Surprisingly, we have a little daughter that is obsessed with Buzz Lightyear. Not princesses, not My Little Ponies, not the entire Toy Story Clan. Just Buzz. And occasionally Zurg because, well, they are arch enemies after all. We have a bucket of little Disney figures (purchased long ago for another child) that has a 2″ Buzz Lightyear character. I can only assume that is where her obsession comes from, as her and Buzz have been best friends for months. So, when her 3rd birthday was fast approaching I mentioned the idea of having a Buzz Lightyear party and she immediately agreed! All she talked about for weeks was her “Buzz Lightyear cake” and how amazing her party was going to be. And, amazing it was. 🙂

For the record, I love decorating cakes. Even when I was little, I’d decorate all my siblings cakes with cute little figurines and colored buttercream frosting. Pretty quickly after we starting having kids, we purchased a little cake decorating set and I think I’ve done one almost every year for each of my kids. However, I have this amazing neighbor that pulled off a wickedly cool fondant cake for her daughter a few months ago and I begged her to teach me. So, she did. Voila!

Fondant is really not as hard to work with as you might think – my friend helped me cover the cakes with the two different shades of blue, and my awesome cousins who were staying with us at the time helped me cut shapes, and roll balls. I think it turned out pretty good, yes? Rachel (who had the coolest My Little Pony cake a few years ago) asked me why her and Andrew didn’t get really awesome cakes for their birthdays? Ugh. The bar has been set.

One of our little birthday traditions is that we have a HUGE breakfast. Sam and I (well, sometimes just me) decorate the kitchen the night before while they are sleeping so its “go time” as soon as they roll out of bed. Each kid has their favorite breakfast – and Cara’s this year was waffles with strawberry syrup and whipped cream. Yum!!

Sam & I had a huge hike to go on with the Young Women in our ward, so we postponed festivities until later that evening. We had my family over for dinner, presents, and cake & ice cream. Rachel & Andrew were super cute with their presents! They spent a lot of the morning writing stories, drawing pictures and wrapping them in LOTS of wrapping paper. BUT, it was so cute to see how excited they all were!

We got her a “Big Buzz” and she was immediately in heaven.  Epic battles between Buzz & Zurg commenced.

The cutest thing was that we had to tell her that Buzz couldn’t blow out her candles, she had to actually do it herself.

Party on the inside too!! This is actually super easy to do – you just color the cake batter in a few different bowls and then layer it in before baking.