Lola's 11th Birthday

A few weekends back we celebrated Lola's 11th birthday with a small Animal Crossing themed party. If you've been following along on Instagram you've likely already seen it, but as always, I love to share our parties on the blog too.

As with last year, we kept Lola's birthday party pretty small due to the pandemic, so we celebrated with neighbors and friends who we actually had not seen since Lola's 9th birthday party. Keeping the party small seems like it would mean less work for me, but there was still a piñata to make, a cake to decorate and themed party bags to put together. I love preparing everything for parties though, so I'm totally in my element when it comes to this sort of stuff. It's the only time I really get to do something creative (apart from Halloween) so I really enjoy it.

Let's take a look Lola's party...

Beehive Piñata DIY

For Mathilde's recent bee themed birthday party I made a beehive piñata. If you've been here a while you'll know that making piñatas is one of my favorite things. I find the repetitive work very relaxing and I love that it gives me a creative outlet. 

Most piñatas that I make for the girls are made from cardboard. This type of piñata is super easy to make and I can usually get one made in just a few hours - which is great because I'm totally a last minute crafter! For Mathilde's beehive piñata, however, I went with a good old balloon and papier-mâché style. These are also easy to make but are much more time consuming. The crafting itself doesn't take all that long, but the drying time between each layer means that I need to allow at least three days for the whole project.

I've shared a simple papier-mâché piñata DIY here in the past (you can see it here) but it was a decade ago so I figured it was time for an updated DIY with better photos!

 

Here's how to make your own papier-mâché piñata...

Mathilde's 7th Birthday

My baby is seven! 

This past Saturday was Mathilde's seventh birthday. We celebrated with a small party on Sunday with just our family and our neighbor. I had originally planned to hold the party on Mathilde's actual birthday but Ava came down with covid-like symptoms and we had to wait for her test results - which oddly came through at 11pm Friday. I guess those covid testers are working around the clock! Anyway, by then I had figured we wouldn't know Ava's test results until Saturday and pushed the party out to Sunday. It gave me an extra day to get everything ready, so that was a bonus.

Despite her party being small, Mathilde was still keen to pick a theme for her celebration. She went through quite a few (Minecraft, Slime Rancher, Among Us, bread (?)...) before she settled on bees as her theme. To go along with the theme I made a beehive piñata, honey crackles as treats, and decorated her cake (badly!) with a honeycomb pattern.  

Mathilde's 6th Birthday

Last Friday Mathilde turned six. 

Given that we're all sheltering at home, a party with her classmates and friends was unfortunately out of the picture. But that didn't mean that there was no party at all. Originally I didn't think we'd do anything right now and save the party for over Summer when (fingers crossed) we can start seeing friends again. But a few days before her birthday Mathilde started talking about all the fun things she was looking forward to doing at her party. It occurred to me that there was no reason to cancel or postpone her party at all. Instead of celebrating with friends, we celebrated with just the five of us. 

Because we were busy with school at home on Friday we celebrated Mathilde's birthday with a small party on Saturday. It worked out quite well as Friday was rainy on and off, but Saturday had glorious weather.

Lola's Potato Party

A few weekends back we celebrated Lola's 9th birthday with a potato themed party.

Ok, I know what you're thinking... A potato themed party? Huh?

I know, it's a weird one, but if you've ever met Lola then you'll know that she tends to be, well, a little weird at times too!

I have no idea what this potato thing is all about, but Lola and her friends at school have a potato club and so it seemed only fitting that it should also be the theme of her birthday party - especially seeing as most of the guests are members of this esteemed club!

So just what does a potato themed party involve?

Potatoes, of course!

We smashed a fancy potato pinata that I made (although it looked a little more like a Mr Monopoly egg due to the balloon shape!), we played "Pin the Top Hat on the Potato", sang "Happy Birthday" over a cake featuring a fondant kawaii potato (not all potatoes are fancy!), ate Irish potato candies that I remember from my childhood and potato latkes, handed out realistic looking potato stress balls as thank you gifts, and Lola wore a potato t-shirt.

Here's a look at all the fun - well, some of it, because the kids spent half their time playing hide and seek in the house and it's hard to take photos of them when you don't know where they're hiding!

