A Yellow Submarine Birthday Party and Cake. For my two-year-old.

We threw together a last-minute birthday party this weekend -- just some family and neighbors and some of the wee boy's babysitters -- and it turned out so spectacularly wonderful that some of the attendees may have been fooled into thinking I've got my act together.

To be completely honest, it was all our friends Beth and Kris who pulled it off. Until one night last week when our husbands went out to "the game" together, the party was maybe going to happen and the theme was going to be: birthday. But then we stayed up late talking, and I mentioned that the Wee Boy had actually asked to have a "Yellow Submarine party" and wasn't that funny because he's almost two and knows all of the lyrics to a Beatles song, and then suddenly Pinterest was involved.

And this happened:




  • We also had a Make-Your-Own-Sub-Sandwich Bar, complete with meat (again, thanks, Kris and Beth!), which is a weird thing for us vegetarians. We also had roasted vegetables, five kinds of cheeses (thanks, GrandDude!), garden tomatoes, and several kinds of pickles. For the kiddos, we had hot dog buns available instead of the giant subs. There was a brief discussion of Helmann's vs. Duke's, but that is for a future blog.



  • There weren't many kids there (we honestly aren't mentally prepared yet to have a for-real kids birthday party that has loads of two-year-olds running around), but for the few we had, we had a little coloring table for coloring your own submarine. I downloaded a printable image and the kiddos made submarines of all colors. This picture is of some of the aftermath, so try to imagine the table without juice boxes and sub sandwiches and applesauces:


  • My big triumph was, of course, the cake. You may not remember this about me, but I love to bake. I was feeling super happy about the party, and I honestly think a lot of that was because I took several hours and baked things from scratch. So very much from scratch that I knew all of the ingredients -- enough so as to ensure a peanut-free-mom that the cake was safe.

The recipe was a simple yellow cake with a 4-ingredient buttercream frosting. It was so so delicious, if I do say so. There wasn't a single piece leftover, so I guess people liked it. Yay!


Also, there is his name. I haven't mentioned it in the blog yet because
I'm weird about stuff like that. But I want you to see the cake, so oh well.

  • How to put an image on the cake: I printed out an image of the yellow submarine and cut it out. Then I lightly put it on the top of the frosted cake and traced the image with a toothpick. When you peel the image off, it will take a lot of the frosting with it (but that was okay with me because it meant the paper wasn't actually touching the final frosting). I outlined the toothpick tracing with red frosting, then freehand drew the rest of the design with an icing tip.

Voila! And feel free to pin this on the Pinterest, hee hee.

For those interested, his absolute favorite gift was: a suitcase. He had asked for his own suitcase for about two months now, and I wasn't sure he meant it. But he opened up that suitcase, ignored everything else (including a PILE of yet-to-be-opened-gifts), and rolled that suitcase away telling everyone he was going "to the airport." He walked down the stairs and rolled it all over the yard, then back up the stairs. He even packed a book, a toy car, and a pouch of applesauce for the road. That's my boy.

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