Birthday wishes to the USA

No I have not gone totally mad. I know it is not July 4th, American Independence Day, but it is my son's 24th Birthday today and he flew off to the States on Thursday. For the first time since he was born I will not be able to wish him a "Happy Birthday" in person. Instead for the next 10 days he is driving down the East coast of America with his golfing friend. They met when they were young lads of 9 when they joined the local golf club at the same time. They are catching up with friends who are still studying out there and also fitting in some quality golf time.

We decided to have a small pre birthday celebration on Monday and although it was not appropriate to have a birthday cake I decided that cup cakes were in order so it was time to do some more baking with Billy.

Only this time I think Billy was more interested in sleeping than helping.

I had one of those "light bulb" moments in bed when I thought that I could use the American flags and stars as the theme for my cakes.

I downloaded a "free"  image from the computer, sized it and printed several out.

I cut them out and attached them to cocktail sticks. I also printed a couple of messages which I also made into little flags.

It was then time to make my stars for the tops of the cakes. I already had some coloured fondant icing and luckily the colours that I had not opened were the red, white and blue.

I rolled the icing out quite thinly and used my set of 3 star plunge cutters to cut out lots and lots of red, white and blue shapes.

Here are the blue ones in all three sizes.

I was able to get this all out of the way last weekend. I was able to bake the cakes on the Sunday evening  so that all I had to do when I got home from work on the Monday afternoon was to quickly ice them.

So on Monday after work I made up some butter icing and piped it onto the cakes, adding the little stars and placing the flags on top.

If you remember my Baking with Billy post you will remember that I made a quick cake stand by standing a plate on a cup. Well I found 2 great glass plates in a shop recently. They are new pressed glass but they have a really vintage look and feel to them, and they only cost £7 for the pair. I was able to use these new glass plates with a cup in between to make my cake cake stand.

They sat in the middle of the party table and were enjoyed by us all. We had great fun and enjoyed all the food. 

My card today is his birthday card which I hope he remembered to pack. I will let you into a secret, Matt has always had a "thing" about giraffes and his very first soft toy was called Yellow Horsie which is actually a giraffe (no we also don't know how that one happened!). As a little boy he had all things giraffe and although he is now a grown man with his own flat and business I thought I would make something to remind him of home and of past Happy Birthdays. I looked long and hard for a giraffe stamp and eventually found a wonderful one by Teddy Bo. 

How cute is that giraffe ;0) Matt often wears a woolly hat so it is quite appropriate too. Also his favourite colour is green so I used that as my contrast colour.  There is a lot of love (and some dollars inside) packed into his card. I have used my Promarkers to colour the image. The super cute giraffe backing paper is by First Edition called Animal Antics. The gorgeous frame has been cut using my MS punch around the page punch which my Darling Daughter brought home for me from her Honeymoon last year. The sentiment is computer generated and I have cut it out using a Spellbinders die cutter. You will also spot the Memory Box bow die cut and the QuicKutz photo corner die.

I would like to enter my card into the following challenges;

Teddy Bo anything goes #48

Natalie and Amy Something old/new #6 The old is my backing paper and my new is the stamp (in fact most of the rest is new!)

Stamping Sensations Fur and Feather

Creative Card Crew #30 Birthday
Jelly Park Get in shape - Use different shapes on your card
Crafty Catz Dies and punches
Allsorts #195 animals
Pan Pastels Happy Birthday #8
Allsorts animals #195
Joanna Sheen Layer it up
Cupcake Inspirations Challenge 199 I have been inspired by the colours of the photo
Cutie Pie #38 pretty pastels
ABC card challenge H for Happy Birthday
My Mum's Craft Shop Love or Valentine
A+T emerald Faeries Love #40
Craft Room Challenge something for a man

Although he does not read my blog  I am sending Birthday Wishes to the USA for my Boy xxx

Can I ask my American blogging buddies to sing "Happy Birthday" at the tops of their voices and maybe, just maybe, he will hear it as he drives down the East Coast of America from Charlottesville towards Florida ;0)

Over here it really has turned freezing cold ago and there have been some flurries of snow too. He has chosen a good time to get away. 

Thanks as always for your kind visits and can extend a very warm welcome to the new followers who have recently joined me. It is great to have you here.

Keep warm and carry on crafting,

Back soon,

Bye for now,

Jane x