Birthday Celebrations

She's had a birthday, shout hurray!  Jane is officially a 9 year old!!!  We celebrated last Saturday with the THIRD iteration of a rainbow cake for my little Rainbow Brite.  Apparently she likes to bring it back every 3 years.  Hahahaha.  Seriously, though.  The rainbow made an appearance for her 3rd birthday, her 6th birthday, and now her 9th.  Of course, I had to change it up just a little bit each time so it wouldn't become BORING, but the essence is still the same.

This version featured a rainbow swirled batter for the cake itself.

Boom!

Voila!

I'm pretty sure that this is the first year ever that she hasn't requested a chocolate cake, so having a vanilla cake base for the layers lended itself to a little more "creativity."  Hence the rainbow-marbled batter.  I added gold sprinkles to the side this time (you know -- like the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow), and since I had some white fondant leftover from Alex's birthday cake I was able to whip up some nice, white clouds for the bottom.  I also found the best ever vanilla buttercream frosting to decorate with that I've ever used.  I'll link it here because it was so awesome.  Basically the trick was to use cold butter at the start and then beat it until it was light and fluffy.  It took longer than my typical recipe takes, but I think it was totally worth it.  The end result was the lightest, fluffiest buttercream frosting that also tasted delicious.  :)

(Lighting the candles was a much more complicated ordeal than it should have been.)

(Seriously -- I need to make a mental note to buy a lighter so that we don't have to keep using wooden skewers that are lit from the stove.)

Cute, little happy smiling face!

While I was working on the cake all morning, Scott had all the kids (minus Jane) with him at Walmart where he was simultaneously trying to have everyone pick out their birthday presents while also getting the oil changed in the van AND having all 4 tires replaced because it was past time to do so.  I'm not sure who had the more aggravating couple of hours.  Hahahaha.  J/K.  It was totally him.  I would MUCH rather be working on a cake all morning than dealing with cranky and melting down kids at Walmart for hours on end.

Slime -- every kid's dream, every parent's nightmare.

Once they were all home and the presents were wrapped, it was time to sing Happy Birthday, rip into those gifts, and cut into the cake.  Nom, Nom, Nom.  I'd say the birthday girl had a pretty great birthday.  :)

To close the post, I couldn't go without including flashbacks to Jane's other rainbow parties.  Enjoy the trip down memory lane...

 Version 1.0 -- Rainbow Brite

 Version 2.0 -- Rainbow Cake Redux

(She was so excited about those rainbow star candles.)

3 year old, 6 year old, and 9 year old Jane.  I just love her cute little smile! :)

{That last week of August was like birthday alley!  Not only did we have Jane's birthday on the 28th, but David's birthday was the day after that, and one of Grace's good friends from our old ward had a birthday the day after THAT and Grace spent most of the week trying to put together a birthday package for her.}

We had fun celebrating with David by taking advantage of Sonic's half-price slush day that just so happened to coincide with his big day.  Happy birthday to David, aka Kid 7 in our family!  ;)

(Ethan was sick that night and missed out on the after Mutual/Activity Days fun.)