My Birthday Boy, past and present

It is nearly time for the next celebration in our family. This time it is my son's birthday which is on Thursday. He will be 22 and I honestly don't know where those years have gone. I know he does not read my blog so I can safely talk here! He has grown from my darling baby boy into a fully grown man in what seems like a matter of  a few years. How time flies by so fast. Although he is an adult and does his own thing he is still very much a home bird and prefers to have an old fashioned birthday family tea at home rather than go out to dinner etc on the day of his actual  birthday. Obviously at the weekend it is a very different matter... he celebrates with his friends and surfaces at some point on the Sunday morning (?sometimes afternoon!) after a hard night partying! 

For many years both my children had such fun birthday parties. We have so many fond memories of them. When they were tiny we would have them at home and in later years in a tiny local hall which could hold all their schoolfriends. We chose a theme each year and for many years it was the "character of the moment". One of my most vivid memories was when Matt was approaching his 4th birthday. He loved Noddy at the time and I made Noddy serviettes, party bags etc . Now up until to now on my blog I have not confessed to another of my crafty hobbies, as these days I do not have the time to do it very much. Well I will confess now...............I also enjoy cake decorating. I have also found out recently how to scan my old photos and upload them so I thought I would share with you some of my old memories.

The year Matt wanted his Noddy themed party I thought to myself, "Now that will be nice and straight forward for the cake, I can make a Noddy plaque". However my darling boy had very different ideas. No, he wanted a Noddy figure in his car driving and he wanted everything made in fondant icing too! So I set to work making the car and Noddy followed by Skittle figures, toadstall candle holders etc and this was my creation in 1993

We have had fun looking at the photos of my old cakes. They are not very good quality photos, as digital cameras were unheard of then. You can click on them to enlarge the detail. Here are a few more which I thought I would share...

Below was his Christening cake  I made in 1989. It featured some hand made sugar flowers I made from petal icing and a piped icing crib. I also used some ribbon insertion around the sides.

By 1991 (aged 2) he was a huge Thomas the Tank Engine fan and I made a cake using the train models which I bought for him and which he was then able to keep and play with. The cake was a butter iced Number 2 figure sponge.

By the time he was 5 he joined the "dinosaur" frenzy which all lads seem to go through and a blue dino cake was the order of the day, together with swampy candle holders.

As he reached his 9th birthday he had found the passion in his life, which he still has today....

Yes golf............he has actually now got a handicap pretty near to the one on the bag too!

Age 11 he owned a Game boy and then computer games became a feature in his life - he loved the old retro Pac Man game.....

And over the years many other cakes have been made and eaten. As my life got even more busier and I returned to work I stopped making fully iced cakes and just made plaques to put on top. They still look very effective and are so much quicker to make. I still always make the sponge cake with  different  flavour variations; jam with butter cream, chocolate and lemon are the favourites. In fact none of us are that fond of eating fondant icing so we used to peel a lot of it off anyway.

Last year was his 21st birthday and he had become a budding guitar player so above was the plaque I made for the occasion. It was complete with a miniature guitar which I bought and he was able to keep. It is very similar to the guitar he plays very loudly in his room now!  Here is the completed cake at the table before his family party began..

So tomorrow he hits 22...would you like to see a peek of this year's creation....

I am making the cake (lemon sponge with lemon buttercream filling; Matt's favourite) tomorrow so I can't show a photo of it completed but as you can see I have made a fondant icing  plaque of the back of a shirt of his beloved football team.....Tottenham Hotspur....or Spurs as most people call them.

So Happy Birthday to my dearest Matt, a party awaits him after work on Thursday... I can't wait...and yes there will even be some jelly and ice cream ;0)

Bye for now,

Jane x