Birthday Thank You Photo

For a few years now I've been including a photo collage like this in Sparky's birthday thank you notes. It requires asking each kid to smile for me, but I find that not so hard when they're holding cupcakes. I crop a square out of each picture and size it to a fixed number of pixels, then collage them all together. It's all done with Photoshop Elements, which came free with our scanner. I have the photo place print it out as a 4x6.

For the second time we did decorate-your-own cupcakes. The kids basically pave their cupcakes with assorted candies. They love it and it requires no fancy culinary creations on my part. Not that I mind creating confections, but I tend to get carried away. For instance...

The Volcano Cake of 2006

It wasn't actually that challenging, since the frosting could be (should be) messy.

The Dumptruck Cake of 2005 was really easy, just a mush of chocolate cake (dirt), chocolate pudding (mud), and crunched up Oreos (gravel). The tricky bit was when I realized I hadn't bought a dump truck yet and it was the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. But the gods were smiling and I found this cheap beach-toy truck.


My sister sent the construction cone candles, and we made a ramp so we could drive the cake onto the table.