A Baseball Birthday Party!

Oh man....where does the time go?  Just a little over a year ago we were bringing this awesome little guy home from the hospital.



Our little man
Photo by Mandey Marie Photography http://mandeymariephoto.com/



What a whirlwind this past year has been!  I'm sure it came as no surprise to anyone who knows us this little guy's first birthday party was going to be all baseball....or as baseball as I had time to make it. 

Jackson has been born into a very baseball family....dad has played baseball for many, many years (far too many)........



Dad batting in a game.


.......he umpires baseball...........



 ....and coaches one of the local HS teams.  It is all baseball all the time!  Not to mention the fact we are big Minnesota Twins fans and watch every game.  In fact, here we are at the Twins spring training stadium in Fort Myers, FL.   

At Hammond Stadium in Fort Myers, Florida

 

Jackson meets Twins outfielder, Ben Revere.



Jackson meets Twins outfielder, Josh Willingham.



Anyway, back to the party..........I looked and looked and found so many fantastic ideas of how to make this little guy's first birthday party a home run.  haha...get it?  I used some ideas from http://celebrationsathomeblog.com/2011/03/batter-up-baseball-party.html and from http://www.oopsicraftmypants.net/2012/02/baseball-surprise-party.html.  I just love the name of this blog! 

I blended those together and a little bit of my own ideas, which I must admit were HEAVILY (is there any other way to show emphasis?) influenced by the blogs already mentioned.  Oh, and this is where I found the cake idea: http://2bluedogs.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/baseball-cake/.  What I'm about to reveal about Jackson's 1st birthday party is both a collection of memories and also little sit down conversation to tell you the parties you see in these blogs....all perfect and every last detail thought of and carried out with the utmost perfection is a complete farse.  Don't think you can replicate any of that....or okay, maybe that was a bit harsh.....don't think you can replicate ALL of that.  My friends, I don't know about you, but I DO NOT (again, is there any other way to add emphasis here, because I really mean it) have time to sit around and fuss over that many minute details.  Maybe you do.  If so, please tell me how.  I gots to know!

Here's the invite I sent out.  I printed it onto some cream colored card stock, which I think gave it a really nice look.  It was easy to create.  This part really didn't take much time.  I know my way around Word.   

Ticket invitation



Baseball cookies!  These are simply sugar cookies cut in to round shapes.  Here's a secret...I don't have a round cookie cutter.  You don't need one.  I used a glass.  It's like it's rocket science.  And I tried a new icing (http://en.petitchef.com/recipes/db-sugar-cookie-pops-fid-919957). 

Baseball cookies



Birthday Pennant - one for each month.



 I don't have any pictures of the spread, but it included hot dogs, popcorn, and nachos (along with some other foods to make it a well balanced meal) oh, and of course....Cracker Jacks!

Now for the cake.  I knew I was in for a big, big challenge here.  I found the one I wanted to replicate and was determined to do it.  However, after cutting out the pennants and putting them together (3 hours) and getting all the food ready and decorating the cookies (who knows how many hours), I did not complete the task.  It didn't turn out so bad...not great, but not bad.

I have one of these cake pan sets:

 I've had it for years and every year I make a baseball cake (like the one shown on the box) for my husband's birthday.

I used the inside round pan (the pink portion on the box above) to make two half spheres.  Then I made some butter cream (YUM!) and went to town.  Now, I wasn't so sure if this was even going to work or how to make it work.  I used the comments area from the blog from this cake (my inspiration)



The cake that inspired me!  See http://2bluedogs.wordpress.com/2009/01/31/baseball-cake/



This is Jackson's cake......

For me, the hard part was getting it smooth....it took a long, long, long time.  A very long time.  I used the Viva paper towel method. http://cakecentral.com/tutorial/perfectly-smooth-buttercream-icing.  This took me hours...no lie! 

A couple tips I will give you is, don't press down with your smoothing spatula!  Just let the hot water and the butter cream kind of melt together.  This is why it took me so long.  Also, if the butter cream was getting too warm being at room temperature, I just popped it into the freezer for a few minutes. 

I did one half of the sphere at a time.  The first thing I did though was cut a small piece off of one of them so the cake had a flat surface to sit on.  Because the cake and what little decorations I had took so long, I didn't even try to do the fondant baseball field to sit it on...I really, really wanted to but this mama just ran out of gas!    Here is the little man with his cake (and dad).  You can't actually put a one-year-old in front of a cake by themselves and expect it to survive for a picture.

Jackson, Dad and the basebal birthday cake.

