Coming from pulling off that Army-themed retirement/birthday dessert table earlier this month, I decided about two weeks ago to throw my girls a farewell/early graduation party on their last day of school. I didn't yet know what theme it would be. All I knew was that my girls wanted to wear their Rapunzel and Aurora dresses, but I definitely did NOT want to throw another princess-themed party, which is what they had for their birthdays last year.
 |
| pretty princess Gabi |
So I slept on it. And the next day, I woke up excitedly at 7am, cuz I had thought of a great theme: Oh, the Places You'll Go! It's a Dr. Seuss story book, about a kid who goes on a journey experiencing the highs and lows of life, manages to overcome the challenges and unknowns and bravely face the future. It's an apt theme for farewell and graduation for sure!
 |
| Oh, the Places You'll Go dessert table |
 |
| love the cheery pastel colours!* |
I also love that it is a rainbow-coloured theme. Dr. Seuss books always have that signature black outlined, black shaded illustrations, and I tried my best to bring those into the desserts and cake. And while the book is illustrated in lighter pastels, I wanted to have brighter "cheery" pastel colours for the desserts. Hold on to your hats yet again, folks, cuz as you can probably tell from the long intro, this is gonna be another epic, long post!
 |
| happily stuffing her face with gummies |
For the celebration, I made cookies, cupcakes, cake pops, macarons and a 2-tiered cake. Even though there would be over 50 kids at the party (I had asked the school principal to invite the other classes as well) I only made a small quantity of desserts cuz I didn't want to have too much leftover!
 |
| silly little Things* |
The cookies were sugar cookies, flavoured with a hint of lemon, and decorated with vanilla royal icing. Because it was to be a farewell AND a graduation party, I had to include a graduation cap and diploma scroll in the cookie set as well.
 |
| cookie sketches + royal icing colours |
 |
| cookies in progress |
Many of the shapes were hand-cut out of cookie dough, but I am glad that I got to use my Cat in the Hat hat cookie cutter once again. (I had used it for this Cat in the Hat-themed dessert table a couple of years ago!) I also wanted to inject a little Canada into the table, since we are going to be moving to Vancouver (Soooo excited to be going home!!!), so I added a little maple leaf to the Hat cookie.
 |
| before shading |
 |
| after shading! |
It took a while to dye the royal icing and mix up the proper consistencies for all the rainbow colours, but the effort was worth it. I really love how all the cookies came together!
The cupcakes were ondeh-ondeh: soft pandan-coconut cupcakes, filled with gula melaka coconut and frosted with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream, dyed the colours of the rainbow! I piped the coloured rings of frosting on the cupcake to mimic the artwork in the Dr. Seuss book, topping each cupcake off with an edible printed image.
 |
| green ondeh-ondeh cupcake batter |
 |
| in the oven |
 |
| perfectly baked, 15 mins later! |
 |
| gula melaka coconut filling |
 |
| Oh, the Places You'll Go cupcakes |
 |
| rainbow frosting |
 |
| lots of colours, just like in the book! |
 |
| adding white chocolate on the back of the edible images |
 |
| Oh, the Places You'll Go graduation cupcakes |
For the cake pops, I made a mix of balloons and graduation caps. The balloons are vanilla, while the graduation caps are chocolate cake. To make the square part of the graduation cap, I had a square silicone ice cube tray handy (free gift from Nespresso! last year with purchase). I put in about half a teaspoon full of melted chocolate in the mould, tapped in the counter a few times to release air bubbles, and let it fully harden in the fridge for 10 mins before popping it out of the mould.
 |
| nifty Nespresso square ice cube tray |
 |
| two cake pop designs in pastel rainbow colours |
I painted the 2018 numbers on the sides of the caps using a mix of yellow and white Edible Art Paints and a fine paint brush. I love how these pastel rainbow graduation caps turned out!
 |
| graduation cake pops |
 |
| the tassels will be added at the venue |
The macarons were a mixture of the odds and ends of different pastel coloured macaron shells I had stocked in my freezer. Unfilled macaron shells can keep for up to year in deep freeze! You just gotta thaw them out, fill them, and let them mature in the fridge overnight, and they're just as tasty!
 |
| dark chocolate ganache & lemon meringue macaron fillings |
These macarons are filled with dark chocolate ganache and lemon curd with vanilla Swiss meringue buttercream.
 |
| pastel macarons |
 |
| macarons all plated up* |
Now, onto the cake! The top tier is a lychee cake, filled with lots of juicy sweet lychee pieces and fresh whipped cream. The bottom tier is the ever-popular decadent Devil's Food cake with whipped dark chocolate ganache.
 |
| lychee cake, surrounded by rainbow buttercream |
 |
| edible icing images |
I picked some pictures from the story book and had them printed out as edible images to decorate the cake with, tweaking the character by adding some hair to make it female. The diploma scroll on top of the cake is a piece of edible paper rolled up and "tied" with a green fondant bow.
 |
| graduation cake toppers |
 |
| edible icing diploma |
The bottom tier of the cake was decorated with strips of pastel rainbow coloured fondant, cut in even widths with the help of a fondant ribbon cutter. The black shading was added using an edible black ink marker.
 |
| rainbow fondant stripes |
The graduation cap on top of the cake is made of Rice Krispie treats, covered with dark chocolate ganache and a layer of fondant. I also had enough leftover Rice Krispie treats to shape a hot air balloon to go on the dessert table! I filled a square dessert cup with stiff dark chocolate ganache, propped the balloon Rice Krispie on a long wooden chopstick, and added some pastel non pareils on the chocolate. Boom, edible hot air balloon!
