Birthday Celebration + DIY Thomas the Train Cake

I’ve always been a planner.  So of course nothing has changed when it comes to my child.  Harper turned two earlier this month and I’m still a little in shock that time is passing so quickly.  Seriously though! Where does time go once you have kids?! He’s currently obsessed with trains and farm animals.  Seeing how we’ll be adding another kiddo to the mix this year, I figured his third birthday will probably be a lot more simple.  So, being the overachiever that I am, we had a little train celebration and I’ve been prepping for his farm animal birthday party!  Anything for my baby boy!

All of our family lives out of town, so we had a little dinner celebration with our closest friends on his birthday. Those of you that came out, thank y’all for coming to celebrate with us! Having friends like you guys makes living away from family a little bit easier! Harper has come to love y’all as much as we do!

So, as far as the celebrating goes…

What do all birthdays need? A train cake of course!  I took the cake decorating classes at Michaels several years ago and all my supplies have just been collecting dust.  So, I decided to pull those suckers out and give this DIY character cake my best shot.  I used the Thomas the Train cake pan, Funfetti cake mix, Wilton Icing Gel Colors, this yummy buttercream icing recipe, and Wilton icing tips (similar here).  Can you tell I favor Wilton products when cake decorating? Ha! I had all the supplies I needed, but no idea where to start with decorating this puzzle piece of a cake.  I ended up finding this super handy “how to” for the entire process and that helped tremendously.

If you’ve never decorated a cake before and you’ve wanted to try, you should definitely give it a go!  Don’t be intimidated by it. All ya need is a little ambition, patience and some time. There are so many awesome resources online…from what I’ve listed that helped me, to YouTube tutorials…regardless of what type of cake you are trying to make and decorate.  There are always going to be things we wish we could fix or change.  I ended up adding too much powdered sugar to my buttercream icing, which didn’t give me the consistency I was hoping for in the end.  My cake isn’t the prettiest one I’ve ever seen! But, you know what?  Harper knew it was Thomas the Train and that’s all that mattered! It brought a smile to his face and that made it all worth it…even the blue teeth!