Happy Birthday Oliver!

One of my favorite annual traditions since marrying into the Maduro/Dusedau family is making our little cousin Oliver's birthday cake each year. It started with a baby chick cake for his first birthday, last year I went crazy with a green dinosaur at his request and THIS year, for his big 4th birthday, I wanted to do something that stuck with the "Science" theme of his party - thrown jointly with his best friend OB (Oliver Benjamin). 

SO...taking inspiration from Pinterest, and with advice from Sara and Keeley - who've tackled this cake for their own kiddos, I made what looked like just a nothing-fancy vanilla cake. 

Oliver and OB had to help finish it, by putting colored sprinkles on the top...(the final ingredients for this science experiment)....

THEN...I cut a slice- revealing that the sprinkles turned the cake RAINBOW inside!!

So fun to see their amazed faces and squealing excitement!

 

I'd say it was a hit. 

Now I need to start planning next year's cake...

Insta-Bench...

Neal had the awesome idea to push the planters back a foot or so from the edge of that concrete level, making a bench for people to sit on.

Before our housewarming party, I whipped up some basic pads to cushion our guests behinds. Don't look to closely at the edges, this was not a very neat job, but I think they are pretty cute.

I also made some thinner, simpler ones for the gross built in bench on the lower patio.

I used basic drop cloths from Home Depot and filled it with some polyester batting.  A little embroidery floss to "quilt it". All done while watching Mission Impossible 4: Ghost Protocol.

A wall of planters...

Since the very first time we saw this place, we've been concerned about the drop off between the two top levels of our back patio. Here's a picture from before we moved in (that's Gali, our awesome contractor) where you can see the 2-3 foot drop off. 

 

We knew this was one of the first things we wanted to tackle. Don't want to have a party and have a friend drunkenly topple over. A couple of weeks ago, our friend's little girl, Delilah was running around and almost soared off the edge. 

So, our idea was to make a wall of planters there, something to keep people from falling off the ledge, but also pretty. One of our friends, don't remember who, sorry guys, had the good idea to put it slightly back from the edge, so the ledge itself became a bench for people to sit during parties. (Can you tell we plan to have a lot of great parties here?) Brilliant! I may even go buy some cheap Ikea seat cushions to throw there when needed. 

ANYWAY - we hunted for planters, could not find ones we liked that also weren't CRAZY expensive (like these...or these...mmmm....) so finally settled on some redwood planters from our local Anawalt lumber yard. We kept thinking black so figured we could paint or stain these later on if necessary. 

Now, I'd read a lot about how to keep wooden planters from rotting too quickly and the cheapest option was to coat the inside with roofing tar! So one morning I laid down some plastic tarp, got gloved up, and spread this awesome good all over the inside of the planters (keeping the drainage holes clear) in a thin layer.

 It was like icing a cake. But smellier. And stickier.

Once you have a 1/8 or so inch coat, let it set for a least 24 hours.

In our case, let it sit a week. We used a coupon to the Sunset Nursery that came in the mail when we moved in, and got a bunch of plants that all needed about the same amount of water and would grow a  couple feet tall and to make our "wall" effect. I'm happy with them so far...really brings warmth to our concrete oasis.

This could become a habit...

S'mores by our new firepit.

This weekend was with college friends Cheryl and Rachel and their husbands.