Out of this World Birthday

As B's 6th birthday approached I began to ask him what type of cake he wanted. At nearly 6 years old he's got a lot of interests. I'm sure we could have done a wide variety of themes, but when he mentioned a rocket ship cake I jumped on it. I thought it was a great theme that would allow a lot of creativity with out the restriction of buying a bunch of products with a licensed character on them.

A t-shirt decorated with fabric paint pens.

I ordered these banners online only because I got a great deal on them. I decided to get two so he could put the one with his name up after the party and the 6th birthday one could be used by a little cousin.

So this was my first ever attempt at fondant. After a little debate my husband and I decided to use a log style ice cream cake for the body of the space ship.

Rather than trying to ice the cake made some marshmallow fondant to cover and connect the ice cream log to the cake pieces. After looking at several recipes I ended up going simple: Lots of butter to keep it from sticking, microwave marshmallows, stir in powdered sugar. That's pretty much it! The biggest problem I encountered was that the fondant didn't budge once it got cold on the ice cream cake.
I also had to work on the cake in little spurts because I was afraid it would start to melt if I spent too much time on it. Gel icings were used to "paint" the cake which gave it a fun shiny finish. 

Since the cake couldn't sit out I decided space themed cookies were a necessary addition. I think they ended up being my favorite part! I used a pre-made sugar cookie dough and added left over fondant to some of the cookies. The gel icing's I found had some something resembling fine glitter in them which really worked with the space look. I have an amazing set of cookie cutters!

Other additions:
I had some wedding gift bags from Bed Bath and Beyond laying around. I decided they needed a little jazzing up and they would be perfect for the space party.

I was lucky to find lot's of little space and alien themed items in Target's dollar section. I decorated brown paper lunch sacks with glitter glue for each kid and filled it with goodies such as stickers, pencils, and alien goo. Of course, as the only girl my lovely niece needed a new necklace added to her gift bag as a feminine touch.

We recently got a little counter top pizza oven, we set up a make your own pizza station complete with alien pizza sauce (alfredo dyed green). The kiddos weren't crazy about trying the space sauce.
Also, because the plastic cups were reusable we provided alien stickers to decorate you cup so everyone could tell them apart.