Casa Lobo Verde - Monster Party

Trinity is now 2! We can't believe it! Her party was on Sunday, June 3 (her birthday) and much fun was had by all. One of Trinity's favorite movies is Monster's Inc. and we wanted to try and do a theme party for her. Thanks to the lovely and creative ideas of Rai, I was talked into making a Monster's Inc. cake for the party. I tried to also order party supplies online to have Rai bring them down from the states, but because the movie was released in the year 2000, all of the themed items have been discontinued. As luck has it, we live in Mexico, and when the US gets tired of stuff, they ship it down here. Also lucky for me was Rai's eagle eye in spotting the party store near the Mercado that had all the stuff I needed: invitations, plates, cups, loot boxes, blowers, hats and buttons. Our babysitter Denis introduced me to a lady who makes piñatas, and I hired her to make a Sully piñata for us. All that was left to do was make the cake...

The Cake Fiasco...

It wasn't really much of a fiasco. The plan was to make a rectangular cake frosted with frosting that looks like Sully's fur, and make a ball cake, and cover it in fondant and decorate it to look like Mike Wyzowski. Mike was to be sitting in the center of the cake. I've been watching this tv show on the Food Network (thanks again for the dishnetwork, mom) called Ace of Cakes, and after seeing some of their creations, I convinced myself I was up to the task. Apparently I wasn't totally convinced, though, because I started having cake nightmares weeks before Trinity's birthday. It really reminded me alot of moot court during law school. My first attempt at fondant was from a recipe in the Joy of Cooking, and sadly, it didn't specify that it was fondant to be used as candy rather than fondant to wrap cakes with, so after several attempts at making it (and making a great batch, just of the wrong stuff) I turned to the internet and discovered recipes for "rolled" fondant. Those recipes were a breeze, the only problem is that fondant is not so easy to work with, especially in a hot humid environment. I hired Denis to watch Trinny for the day on Saturday, turned the a/c on high, and started my day by making multiple batches of buttercream to frost the cakes with. Yummm....there went my diet for the weekend. We didn't have any red food coloring (and couldn't find it at our local stores), so I wasn't able to make the Sully fur turquoise and purple, so I had to do it sort of turquoise and dark blue. The turquoise turned out to be really really green, but oh well. Then it was time to color Mike. The green turned out perfect, and I couldn't believe I managed to blend in the color so smoothly into the fondant. Then I rolled out the fondant.

My problem came in when I tried to pick the fondant up - it had started getting too dry, and by the time I was wrapping the round cake with it, it was cracking and falling apart. I chose the most messed up side to cut into to make his mouth and eye, so most of the rest of him looked okay. I couldn't belive I managed to get all the fondant teeth and eyeball to stick, and really, the cake did look great. But if I were doing this professionally, and believe me, I'd have to be paid ALOT to do it regularly, I would never have gone with my first attempt.

Beach Babies

The party was at our favorite Sunday morning hangout, Popeye's on Playa Larga. There's a baby pool that the kids could swim in, or stand in if they don't want to swim, and lots of sand and lovely views. The food is good, and we ordered lots of appetizers of quesadillas, camaronillas (shrimp tacos) pescadillas (fish tacos), breaded fish fingers and guacamole. We had, all told, about 22 adults and 14 kids. The best part (for me) was that I could totally enjoy myself, because my work was done. The restaurant cooked the food, brought out the drinks, and cleaned up the plates. After a week of making ice cream, fondant, and cakes, I was ready to chill out and enjoy the party. Trinity was an absolute champ. Normally she's ready for her nap by 1:30 or 2:00, and we ended up staying at the beach until 6:00 with Trin only having a few crying spells that didn't last long. Trinity spent the day playing in the pool with her friends, learning to make sand castles, and asking Daddy for more tattoos. We bought two huge sheets of temporary tattoos, one of spiderman and one of princesses, and they were the hit of the party. Andy was in charge of the tattoo station, and he was busy the whole day. Even most of the adults got tattoos. Trinity ended up with Spiderman on her right arm, a mermaid and a princess on her left arm, an arm band of something, and all the disney princesses posed together on her stomach. Lovely. Luckily they only last a few days.

Everyone loved the ice cream and cake (yay) and the piñata was a hit (no pun intended). Strangely, none of the kids wanted to break the piñata because they all really liked the movie Monster's Inc. We finally managed to convince two of the older boys to take out their aggressions on Sully, and in spite of breaking the stick into four pieces, they finally broke the piñata and got to the goodies inside.

All in all, it was a fabulous party, if I do say so myself. What made it fabulous, really, is that we have so many great friends, with such lovely kids, and it was such a pleasure spending the day with them. Having said that, I'm glad Trinity's birthday only comes once a year!

Monster Party

Tuesday 5 June 2007

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