Pretend Play Birthday Cake

My son got a wild hair tonight and he insisted that we throw a surprise birthday party for his toy ninja.  It's 8pm and 2 days before Christmas the last thing on my mind is to bake a cake for a toy ninja.  However, I was more than happy to craft a cake.  I've been saving a KFC bucket for a few weeks waiting for some inspiration.  Finally that inspiration has come!  Melissa & Doug make an adorable pretend play birthday cake, here's my homemade (built with a 4 year old) version that also doubles as a birthday cake hat!

The ninja blowing out his birthday candles.

Age: 3+
Time: 30 minutes +
Mess/Cleanup:  This isn't too bad. It's a let messier than making a real cake. It all depends on the materials that you use.  If you use glitter and glue, except a bit of mess. 
What You Need:

• KFC Bucket
• 2-3 sheets of White Paper (to help hide the KFC logo)
• 2 pieces of 8x10 felt
• Tape
• Scissors
• Various colors or self-adhesive felt, like this (for cake decorations)
• Various self-adhesive foam stickers, like this (for cake decorations)
• Scrap pieces of cardboard or styrofoam
• Glitter and Glue (to make sparkly candles)

Why I Like This Craft:
My kids love playing in their pretend kitchen with all of their fake food.  I think this birthday cake is an adorable addition.  If we spent a little more time on the cake decoration and if my son was a little older, this could look store bought and would hold up to lots of play.  Plus, I love that it doubles as a hat. 

Step 1:
Cover the chicken bucket with white paper and then the felt.  I used the white paper to help cover the logo on the bucket.  I applied the white felt over the paper and taped it to the bucket.

Step 2:
Cut a few strips of cardboard or styrofoam to fashion some candles.  Invert bucket and cut a few slits in the bottom of the bucket so the candles can be inserted into the slots.

Step 3:
My son loves to use my expensive glitter.  So we decided to make the candles sparkly.  We covered the cardboard strips with glue and applied glitter to both sides.

Step 4:
Cut some flames out of the cardboard and covered both sides with yellow felt.  And to use the glitter again, I ran of bead of glue around the edge of the flame and my son dipped it in orange glitter.

Step 5:
Cut a little notch out of the flame so it can fit over the candles.

Step 6:
Decorate your cake with jewels, felts, markers, paint, etc.  We used only self-adhesive felt, so the cleanup was pretty easy.

Step 7:
Sing Happy Birthday to the Ninja and enjoy!  And since the bucket is still open you can use this a birthday cake hat (or you can buy one like this).  How fun (or silly)!

Enjoy!
-Rose @-}---