxed cake mix, then uses butter in place of the oil and milk in place of the water. So basically you follow the baking instruction on the back of the box but make the milk and butter substitutions. It just comes out fluffy and fresh I guess would be a good way to describe it. No matter how you describe it, it's DELISH!

Add everything into a bowl and beat until all ingredients are mixed. ** side note, it tends to be a little thicker consistency than when you use oil & water.

Spread it in your baking pan(s) then bake as noted on box.

Of course you have to let the Birthday Boy lick the beaters!

I have this trick to frosting the cake so it wont get all over your cake stand or plate. I'm not sure where the idea come from but it seems to work for me. It doesn't always come out perfect but it sure helps! There is nothing worse than trying to get frosting off of your nice clean plate!

I take a piece of parchment paper and trace around the cake pan, then cut out the circle. So you have the parchment paper with a hole in the middle.

Then once the cakes are cooled and you stack them you slide the paper over top the cakes. This will give you a barrier between the cake being frosted and your plate. Once the cake is frosted you cut up the side of the paper and pull it out from around the cake. ** side note- DON'T try and pull it over the cake because you will mess the frosting up!

For the frosting I normally make my own, however, for this "Sponge Bob Party" there was a request for cotton candy frosting. I figured I would give the new "flavor your own" frosting a try. You buy the canned frosting then pick out your flavor and mix it in.

Mix it up!

After you frost the cake, try and keep little fingers out.

Good Luck!

Add your decorations and there you have it.

Sponge Bod, Gary, #3 Candle and you can't forget the Krabby Patties!

On to the party!

We just moved to Idaho, so we kept this party super small! It was just the 4 of us and it was perfect!

We started off with a little birthday song of course!

If you have never heard of Captain Zoom then you may not be a kid from the 80's. I remember having listening to this every year on my Birthday and it was so cool! lol It was on a little floppy record back in the day and you had to buy it at the store so you were lucky if your parents game you the "normal" name with no fancy spellings or you were out of luck! Now you can pick the name you want, they add your kids name and there you have it, your very own personalized birthday song. I added the link above, just click on Captain Zoom.

I of course had to make up little party bags for the boys. No party is complete with out Party Bags!

I found these cute little cups at Walmart. They are a hard plastic and they were perfect.

I filled them a cotton candy sucker (Walmart), a magic towel (I found these at the Dollar Store), a packet of fruit snacks and little container of flarp, what boy doesn't like flarp!