Mathilde's Kiwi Bot

If you frequent Downtown Berkeley, or if you've been following along with my Instagram stories you're sure to be familiar with Kiwi Bots, the cute food delivery robots that zoom around Downtown and the Cal campus. If you don't frequent Downtown Berkeley or watch my IG stories, then you're probably wondering what on earth a food delivery robot is!

Kiwi Bots are super cute robots that have taken over the sidewalks of Berkeley. Created by the Kiwi Campus team at UC Berkeley, Kiwi Bots are the cutest way to get your meals delivered from local restaurants. You order through an app, chose a delivery location within the zone and the Kiwi Bot brings the meal to you in its insulated body that keeps food hot or cold. As you can probably imagine, Mathilde is obsessed with them! She loves seeing them on the street when we're out and about and always wants to stop to chat to them - or give them a hug.

In the lead up to Mathilde's birthday she kept asking for a pet Kiwi Bot as her present. While a delivery robot of our own would be amazing, they're not really something that's available to purchase - and if they were I imagine they'd be super pricey. What is available to purchase, however, is a plush Kiwi Bot! Perfect as a gift for Mathilde's birthday.

Now, there's only one way to get a plush Kiwi Bot, and that's to order it through the Kiwi app and have it delivered by a Kiwi Bot! How fun is that? 

Lola's Emoji Themed Birthday Party

Last weekend we celebrated Lola's 8th birthday with an emoji themed birthday party. There were smiley face emojis, heart eye face emojis, winking face emojis, and, yes, plenty of her favorite: the poop emoji!

We had a beautiful sunny day here in Berkeley and celebrated Lola's birthday up on our roof deck as we usually do. It wasn't even windy, which is pretty rare! In fact, we were even able to light a candle on her cake without it blowing out straight away. I don't think that has ever happened at any of our parties!

The emoji theme was spread across all aspects of Lola's party and I'll have lots of fun (and simple) DIYs coming soon. I made emoji face decorations and photo props, I baked emoji cookies, cupcakes, poop emoji meringues and a rainbow poop emoji birthday cake, we had an emoji face piñata, emoji themed gifts in the party bags and pass the parcel, and the girls wore emoji t-shirts. So many emojis!

Mathilde's Wild Kratts Birthday Party

I feel like I've been starting every post with this lately, but here I go again...

I've been a little behind here on Little Hiccups, so it's time to play catch up!

Ok, when am I never behind? Between the kids' schedule, travel and writing for other web pages (which you can see here) Little Hiccups tends to get a little neglected. But my goal is to catch up so fingers crossed I can keep it.

Anyway, enough of that. Let's take a look at Mathilde's 4th birthday party from a few weeks back...

Lola's Art Party

October is always a super busy month for our family. Between Halloween and all its preparations, visiting a pumpkin patch, school festivals and harvest festivals it's already a pretty crazy month. Throw in Lola's birthday right in the middle of the month and crazy takes on a whole different meaning!

This year we celebrated Lola's 7th birthday with an art themed party. As usual, she came up with the theme and was eager to help plan all of the fun. It was such a great party theme with endless options for creative fun. Let's take a look...

For the party invitations I had a ton of different ideas going through my head (as did Lola) but none of them seemed quite right. Then an image of Lola as an artist popped into my head and I knew that it was perfect. So she dressed up in a striped shirt, placed a beret on her head and added one last touch - a paint brush balanced perfectly on Lola's duck face pout! If you know Lola, you'll know that she is the self described queen of duck face (take that Kylie Jenner!) so it seemed only fitting that her favorite selfie pose be included on the invitation. Plus it totally worked with the whole French artist look!

Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake

For Ava's recent birthday party she requested a completely different kind of birthday cake. I use the word "cake" loosely, because her cake wasn't actually a cake. Rather, it was thick, chewy chocolate chip cookies stacked on top of each other with layers of icing in between. A chocolate chip cookie cake! Doesn't it look delicious?

The theme of Ava's birthday party was Pokémon, so in keeping with the theme I made a few cake toppers featuring some of her favorite characters. I love how the cakes turned out. They look a little more grown up than the cakes I usually make, so they're perfect for a 10 year old, but the cake toppers tie them in with the party theme and add a little fun.

