For birthdays each year, our four kids can choose to get a present from us or a birthday party. For her fifth birthday this year, one of our daughters chose to have a party. I kind of love the party option because even though it's a lot more work, I get to have fun being creative with cupcakes!
I baked two dozen pretty basic chocolate cupcakes, then went to work on them!
For the Thing 1 & 2 cakes: I baked these in red liners. (This picture shows just one liner, but I later switched the label to a second liner and placed the cupcake in that.) I made a simple cream cheese frosting and tinted it aqua with mostly blue and a touch of green food coloring. After lightly frosting the cakes, I waited until the last minute (very important!) to top the cakes with tufts of cotton candy. The labels are just circles cut out of white paper, and I hand-wrote "Thing 1" or "Thing 2" with a black circle around the edge.
For the Cat's Hat cupcakes: I baked these in blue liners and lightly frosted them with some of the un-tinted frosting. On these, you can see that I added a second liner. I just liked the brighter color it gave them. The topper is an Oreo cookie (red velvet, no less!) I took the top wafer off and used a smidge of frosting to adhere the marshmallow to the top. For the marshmallows, I dipped each end slightly in water, then in red decorating sugar. For the bow ties, I drew a template, then traced and cut them out. I added the squiggly black lines to mimic a cartoonish style.
I kept the food to just cupcakes and chocolate ice cream, though it was tempting to go all out! We played several simple games like Memory, using the hats in the bottom right of the picture. The red cups have white paper stripes taped around them and they were used for bowling.
The party invitation is pictured above. I wanted something a little
abstract, but that was unmistakably Dr. Seuss's The Cat in the Hat. And
of course, on the address card that I sent out I used our real address
and phone number. (Though if you called that number you might find someone named "Jenny".)
I also went abstract on the the decorations, trying to stick to shades of aqua, pink, and red, just like the book! I did have some Cat Hats that I hung up (the same ones from the memory game) but I don't have a great picture of those.
*The original inspiration for the Thing 1 & 2 cupcakes is a picture I saw on Pinterest years ago. The source for that picture can be found
here.
The Cat's Hat cupcakes were just something I came up with.
