Busy as a Bee!

This is a busy weekend.
It's Matthew's 5th birthday in a couple days. **sniff, sniff... my baby is growing up too fast.....sniff, sniff**
So, with turning 5, we decided he's old enough to have a party with friends. He had 5 friends, 2 cousins and his 3 sisters, which made for a busy party. Busy, yes, but it surprisingly went to good!! I wish every party went so smoothly. Matthew had a blast!!

As part of Matthew's birthday party, we had Richard Young the Magician come and do a show. It was so good!! I've never seen kids laugh, giggle and be so excited. I loved how every child at the party got to participate. It was perfect! If you're looking for something great for a party, consider hiring Richard Young the Magician to do some magic for you. I've seen a lot of magic shows, but his are always the BEST! Check out his website.... http://www.ifoolu.com/

Also this weekend, I did another cake....
This was such a fun cake to make! The more I worked on it, the more I liked it. When I was asked if I could make a birthday cake for a sweet, little boy's 1st birthday and was told it was going to have a bug theme, I asked if I could have free reign to do a cake within that theme. Thankfully, she said yes. I get very excited about cake making, when I can search online and find cake ideas I'd like to make. If you'd like to see the inspiration for this cake, there's a ladybug cake on this blog....at the bottom..... click here.
I'll definitely be making this cake again for someone else's "bee" day. Hmmmm.... maybe my sister Heather's birthday since she loves buttercream so much and that's what this one is mostly done with.

Okay and before I did the bee cake, I started out by making some little bees out of royal icing.
If you want to see the recipe I like to use... click here. *I rarely make the full recipe because it makes so much. 1/2 is probably more than you'll ever want.

I made these bees after seeing some that my friend Jenn made. Thanks Jenn for sharing such a cute idea with me a long time ago.

Here's how to make them.... you need some white, yellow and black. I like to make my royal icing a little less stiff than the recipe makes. Just add a little water. Just enough that it will hold it's shape, but enough that it will not have any hard edges. Does that make sense??
How about I just post some pictures.... I think they're fairly easy to follow.... aren't they?

These look cute on cupcakes or cakes.... Plus, what's really nice is that you can make lots and lots of these and just keep them in a container. They'll keep indefinitely. And don't stop there, you can make all sorts of stuff with royal icing. If you saw Matthew's cake up above, the stars on wire were done with royal icing too (you can see the wires in these bee pictures).
Oh, and I should mention that I piped these bees onto parchment paper. When they're completely dry, they'll just slide off.

So, when you've got some free time, why not try making something out of royal icing!