I originally got the idea for a chocolate chip cookie cake from Foodstirs, a kid friendly baking subscription box that I receive each month. Each month's box features a fun baking idea along with all the (non-fresh) ingredients required. A few months back our box featured a chocoloate chip cookie cake. We ended making it for Kim's birthday in December and it was such a hit with the kids that Ava decided then and there that she wanted the same thing for her birthday.

The chocolate chip cookie mix included in the Foodstirs box was absolutely delicious, but as I have a favorite chocolate chip cookie recipe that I like to use, I decided to go with that and modify it a little for Ava's cake. Today I'll be sharing my recipe for Chocolate Chip Cookie Cake as well as templates for the cake toppers.

What you'll need:

For the cookies:
Set of 3 mini spring-form pans (You can find them here on Amazon)
2 Cups all-purpose flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
3/4 cup unsalted butter, melted
1 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
1 tablespoon vanilla extract
1 egg
1 egg yolk
2 cups semisweet chocolate chips (I like Ghiradelli)

For the icing:
1 1/2 cups icing sugar (powdered sugar)
3 tablespoons unsalted butter, room temperature
2 tablespoons Greek yoghurt
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
Sprinkles for decorating

This recipe made enough for 6 thick cookies (two cakes). I made three cakes all up so I made the recipe twice and we had one cake left over for home.

Preheat the oven to 325F (165C).

Grease the pans and put aside.

Sift together the flour, baking soda and salt. Set aside. If, like me, you don't own a sifter, you can easily sift the dry ingredients together with mesh colander and a wooden spoon or spatula (see photo further down). Set dry ingredients aside.

In a medium bowl, cream together the melted butter, brown sugar and white sugar until well blended.

Beat in the vanilla, egg and egg yolk until light and creamy.

Mix in the sifted ingredients until just blended. I don't own a sifter, so I used a fine mesh colander placed over the mixing bowl, and use a spatula or wooden spoon to "sift" the dry ingredients into the bowl.

Stir in the chocolate chips by hand using a wooden spoon.

Fill each mini pan 3/4 full with cookie mix. Use a spatula to press the mix into the pan and to smooth the top.

Bake for 25 minutes in the preheated oven or until a skewer poked into the center of the cookies comes out clean. Depending on the thickness of each cookie, the baking time may be a little longer.

Leave the cookies in the pans to cool for 5 to 10 minutes, then transfer to a cooling rack to cool completely.

While the cookies cool, make the icing by mixing the icing sugar, butter, Greek yoghurt and vanilla together in a medium bowl until smooth.

Once the cookies have cooled it's time to assemble the cake (something I missed taking photos of as I prepared for the party). Based on personal preference, work out the order you would like to stack the cookies. I put the thicker cookies at the bottom and tried to use ones with smoother tops at the top. Apply a generous amount of icing between each layer of cookie. I found it easiest to apply the icing to the bottom of the middle and top cookies as the bottom is nice and flat. Once the stacked cookies are stuck together with icing, decorate the top with a generous layer of icing and sprinkles.

The cake looked pretty good as is, but in keeping with the Pokémon theme of Ava's party I added four small cake toppers featuring different Pokémon charcters. I made the cake toppers using my printer and Cricut machine. You can find the printable for the cake toppers here.

I used the "Print then Cut" option in the Cricut Design Space to make these cake toppers. You could always cut them out by hand if you don't have a Cricut machine. I find curved nail scissors handy for this sort of thing. Once the cake toppers were cut out, I attached a tooth pick to the back of each with tape and they were ready to put in the top of the cake.

 Ava and her friends love her chocolate chip cookie cake. It was a novelty because it was so different from the birthday cakes I usually make, but it also tasted fantastic!

Have you ever made a cookie cake before? Trust me, after you try this one you'll be making them for every party!

Pokémon Party Invitations

For Ava's recent Pokémon themed birthday party I made the invitations in the style of Pokémon cards. They were such a fun invitation and Ava's friends were pretty excited to receive them.

Here's a look at the invitations...

Lola's Rainbow Unicorn Party

Yesterday we celebrated Lola's 6th birthday with a rainbow unicorn themed party on our roof deck.

After the grey and rainy weather of last weekend (when it was actually Lola's birthday), we were in luck with perfect weather for the party. It was a little overcast, and the view over the bay was foggy, but the sun was shining and the temperature was just right. Not too hot, not too cold.