Easy Ways to Decorate Birthday Cakes

Hey everyone!  Remember this?

It's being featured along with several other fantastic birthday cakes made by moms at the Birthday Cake Roundup at Life as Mom in an effort to demonstrate how easy it is to make special and unique cakes for your kiddies' birthdays (also affordable!)  Go check out all the great designs and comment to enter a giveaway there as well!

In the meantime, here's a little peek into my journey of birthday cake decorating:

I began to have an interest in cake decorating and all things sugary after I had my first child.  I wanted her to have a special first birthday cake.  Here is my first attempt at "real" cake decorating:

For my hubby's birthday later that year, I decided to get a little daring and tried my hand at fondant.  It was surprisingly easy and the perfect medium in achieving this Super Mario cake:

As usual, I quickly ditched the conventional cake decorating books and began making up my own techniques.  This birthday cake for the in-laws was decorated with white flowers and then I used a toothpick dipped in yellow food coloring to tint the centers.  Mostly because I was lazy...

Last year Gabi really wanted a school bus cake (I have no idea why?) for her birthday so this is the sad result.  It would have been a lot better if the cake plate hadn't cracked all the way down the middle, causing the bus to cave in slightly.  It tasted really good though and we all fought over who got the Oreos:

Here's a sunflower cake decorated with chocolate chips for seeds and marshmallow peeps for petals.  I cannot claim originality with this idea though - I believe I saw it in a Taste of Home magazine:

And David got his animal train for his first birthday!  This took agonizingly long to do so I would not recommend it as a quick and easy birthday cake.  It also didn't help that Gabi kept snitching gummy bears and M'n'M's off the cake when I wasn't looking:

Our Sunday school teacher is a big Yankees fan, unfortunately for him.  :)  I "cheated" by printing out the team logo on a piece of paper and then cutting it out to use as a stencil.  Wouldn't want to offend the team or anything:

And here's two random birthday cakes for people in my music group - note that Chuck's music notes are actually tiny footballs:

And now I am so inspired by these other decorators as well!  I refrained from showing you my baby shower cakes, because I already did that here; and besides, this is a BIRTHDAY cake roundup!

Go on now, check out some cakes and get inspired!  

OR get a craving for some sweet buttercream frosting spread on extra thick. . .