Mexican Star Pinata

For my son's 5th birthday we had a Mexican fiesta theme. I wanted to make a pinata and let him choose the style. Lucky for me he chose the traditional star shape which looks great and is fairly simple to create.

I wanted a perfectly round ball, so I bought a punching balloon from the dollar store. It blows up pretty big, so I ended up with quite a large pinata. The make the points of the star I cheated a little and used birthday hats (If you want a longer point then you can roll of newspaper into a cone shape).

After adding several layers of papier-mâché to my balloon, and letting it dry completely, I added my hats.

I started with one on top, and then about a third of the way down the balloon (longitude)  I added three more (just imagine a triangle shape when you are looking directly down on the pinata/bird's eye view). Then at about two-thirds of the way down I added three more hats with my "triangle" shape rotated slightly from the one above so they pointed out evenly in different spots on the pinata. (Sorry if this sounds very confusing!) To attach the hates you can either use hot-glue, or more strips of papier-mâché (that's what I did). There is no hat at the very bottom of the pinata, because it will actually get flipped up-side down and have a hole for the candy there.

After the hats were in place and dry, I popped the balloon inside, and made the opening a little bigger, and then attached string.

Next for decorating I decided to use a variety of colors. I have 7 cones, and wanted each to be a different color.

I started by decorating all the cones. I cut 4-5 inch lengths of streamers, with snips cut into them to make a fringe. Then, started at the tip I used more papier-mâché paste to attach them, wrapping them around the cone. overlapping slightly and working my way down to the base of each cone. 

For the body I cut lots of little squares from each color and then stuck them on with the paste in little clusters of color.

 A view from the bottom of the pinata.

I also added some skinny strips of streamers at the point of each cone. It's really pretty when the pinata swings on it's rope with the fluttering steamers! (sorry this isn't a great photo, I forgot to take one before the party started).

Cake Number 5

I'm really not much of a cake decorator. I want it to look good and all (things always taste better that look pretty, am I right?), but I just can't really get behind the idea of spending hours to decorate something that will be eaten in about 2 minutes by a bunch of unobservant five year-olds. When I saw this idea, I knew it was the cake for me! Simple and cute.

Once again, sorry for the poor quality pictures, I decorated this right as the guests were arriving (which is why this cake idea is so great, it only takes a few minutes to do), so I didn't have a chance to get a great picture of it.

Basically you ice the cake, the lay a piece of paper, whatever number or letter you're using in the center and carefully spoon the sprinkles all over the exposed icing. I learned pretty quick to just do a few sprinkles at a time, or else they just bounce off the cake and all over the counter. It helps to gently squish them into the icing too, so they stay in place. After the cake is covered remove the paper template and you're done!

Here's the birthday boy!

Diaper Cake

I made my first diaper cake this week. I like the simplicity of it. I didn't know the gender of the baby, so I tried to keep it pretty neutral. I can't believe how tricky it is to make these things, but I'm really happy with how it turned out.