A Moon and Stars Golden Birthday!

I have to admit, I had never heard of "Golden Birthdays" (turning the age of your birth date) until Shortcake's godmother mentioned them many years ago. Since that time, Shortcake had been looking forward to celebrating her Golden Birthday before anyone else in the family since her birthday is the 13th of the month and everyone else's falls in the twenties. That is, until Cupcake snuck in on September 2nd!

So, we will celebrate TWO Golden Birthdays this year and Shortcake will console herself that she will actually get to remember hers. :)

First up... Cupcake's Golden Birthday. This little girl loves the moon so much. She looks for it wherever she goes. Daytime, nighttime... it doesn't matter. She wants to see her moon! So how could we not give her the moon and the stars for her birthday?

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~the decorations~

 The Pixar short movie La Luna enchanted all of my kids (and me too!) so I used that for inspiration. I made "glowing" star cookies using star cookie cutters of varying sizes and yellow sugar sprinkles. I also reused some paper mache stars from December's Our Lady of Guadalupe celebration and some sweet little star lights that will be added to our celebration this year. The white table cloth and the bowls underneath it were supposed to simulate the moon surface and craters. Cheesy, I know, but the big kids liked it and it gave me something to prop the little character up on. I also added some glow in the dark stars and a moon (like these) to our back wall but they only showed up in this picture.

 Unfortunately, this little guy doesn't have a name in the book or the movie so she just calls him "the Boy". I even made a big star and stood it up like the big star that lands on the moon in the movie (by stacking other cookies behind it).

The banner was made using a Moon Star font I found free online and some scrapbook paper. The backside was actually my favorite part of this banner. I printed off images of the phases of the moon and glued them to the black cardstock I used for backing. She loved it! We plan on moving it to her room soon so she can see "her moon" anytime she wants. 

~the food~

 Moon donuts for breakfast!

Moon pizza for dinner! You can't even imagine how easy it was to make these. Dunkin donuts + round biscuit cutter= moon donuts and Little Caesars + large round skillet lid + knife = moon pizza! Yeah. That's it.

~the games~

Moon bowling! Well, that's what we called it. She LOVED it! She pushed the ball down the little slide and cheered when the "bottles knocked down". She keeps talking about it even now and grabbing our hands saying, "Let's go knock the bottles down!" And it was wonderful that her birthday fell on Labor Day this year so that Sean could be home to celebrate with us. The only thing that wasn't wonderful were the stupid music videos blasting all over the bowling alley... but that's another rant for another day. Oh, and I did end up making her that birthday dress! Isn't she so cute in it? 

I also made this moon shaped pinata for Cupcake. It was super easy and I can post a tutorial later for anyone interested. This was where I found the pictorial instructions. I used their basic idea but made it a pull string pinata so all she had to do was pull the star to open it (my kids never like bashing pinatas open until they get older). 

Not sure what's going on here. 

Looks a little scary, Dad!

Chocolate?!

Honestly this wasn't a big hit until she saw the candy hit the floor. Chocolate kisses and stars!

~the cake~

It was a Golden Butter cake with Whipped Cream Cheese frosting. Y'all... this is my new favorite frosting! Oh. My. Goodness! Light and sweet without being too overpowering like buttercream but more stable and sturdy than whipped cream. Even the big kids kept saying "this is a really good cake!" YUM!!!

Now you can see how I got the moon cookie to stand up (that is one of my plastic measuring teaspoons) and what a cake looks like with it's backside shaved off. Yeah, I'm not sure what happened there. I thought for a second that the cake might look cuter if I cut off the crust. I didn't think of it though until after the cake was frosted and decorated so I tried it in the back and then decided just to leave it alone. She's only two. She'll never remember! Until she reads this blog post.

Happy Golden Birthday, my little Cupcake!