Penner's 2nd birthday party!

Penner is turning two tomorrow. I am still in shock that my little boy is no longer a baby but a full-fledged toddler! I had been preparing for his birthday party for two weeks. And now it is done! I ordered this "print on it" from Etsy for Penner and it came with 1 day to spare. We don't own an iron, which is usually never a problem because we use a steamer. But the steamer would not do this time, I used my mom's iron to iron this on to a white t-shirt for Penner! I was so excited to have a special birthday shirt for him.

Me and my sisters spent a few hours drawing and cutting out Elmo, Oscar, Cookie Monster and Big Bird eyes, noses and mouths for balloons, goody bags and plates. It was a lot of work, but I think that they came out cute and that is was worth the work.

 My center piece was Cookie Monster stuck in a cookie jar staring at a plate of cookies. I got a few comments that this was mean, but I thought it was funny and cute.

Almost everyone eating at the table. My in laws were a little late but it actually worked out perfectly because we don't have enough room at the table for everyone at once. I made chicken tacos, and I guess they were good, because there was none left and I made a lot of food. We didn't have any cheese and we had vegan sour cream. The last thing I wanted was for Penner to have an allergic reaction on his birthday celebration.

Penner's cousins eating their tacos!

This was the best picture I could get of all the cousins sitting on the couch. I think they are all looking somewhat in the direction of the camera. And they were wearing sesame street clothes to go with the party's theme.

Sean put on Justin Bieber and the kids along with my 21 year old sister had a dance party.

I made my first cake!!! I think it turned out pretty good for my first try. I will admit that I had to use a lot of frosting to cover up some mistakes. But I mostly got good feedback on that, my mom said it was sweet ( probably because of all the frosting) but everyone else seemed to enjoy it. The cake was vegan, not because we are vegan, but because Penner is allergic to milk and eggs, so I always look up vegan recipes because they seem to have the best replacements for egg, milk is easy to replace. Without the eggs the cake becomes a little more crumbly and a lot more difficult to move or work with. All this to say, I am proud of the cake I made.

I also made these Oscar and Elmo cake pops. Also vegan, which was very challenging. I had to order vegan white chocolate from amazon because you can not find it in any stores. I called a vegan bakery and they told me they had never heard of vegan white chocolate. I was going to make cookie monster cake pops as well but the first batch of white chocolate get ruined and I had to throw it away. Vegan white chocolate is more difficult to melt, and on top of that I had to add food coloring which made it grainy, so then I had to add some soy milk and whisk it together until it was the correct consistency. I bought the candy eyes from Walmart and I used tick tacks for Elmo's nose. I have seen orange jelly beans used for Elmo's nose as well, but those were like $8 a pound and tick tacks were $1 with extra to spare. I didn't add the mouths because I could not veganize those.

We sang to Penner and it took him four tries but he got that candle out.

I had been telling him for a week that I was going to make him a cookie monster cake for his birthday. He was very excited to finally be able to eat it!

Then we opened gifts, Sean and I got him a tricycle that I could steer and push. We love to take walks to the park and at the zoo when it is warmer outside, but he doesn't like his stroller anymore, he always crawls out of it. Hopefully this tricycle will help. When Sean wheeled it in Penner screamed and laughed it was a perfect reaction!

Sean's grandma Pat made Penner this beautiful Sesame Street quilt. It is amazing. Maybe I should learn to sew of make nice things somehow. Or maybe I will just make more purchases on Etsy.

Happy birthday Penner I love you!!!