Astronaut Cookies

These were some kind of work, but they turned out so cute. They were for Super Bear's school birthday party along with star cut cheese.

I used a gingerbread cookie cutter and then iced the men in all white.  I then did the visor and details with black and just a little red and blue to make them American astronauts.  Since I did 24 of them, I got a little sloppy with the flooding, but the kids loved them.

Rocket Ship Cake

This is the birthday cake for the space party as requested by my 5 year old. He wanted rocket ships and astronaunts, not aliens. With that in mind, I started looking around for rocket ship cakes. A site I love to visit is coolest-birthday-cakes.com because it shows photos of real people making real cakes - I'm not talking pros here.  It's right up my alley because I want to make birthday cakes for my kids and they really don't care how silly (or ugly) it turns out.  I just need ideas. This cake is a hybrid of several things I saw. I really liked the idea of putting Super Bear's photo on the ship (just be sure to put a piece of wax paper under the photo) to personalize it.  As you can see I used Twizzlers for the lettering and boosters, M&M's and Mike & Ike's for the decorations.  The candles went into the rocket boosters at an angle for "fire power", so when it was lit up, it was way cute.

This is how it looked when I started out, not pretty, but I'm learning how to "sculpt" a cake into the shape I see my my head. Click here and here for more of the party ideas, including the invitation wording and homemade jet packs!!

I also had fun making these astronaut cookies for the school party. They were a blast!

Space Jet Packs

I really have no idea where I came up with this idea, but it just really worked.  I know my kids still play with their super cool space walk jet packs.

You take a small piece of cardboard, around 10"x10" and drill/ poke four holes in it, two at the top and two at the bottom.  Then attach two empty juice bottles (the Juicy Juice ones work best because they are flat) with duct tape. Spray the whole thing with silver spray paint. Thread flat elastic through the holes going in and out of the holes to form two loops that come out the opposite side of the bottles like a backpack (see my terrible drawing). Tie the elastic together and cover with another piece of duct tape. Then I printed off the Nasa logo on sticky label paper, but you could use cardstock and a hot glue gun for on top of the bottles.  Voila, an astronaut's jet pack for space exploration.

Kids in Spaaaaace

For the 5 year old's birthday party he really wanted a "Space Party" which I was totally on board with since how cool is space? I started with the invites with this wording:

Journey with Lt. Commander xxxxx

to Outerspace on Shuttle Adventure 5

Mission Date:

Launch Countdown Begins:

Return to Earth Around:

The shuttle crew will be served lunch and cake!

 Report to Command Center: (your address)

Mission Control needs you, input your readiness at: (phone number)

I got the Nasa logo off their website.