One more thing about the ball cake...I made it about 24 hours before the big party....I think you can see from this picture the weight of the top part of the sphere is starting to settle.  In the future I would probably wait to construct the cake until the morning of the party. 

 That brings me to the next part of the par-tay.  The traditional cake destruction.  Oh boy.  This was something I was not 100% on board with.  Probably because I knew I would be the clean up committee.  Ugh.  Well, here's a picture of the cake to destroy:

Jackson's baseball cake to destroy.

I wish I was this good at creating pictures with icing freehand, but the reality is I am so not.  Here's how I did it:  http://brasstacksandbasics.blogspot.com/2011/08/super-fancy-cake-decorating-tutorial.html


I really wasn't that disappointed when the little guy just didn't get too into making a mess of the cake.



Family birthday pic.



Me and the little man.

So, I guess I lied...it wasn't all baseball....there was a little slip n slide action too.

And that's it....a very successful baseball birthday party.  I really wish I had the time, patience and enery to create every little thing from scratch and it would have been awesome to add even more baseball detail all around but really.  Ugh.  I can't even think about how much time that would consume. 

This is as good of a picture as he would let us get with Aunty Josy - the other Farmer's Daughter.

Cupboard....A Love-Hate Relationship!

Part of being crafty means you have to be experimental!! And super duper patient!! Here is a large antique cupboard that I wanted to refinish...back in 2009.....just in case you forgot where you were, its now 2012!

It is hard knowing the true age of this gem, but its old...really old....

 Here you can see some of the many layers of paint. REALLY REALLY GOOD OLD STRONG PAINT!!  This baby is 7 feet tall and weighs in at almost 200 pounds!!  

 I hated stripping this thing so bad, I hardly took any pictures it stripped!! Maybe it was shame...of me never having it done....after three years! 

Sorry, no bottom before picture...I had to use a jigsaw to cut all the wood off the bottom here and put a new 1x4 footer on.  Glue and screws hold it together!  I just hate changing the original parts, but I had no choice...it was rotting away!!

Here you can see that I just said to heck with getting the paint off on the inside...it just wasnt going to happen...I have much better things to do.........like, clean my garage as it turns out!

Don't forget the beautiful hardware!!! I left the back one for you to see the paint...this wasn't fun.  Paint stripper....toothbrush....toothpaste....muriatic acid....more water, toothpaste, brushing....Then i finished them with a light coat of RemOil....aka...gun oil.  FYI...Muriatic Acid is totally caustic, please be careful...actually I suggest not even using it!!

I have a new love....chalk paint!! You can buy it online, or you can use regular latex paint and mix with plaster of paris and a dab of water, and voila!! you have chalky-antiquey looking paint! No need to sand a piece for hours! Just slop it on...two coats and you are in business!! 

After paint, I sanded a few areas for the "broke in" look. Brushing the chalk paint on, gives it such a neat texture! 

 

And Ta-Daaaa!!!! The outside paint is DutchBoy in Fresh Rosemary, I also used the chalk paint method which worked out great! Inside is Antique White. I used the glaze technique also...

This crown molding....ahhhhh the find of a century!! The original was really beat up and parts were missing, so i wanted to find something old or old looking! Well, in an abandoned house, I found this piece in the perfect length!! 

Okay, the glaze technique is what makes those dark areas....using Glazing and stain or paint.  Let me tell you...everyone says "oh-just run down to your local hardware store and pick some up!" YEAH RIGHT!!! I looked everywhere...and all a long I had some from the local craft store in my craft room. But you can get it at a craft store, or I found a quart at Ace Hardware...it lasts a loooong time!! Basically you mix the glaze with the paint and wipe on, then off....got that??!! Wipe on....wipe off......

I screwed it up too, trust me...it got way too dark...but the glory of having painted furniture, is that you can just paint over the dark areas!!

So in conclusion....three years, 100+ hours of experimentation.....its finally finished and will be a piece I will never part with! 

...meanwhile, back at the ranch...

Holy smokes! What in the world have we been up to? You would think writting a little something here and there on a little blog really wouldn't be so hard. Well, hard it's not. The hard part for us constantly on-the-go types is finding and relishing in a sweet tasting moment to just well, sit. And here I am, finally with a moment to let you know what we've been up to. We're starting to get ramped up and excited with some new ideas and designs for Countryfied. We'll make a go of it yet. Here are a couple of our newest creations we are so excited about. What we love about this process is that because they are hand made and each one gets very special attention, each and every shirt will be a bit different than the next. Take a look:


Countryfied t-shirt





All Natrual t-shirt



Farm Raised t-shirt