Family Carnival

We recently spent 2 weeks in UT for some family reunions. The first family reunion was my family and the second was my hubby’s family. We had a blast, plus I got to go somewhere the sun shines and it’s warmer than 70 degrees. A BIG PLUS IN MY BOOK!!! Anyway I digress, onward and upward.  My extended family is pretty young; the oldest grandchild is only 9 (she happens to be mine, the next oldest happens to be mine also) When my mom & sister were trying to think of ways to entertain the kiddos, they came up with a great idea.  They decided to have a family carnival.  Each family was in charge of one of the carnival booths.  Since there are 6 kids + my parents in our family we had 7 different stations.  My parents were also in charge of the food.  They even got a snow cone machine AND a cotton candy machine.  It was a ton of fun, super easy and kept the kids really entertained. 

The booths we had were

• Fortune Teller/Kissing Booth (I’ll explain)
• Ring Toss
• Dunk Tank
• Whack-a-mole/ water squirt
• Picture taking (strongman, trapeze lady)
• Donuts on a string
• Knock down the bottles.

This little game you hook up to your hose and it sprays water at you as you jump on the little whack-a-mole guys.

Take your picture as a circus performer.

My sister did and awesome job with this one. The kissing booth was guessing how many Hershey’s kisses there were in different sized bottles.  BUT the fortune teller was by far my favorite, my sister dressed up and told peoples fortunes, she used one of those paper fortune teller things you use to make back in 3rd grade (remember those?). Every kids got to keep one as a souvenir from her booth.  Plus the fortunes were hilarious.

This wasn’t a true dunk tank, but it was still really wet and fun.  A person (mostly my husband) sat on the stool while other people got to throw wet sponges at them (him).

Ring toss.

I usually don’t share family pictures, but here are some from the carnival, some of them are my kids, some of them aren’t.

My parents also brought foot racers and stilts for the kids to play with.

We were coming from so many different states that our booths weren’t super elaborate or involved but you could really go all out, or just keep it simple like we did.  It was a great time. 

Easy Purse Cake

Well the purse cake turned out pretty great for our little princesses birthday yesterday.  She loved it!  Plus, it was super easy to make.  Here’s how

You’ll Need

• 1 9X13 cake

• 1 container of pink icing (or whatever color you want your purse to be)

• assorted candy for decoration.  I used

• mini M&M’s, licorice,  Good & Plenty, and pink sugar sprinkles.

Cutting the Cake

Make sure you cake is really chilled before cutting.  You might want to put it in the freezer for a little while.

Cut your 9 X 13 into 4 sections each about 1/2 inch shorter than the section next to it.  The largest section should be about 4 inches.

Stack the cake on their sides, to start forming the shape of the purse.  I know it doesn’t look so great now, but don’t worry.

I moved my cake to a cutting board at this point and cut the sides at an angle the top of the purse smaller than the bottom of the purse. I didn’t have to cut much off.

I

Then I cut down the top of the cake so it would have a nice gradual slope.  Like so

If you want you can stuff the cracks with extra cake.

Stick the sections together with your favorite jam. Placing it on your cake board.  After it was all stuck together with jam I placed it back in the freezer for a good 20 minutes before I attempted to ice it.

Once it’s out of the freezer I did a light crumb coat with vanilla icing and stuck it back in the freezer for about 5 min.

Then I iced it with the pink frosting.  Since my daughter picked a strawberry cake I just used strawberry icing so I didn’t have to tint mine.  It worked out great.  

Also I didn’t worry about getting the icing super smooth, because I covered the whole thing in pink sugar sprinkles.  Continue to decorate with whatever candy you would like.

This is a great cake for little helpers to help decorate. ENJOY!

Little Doggy Cake

I made this cake for my daughters 2nd birthday.  It’s one of my all time favorites.

You’ll Need

1 9X13 rectangular cake

1 container of chocolate frosting

2 Jr. Mints

2 white Necco Wafers

Red licorice

Black licorice

Red Fruit Roll-Up or Fruit by the Foot.

M& M’s

Cutting the cake

Make sure your cake is really chilled before cutting.  You might want to place it in the freezer for a little while.

I made this cake before I started blogging and taking pictures of everything.  So hopefully you can see how it’s done.  The white rectangle represents the 9x13 finished cake.  First you cut the body with the legs plus the head (leaving out the nose) out of the cake.  Then with the leftover cake you form an ear, tail and nose. Round off the nose so it looks like a real nose and not like a rectangle.  (make sense??)

Decorating the cake

Once you have all of your pieces cut out you can start the assembly.  Place your ear, nose and tail on the cake.  Ice all of the cake with a light crumb coat and place it back in the freezer for a few minutes.  Once the crumb coat is firm remove from the freezer and continue icing until the cake is completely iced.  Use a fork in make lines in the icing representing the fur.  Add a white Necco Wafer for the eye with a Jr. Mint on top.  Add a Jr. Mint for the nose.  Shape a tongue out of a red fruit roll-up or fruit by the foot. Add red hots for collar and another white Necco Wafer for the dog tag.  I added my daughters initial on the dog tag with chocolate frosting. Use the red licorice for the leash and add M&M’s for decoration on the leash.  Use the black licorice for the eye lashes.  All finished!

I was really happy with how it turned out.  Today is actually her 3rd birthday and she wants a purse cake.  If it turns out I’ll share that with you too! Happy birthday sweetie pie!!!

Super Easy Ice Cream Cake

This ice-cream cake is so easy and yummy.  All you need is 3-4 ingredients.

You’ll need

box of whoppers

box of ice cream bars (these come in lots of flavors any kind would do)

cool whip ( chocolate flavored cool whip is awesome if you can find it)

chocolate sauce (optional)

Unwrap the ice cream bars and start with four on the bottom.

add cool whip

then a layer of chopped Whoppers.

continue doing the same until you have 3 layers.

add chocolate sauce if you want.

ENJOY!!

I chopped my Whoppers using my food chopper.  Every time I use that thing I always have this song in my head forever.  So I thought I would share…

Stop having a boring tuna stop having a boring life!!