Alex's 7th Birthday Party

My son Alex's birthday is not until next Wednesday, March 23rd but we celebrated it a little early this year. In many ways, Alex  reminds me of my dad...stubborn but very sensitive.  Alex is extremely creative whether it's with paper & colored pencils or Lego's.  He also  loves music...actually, I think he actually feels the music.

So, today we celebrated Alex's 7th birthday with his friends.  We had the party at a local bowling alley.  Alex invited many of his 1st grade classmates and they all had fun.  My tradition is to decorate my kids birthday cakes for their birthday parties.  This year, the theme was Toy Story.  We have always loved all the Toy Story movies and when Toy Story 3 came out, all four of us were at the theatre the weekend it opened.  We loved it!.

This year's birthday theme was a natural choice since Alex's backpack this year is Toy Story! I spent hours looking for just the right on-line image to use for Alex's birthday cake.  Alex loves dinosaurs and naturally, one of his favorite characters in Toy Story is Rex.  I had concluded I would have to create my own image by combining Woody, Buzz and Rex using Adobe Photoshop Elements.  But before I had time to do this, I had to pick up Alex from school and as he is running to the car...what did I see?  His backpack with just the right image!

Alex's School Backpack

This was probably the most challenging of all the cakes I have decorated.  I was not even sure I could do it but I decided I had to try for Alex.  Alex was very happy with his cake, and so was I.  It took a long time to paint this onto the cake, but the time spent was well worth it given the joy it gave Alex.

Alex's Birthday Party Cake

 Another tradition is to create Popcorn wrappers and Hershey candy wrappers as part of the party favors.  I created these using images from the web and Adobe Photoshop Elements.  I love to personalize them with the birthday theme, age and picture of the my birthday boy or girl.

Popcorn and Candy Wrappers - Part of Party favors

Back of Popcorn and Candy Wrappers - Alex's picture blurred for blog posting