There's nothing like an enormous, bright red decade marker on your birthday cake to remind you of just how far you've come!

I got to make both of these cakes this past week, and not to get to philosophical on you or anything, but they reminded me of two things:

    1) I have just 3 short years left till a big 4-0 of my own; and,

    2) the Brian Setzer Orchestra recorded a fantastic song called Let's Live It Up in 1998, which starts with this lyric:

Ain't it the truth.  

What an awesome thing it is to hit a major milestone birthday and have people who love you enough to throw you a party.  Just to celebrate you for being you!  Awesome, I tell you.

Happy birthday, Dave!! Happy birthday, Brian!!

Today is Clara's 3rd birthday, and we celebrated with a little party this past weekend.  Since she's not yet in preschool and her daycare days are long past, she borrows most of her friends from her older sister.  So we had just a few kids over for her backyard party, but we still did it up in style!

Mickey Mouse Clubhouse is the latest, hippest version of Mickey out there these days, very popular with the toddler and preschool set.  It's Clara's current favorite because there are no scary parts.   At present, she's terrified of all the Disney movies... dogs... the dark... etc... but Mickey Mouse Clubhouse has passed the Clara Scariness Test, so that's what she landed on for her birthday party.

A quick cake search on Pinterest revealed lots of re-creations of the clubhouse itself, which is essentially an enormous black ball with ears.  I'm impressed at all the bakers who managed to balance a great big ball of cake on top of a skinny little pole!  But to be honest, I don't find it very aesthetically pleasing, as far as cakes go.

Plus, I wanted to keep things simple for Clara's party since it's just her 3rd and I wasn't looking to set the cake bar too high so early on!

So here is what she got.  Clean, bright primary colors, and Mickey's face smiling at her, which I cut out of layers of fondant with a sharp knife using the pushpin trick and a page from one of her coloring books.

I also liked the idea of creating a cake for Clara that lay in a similar spot along the complexity scale as Stacey's Abby Cadabby cake from her 3rd birthday party two years ago.

I was going for "whimsical" with the puffy, fluffy clouds, but Clara wanted to know why there were big white flowers in the sky!  Ah well, so she's literal.

As I mentioned before, I remember Stacey's 3rd birthday being the one where I no longer saw a baby, but a little girl.  Now that Clara's 3rd is here, I guess this means our baby days are over!  (Can I get an AMEN?!)

Here are a few more shots from the sunny summer party.

Happy 3rd birthday, Clara!