The Birthday Cake

We had a very successful 5th birthday party!  I highly recommend a pool party, the kids loved it.  I practically had to drag everyone out of the water to do the cake and the pinata.
The two big stars of the show were the birthday boy, of course, and the Cake.  I got tons of compliments and questions, especially when the guests realized that it was homemade.  I thought I'd share the tricks since they are way easier than anyone thought they would be.

My mom made all my birthday cakes, so she has all the tools for decorating, icing, etc.   If you don't have them, they are a one time purchase, so still economical.
Ryder went through a lot of themes for this party and we never actually decided on one specific character or theme.   The cake, however, was definitely going to be "Ice Bird".  (Ice Bird is an Angry Bird for any of you who have never played the game)  After a quick Google search I knew we could do it.  For all of you non artsy types, like myself, trust me this is totally do-able.
I wish I would have thought about taking more pictures while we were making the cake, but I guess I was too focused on the task at hand. :)
We made our icing, but you could just as easily use a store bought container and add food  coloring.  Once we figured the base color we put some plain white aside so we could make different mixtures for the colors of the bird.  My mom has this huge cake pan, which takes 3 boxes of cake mix. It's perfect for birthday parties, it feeds about 50 people.  I would recommend Pillsbury, we used Duncan Hines this go round and while it was delicious it wasn't quite as moist. 
So the big trick to this is finding a good image that you can enlarge and print.  And by enlarge, I just mean on a regular 8x11 piece of paper.
After printing,  I simply trace the outline of the bird with some black store bought gel icing and "stamp" it on the cake.  Wa-La, I have an edible outline on the cake.   Everyone thought I drew it free-hand. 

The time consuming part is filling in the image, but I think it came out pretty good.  And most importantly the birthday boy was happy.
We also did this two years ago for his 3rd birthday which had a Ninja Turtle theme.
The cake was a Leonardo face.  It had a little more detail than Ice Bird cake with some decorative border around the outside.

Before I go, I'll share a few other images from the party.  It really was a good time.

This pinata was fantastic.  I got it on Amazon.  The reviews said that it lasted through a bunch of kids, but I never expected it to last through all of them.  How cool, right?!
I was about 12 kids ranging from ages 2-8 and they hit it with an aluminum kids bat.  I loved it because it went through the whole rotation (each kid got 3 swings) and back around to the birthday boy who ended up busting it open.  It was filled with 72 little dinosaurs (also from Amazon) and Airheads.

The red, white and blue strawberry idea came from The sisters Cafe  via Pinterest.  The ones they made look much more professional, but this were delish nonetheless.

The birthday boy and his cousin

The birthday boy hanging with some school buds

 A special Thank You to everyone who came.  It was a wonderful party filled with food and fun!  We always enjoy hanging out with friends and family, you guys are great!
And a very Happy Birthday to my 5 year old!  I couldn't ask for a more loving and passionate boy.  You are the best, buddy!