Four Years and Counting

Four years ago today Kinley was born...after 17 minutes of labor, without a doctor present, in a hospital with no air conditioning...and we couldn't have been happier. Since then it's been one smile after another as we watch our sweet baby girl learn and grow. It's hard to believe that she is already four years old and getting ready to go to preschool.

This year we had two birthday parties again, and she shared both of those with her brother (and one with her cousin). For her portion of the party I decided to do a Hello Kitty theme. Little did I know that while Hello Kitty is popular in clothing design and stationary sets it is not popular in the cake and cookie world. I couldn't find a HK cookie cutter anywhere...not even to order online. We don't eat much cake around here so I usually try to avoid birthday cakes and do some other kind of treat instead. I finally saw an idea online for how to piece together a HK cake and decided to do that.
It was simple to make two round cakes (two layers each), cutting one in half to make two semi-circles and cutting the other on in to strips, one to go between the semi-circles to form an oval and the other two to be cut into triangles for the ears. I covered the whole thing with a crumb coat of thin buttercream icing.

I then decided to try making marshmallow fondant for the first time ever. It was super easy and looked great. I just mixed one large jar of marshmallow creme with 2 pounds of powdered sugar...and then kneaded it until it was dry enough to roll out and cover the cake. I colored portions of it for the eyes, nose, bow and whiskers and added those at the end. It turned out cuter than I even imagined.

There was no way I wanted to have two half eaten cakes laying around my house so I was determined to make cookies for the second party. I finally cut out a picture of HK from an activity book and traced around it over and over again on the cookie dough. It worked well and I decorated the cookies with the same icing I used for Cainan's Star Wars cookies.

Overall we had two great parties with yummy treats and lots of presents. Happy Birthday Kinley!