 |
| Rice Krispie treats |
 |
| edible hot air balloon! |
Now, short on time and still wanting to everything to turn out great, I went to my go-to for dessert table styling: the always reliable, super creative All Mommy Wants!! I had engaged them for this Cat in the Hat party a couple years ago, to do up a photo booth and bouncy castles, so I was glad that we could reuse some of the props from that party.
 |
| Oh, the Places You'll Go dessert table* |
 |
| touches of Canada* |
 |
| love this signpost! |
 |
| custom-made foam prop!* |
But having said that, this was a totally new theme and a totally new set-up. Once again, I was wowed by the effort that went into conceptualising and styling every single tiny detail. They even made a styrofoam mountain prop and made a special graduation hat cake pop stand x 2!
 |
| check out that handmade rainbow tassel! |
 |
| customized cake pop stand |
We even got to reuse the directional arrow signs from the Cat in the Hat party photobooth, but All Mommy Wants threw in two brand new arrows. Love it!! The backdrop is just genius too. The blue "sky" is a reuseable PVC banner, but the colourful mountains and hot air balloons are separate print outs that they stuck onto the banner, achieving the 3D effect using some loose cotton for the clouds! Genius.
 |
| love the backdrop!* |
 |
| BFFs!! |
I love the "bookshelf" stand on the side, which was perfect to display all the Dr. Seuss books (that I borrowed from the library!) plus the Oh, the Places You'll Go storybook that all the kids' friends and teachers signed in, in lieu of a typical signature book.
 |
| view from the book corner |
 |
| Oh, the Places You'll Go storybook |
 |
| filled with well wishes from friends and teachers! |
Instead of goodie bags, we got each of the kids in my girls' Nursery and K2 classes copies of the Oh, the Places You'll Go book, My girls worked hard to hand-write personalised messages in the inside cover of each and every book for all of their classmates! I also got Canada pencils custom-engraved for giveaways, cuz I didn't have the foresight to buy a bunch of generic Canada flag pencils from the dollar store and bring with me when we were in Vancouver for my cousin's wedding in March earlier this year.
 |
| specially engraved Canada pencils |
For Thank You gifts for the teachers, I was able to get custom-printed mugs with a very fast 3 day turnover in short notice. All Mommy Wants helped to design the mugs as well, to match nicely with the Oh, the Places You'll Go theme, borrowing the poem and mug idea from my friend's Cat in the Hat party giveaways.
 |
| Dr. Seuss poem on the Thank You mugs |
 |
customized Thank You mug gifts for the teachers
|
I was surprised to see that they had decorated up the side wall in the party room as well, with a customized Oh, the Places You'll Go bunting, and hot air balloons with photos of my girls and their friends in the baskets! Such a nice touch!
 |
| Cat in the Hat showed up to party* |
 |
| special photo hot air balloon bunting* |
 |
| Magician Silly Lenny |
This provided a nice backdrop for the magician we brought in the for the party: Silly Lenny from Makors Events. He did a great job entertaining the kids for about an hour, with magic tricks and balloon sculpting. My silly girl asked for her balloon to be sculpted into the shape of a poop! (and my son asked for a toilet to compliment that.) Gosh. They really are my kids!
 |
| Silly Lenny and his balloon tricks |
 |
| where'd all the milk go? |
 |
| kids are so excited to volunteer! |
 |
| balloon sculpting time |
 |
| yep, she asked for a POOP. |
 |
| and her brother got a TOILET.... |
All Mommy Wants also arranged for a nice Surprise box for Cayleigh! When she lifted up the box cover, a bunch of rainbow balloons floated out, and the box contained a stuffed toy designed after a sketch of Minnie Mouse that she drew last year! The stuffed toy was made by a lady in South Africa, and the proceeds were used to help buy food for her family. It is such a nice social initiative to help the less fortunate women over in South Africa. Please contact All Mommy Wants if you'd like to find out more info.
 |
| what's in the box?! |
 |
| surprise!!! |
 |
| it's a stuffed toy based on Cayleigh's artwork! |
Oh, and because it technically was "tea time" and I didn't want the kids just having sugar to eat, I brought over a couple of Pepperoni Pizza's XXL 21" pizzas!! These pizzas were so massive that I had to fold down the back seats in my car to transport them! And 2 pizzas were more than enough to feed everyone, even though the pizza guy told me that these pizzas are meant to feed only 6-8 people. Seriously?! Dude, it fed over 50 kids!
 |
| apparently my trunk is less than 42" wide... |
 |
| biggest pizza she's ever seen! |
 |
| so excited to take a slice! |
 |
| all smiles after pizza |
 |
| happening party at school! |
I used up the last couple of sparklers in my stash for the girls cake. It was a bit weird not having a birthday to celebrate, so I had the kids sing "see you next year, Gabi" to the tune of Happy Birthday. Bwhaha silly. Oh well.
 |
| sparklers and a "birthday" song. |
 |
| time to cut the cake! |
The school principal presented Cayleigh with her "graduation certificate" and we took a big group photo with all the kids. Definitely challenging to get everyone to look in the same direction!
 |
| Congrats on Kindergarten graduation, Cayleigh! |
 |
| photo with all the teachers |
My kids really enjoyed this memorable party to help them bid their friends farewell. I do hope that they keep in touch with their best friends and catch up when we are back in Singapore next year! Thanks again to the All Mommy Wants for helping to make this farewell+graduation celebration an event full of colourful surprises and touching details! And many thanks to you for reading all the way through!
No comments:
Post a Comment