Pirate Party Prep

May is Walt & Shep's birthday and one of the big things in our house is playing pirate!

I made the executive decision to have a few kids over for a pirate (and princess) birthday party for both boys.  

About a week before the party I thought, "wouldn't it be fun to have a pirate ship for the kids to play with?" After a bit of online research I found this website and bought the plans and pegs! A friend gave me the cardboard and on Monday I went to work.

It took about a day to get the panels cut out.  The great things about the plans is that they are "flexible" in the dimensions.  I asked Walt to come over to the cardboard boxes so I could measure his height and see if he could step over the edges, etc.

None of the kids really understood what I was doing while cutting the panels but when Ellery came into the basement while I started assembling she was STOKED!

Then it was off to PAINT it!  Cary was surprised I was actually painting it and we pulled all of the colors together from what we already had on hand.  Instructions said to use interior wall paint, which is what we did except Cary did purchase a can of brown spray paint.

Ellery helped!

Okay, so all of this work had to basically be done while Shep was napping.  He is just into too many things at one time to make any progress on anything.  He did play outside while I was cutting the boxes but even that was a bit sketchy at times, when he was trying to find the box cutter.  Ellery did a fantastic job of playing with him.

I'll leave the finished product pictures for the birthday party....

NOW....the cake.....

My original plan was, "KEEP IT SIMPLE!"  I wanted to buy a sheet cake and call it done.

That was until I found out a sheet cake was going to be more money than I wanted to spend and Walt saw blue box cake while walking through the grocery store.

GREEEEAAAT....  I guess I'm making a birthday cake!

Of course inspiration came from Pinterest.

The supplies.

I got to this point of decorating (the cakes I made earlier in the week so I could just decorate the night before the party) and realized the 2 tubs of icing I bought would not be enough to cover the entire cake.

Great.  Not happy but used the LAST 1 1/2 sticks of butter to make butter cream icing.  LOL!

Okay, so I used crushed graham crackers and raw sugar for the sand.

Red Swedish Fish in the corner were going into the "water."

Then I had to go BACK out to the craft store and pick up this clear gel icing.

Once home I dyed it blue and there is my water!

A little butter cream icing in the piping bag and there is my first attempt at scalloped edges.

By this point I was just tired.  Keeping it real, folks.

I found some black and red tube icing in the drawer from Christmas cookies

and again, piped them onto the cake.

Let me just add that this was probably the most frustrating part.  The "sand" wouldn't let the black icing stick to the cake and therefore was hard to finish a dash or the compass.  

At this point I thought, "What the heck am I thinking?  How did I get sucked into making this elaborate cake?  Where did SIMPLE go?"

Cary gave me the brilliant idea of using our Jake & The Neverland Pirate legos to create a scene on the cake.

 Yes, I'm pretty proud of myself.  It is HUGE!  2-1/2 hrs of decorating.

On to the party!