owen's second birthday cake

Owen's second birthday was a total blast. I'd like to share some party details. To start: Owen's birthday cake. 

The cake theme was Yo Gabba Gabba's Birthday episode. 

 In the episode, Brobee reminisces about his second birthday where he enjoyed a bowl of spaghetti. 

Thus, this was our inspiration for Owen's cake. 

Brobee was 4 layers of vanilla cake with vanilla butter cream filling. 

 The stump in Brobeeland is chocolate cake with chocolate butter cream filling. 

The bowl of spaghetti is fondant through an exturder. The meatballs are Tim Horton's chocolate Timbits. The volume in the bowl is trimmed cake from the Brobee and stump.

Owen wasn't quite sure how to blow out his candles, but he knows how to sing Happy Birthday. And most importantly he knew it was his celebration.

And he loved his cake. In true fashion Owen goes for the biggest piece first.

birthday invites

Owen's birthday invites are in the mail now. This year the party's theme is, big surprise here...

Yo Gabba Gabba!

We are planning two parties again this year. First is the one for the kids, then a second immediately after for our family and close friends.  What we learned from last years experience was to host our party a week after we return from Florida. That way we aren't scrambling to put a party together hours after walking off a plane. I'm really looking forward to the big day!

yo gabba gabba live in b-lo

I don't keep much of a secret of how we all as a family love Yo Gabba Gabba. This week we took Owen to his first ever live show at the University of Buffalo Centre for the Arts to see Yo Gabba Gabba Live. 

Owen was totally thrilled when he realized he was going to see, "Muno". This cut-out is as close as we came to meeting Muno, but our seats were very close to the stage. 

 

It was actually the perfect spot because any closer you probably would have strained to see the entire stage. 

Bright lights, cannons shooting off confetti and loud music were all things that I wasn't sure how Owen would deal with, but he was delighted by it all. He watched with wonder through the entire performance.

There were some great appearances including Biz Markie!

 And we weren't expecting to see Leslie Hall on tour with them.

Probably the thing that really surprised me was how dressed up everyone was. I guess it isn't much of a surprise to see kids dressed up as baby DJ Lance Rock and homemade outfits to suit their favourite characters. But half the parents were dressed up as well! These are our type of people! Usually we are the ones arriving in public places unashamed to be dressed up. But here, we looked pretty conservative.

Then we finished our night out with dinner at Duff's. This place is famous for Buffalo wings and gained notoriety when President Obama came here for lunch. They offer a limited menu of wings and fries. We ordered a combo of 20 wings, fries and beer for $20. Owen even tried a medium wing!

family day yo gabba gabba party!

Since Ontario implemented "Family Day" a few years ago, we've actually observed the holiday for its true purpose. This year was no different with having my sister stay with us for some quality Owen time. It's a little difficult to have parties these days, but we managed to blend everyone's interests into a Yo Gabba Gabba watching marathon / party. 

We pulled off this party on a spur-of-the-moment. Nuno and I decided to make a celebratory cake that morning and got right to work. I baked the Busy Day Chocolate Cake early and once cooled Nuno shaped and decorated the cake.

Here's Nuno helping Muno come together with a blanket of bright orange fondant.

After purchasing a couple chocolate discs and M&M's at Bulk Barn the cake was complete.

We ate these Brobee nachos for dinner.

Owen isn't really of TV watching age, and I'm certainly not on board with plopping him in front of the Treehouse TV as a sitter. But he had fun catching a few clips here and there and recognized the Muno cake dad made. We had so much fun together and I have to admit, I'm totally hooked on Yo Gabba Gabba.