Volcano Party!

Last weekend was the big event: Big Bear's 6th birthday party!!! He had a great time with family and friends.

The hit of the party was the lava rock toss into the paper mache volcano we created:

Seeing Little Bear attempting to get his lava rock out of the volcano kind of gives you a sense of scale. It was a fair-sized mountain!

I made some special bean bag "lava rocks" to toss. I just used some rock and lava-looking fabrics from my stash. Some were traditional square shapes, others were more irregular (rock-like!). They are filled with a mix of poly-fil and dry red beans.

For prizes/favors, I ordered some custom-created cotton candy through etsy seller, Sweetopia. She was even able to color it grey-- to mimic volcanic ash! It was awesome!

And of course, there was a volcano cake. I took inspiration from a tutorial I found for making an erupting volcano cake and used a bundt pan and a bowl to create the cake stack. Since I knew we wanted it to be sturdy (as opposed to spongy), I used a recipe for Vanilla Bean Bundt Cake that was nice and dense (though it was also a little on the dry side; still tasty though!). We used a glass to cut out the center of the bowl cake and then stuck it down the hole through both layers, just as in the tutorial. Then we used some dry ice to create a foggy/eruption-effect. It was actually pretty darn cool in person. Big Bear loved it!!!

Happy Birthday, Big Bear!!!