Space Party Cupcakes

Life is Good: We have a five year old!

Recently, our big kid turned five. (*Holds hands to cheeks, shakes head.*) The time has flown by. Indeed, the hubs and I agree that these have been the best five year of our lives!

Since our oldest is silly for space, nutty for Neptune, and mad for the moon, of course, we threw a space-themed party!

I love a party! I mean I lovvvvvvve a party. And the prep is just as much fun as watching our guests enjoy it. This year was especially thrilling because the big kid and I did a lot of the party brainstorming and preparation together.

Baking with my grandmother was a wonderful thrill of mine as a child, so I have been including our big kid in (eggless, due to allergies) baking since he could dump a cup of flour into a bowl. He and I made these blueberry muffin cupcakes for the party. We talked about the different ways that I could decorate the cupcakes---like astronauts faces, maybe with a rocket shooting off of the top, or perhaps an alien? Then I made the mistake of suggesting suggested that it might be fun to let everyone decorate their own cupcake as an activity for the party. The birthday boy jumped at the chance. And as far as party activities go, it was a great idea! (I was just a little bummed that I didn't get to try my hand at decorating them myself...)

The prep was pretty simple. I purchased takeout containers to house all of the decorating supplies. I made different colors of frosting using my Grandma's recipe. Guests could also use chocolate chips (my kids have egg and nut allergies, so these were a blessing to find!), marshmallows, craisins, and fruit snacks that I cut into inch and a half-sized pieces.

The birthday boy thought the fruit snacks looked like alien antennas and asked if we could make the marshmallows look more like eyeballs. That's my kid! So I dipped a toothpick into black food coloring and dotted some marshmallows in the center. Voila!

I threw a plastic tablecloth over the dining room table so that when all of the guests had jumped into their rockets and zoomed home to planet Earth, all I had to do was pull up the sides of the tablecloth and throw it all in the trash!