Last in the birthday party lineup is Gabriel's Octonauts birthday. It's been tradition the last four years or so that on the actual day of his birthday I make a cake for him and we invite the grandparents over for cake and some pizza or whatever it is that we will be eating. This year he wanted an Octonauts party from Disney Jr. It's a super cute show that he has loved for awhile now however, it's originally a British show and has only been around here for a little over a year (if I'm not mistaken) so there isn't much merchandise as there is over seas. Again, I check pinterest for months for ideas on both "Under the sea" and "octonauts" birthdays and started my planning.
The day of, Gabriel got a special birthday breakfast of bacon and a big number five pancake with whipped cream and sprinkles. Poor kiddo wasn't really feeling well the whole day so he barely touched it.
I had baked his cake the day before and that day all I had to do was to put it together, ice and decorate. It was an ombre blue velvet tiered cake with cream cheese frosting. The awesome part about this cake was that since it was an underwater scene I didn't really need a smooth iced surface so it wasn't super time consuming. I crushed up some graham crackers for "sand" and made a small batch of buttercream frosting to pipe on some coral and sea weed along with the "Happy Birthday". I added his Octonauts toys all over the cake and some mini white sugar pearls for "bubbles". I loved the result and the cake itself was so delicious that I'm still drooling over it.
I tried decorating the house slightly to give it that "under the sea" feel so I made a few jelly fishes out of some paper bowls, ribbons & crepe paper and hung them in a door way with some crepe paper sea weed over it.
Then more crepe paper sea weed along with some blow up fishes in the kitchen entry way.
Marshmallow pops made with some white chocolate tinted blue, dipped in crushed graham crackers and some baby goldfish crackers and some of the mini sugar pearls for bubbles.
I used some leftover cream cheese frosting which I colored pink and smeared them between two pepperidge farms cookies, some wilton candy eyes and a white m&m for a pearl to make these little clam cookies.
Octopus hummus dip. Just an orange bell pepper with some blueberry eyes (I had no olives!) in some Sabras garlic hummus. I'm addicted to this stuff!
I saw a killer whale cucumber on pinterest and attempted to make it and pretty much failed when I was "carving" it but Gabriel thought it was super cool that there was an Orca in the veggie dip.
For the food table I put up a plastic blue table cloth on the wall with some crepe paper sea weed and cut out some octonauts characters that I had printed out along with a birthday banner.
Ricotta and marinara stuffed "sea shells"
You can sea the "sea weed salad" (really, just a mixed green salad) as well as the desserts in this picture. I forgot to get a close up of the jello cups but they are just blue jello with a swedish fish on top
"Octodogs"(hot dogs sliced up to look like octopus) and "Sheldon's sea shell pasta" (small pasta shells, lightly buttered with parmesan cheese). We also had garlic bread and pizza that didn't make it in to the pictures.
Birthday boy and his weirdo Daddy. See? Everyone thinks he's super serious but he's just as weird as I am.
The birthday boy was loving his cake and having everyone sing happy birthday to him even though he wasn't feeling so great.
The boys. Three generations of awesomeness
Damian can't ever say no to some cake, just like his momma! And you can't blame him, the cake was pretty finger-lickin' good!
Time for gifts! Legos, clothes and the Octopod! He was one happy camper!
Overall, the little shindig went well. The food was good and like always, it was so worth it to see how happy the kiddo was with the result. It sucked that Gabriel was feeling icky but he loved his special day and enjoyed having his family and cousins over.
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