My sweet boy turning 8 was so excited to have his ‘Golden Birthday’ he began pondering what theme he wanted for his party months in advance. When he settled on what he referred to as “Old Computer” theme I had to laugh. What is that? He explained to me that he liked old computers and wanted a computer cake. He loves minecraft so I thought he wanted that type of computer theme but he quickly clarified for me. He was thinking of the old Apple II from 1984. HA! This is so far beyond what I thought he knew about the history of technology!! After I wrapped my head around all of that I decide this should be easy and man was it! I started with some old dot matrix printer paper we had gotten from my in-laws. You know, that paper with the holes on each side…yeah that stuff. I printed off banners and signs using the Minecraft font which looks like the hold school font. ( I downloaded it for another Minecraft party I had done). I then glued the words onto the old-school printer paper. Bam, done!  He liked green and black so I went through my basket of birthday decor. (Yes, I have a laundry basket tucked away in a closet filled with all of our party decor organized in large zip-bags.) I was so psyched because I found black and green balloons, streamers, forks and napkins. I just had to buy plates, cups and a table cloth all of which I found at the dollar store. SCORE! I also snagged some fun paper confetti to sprinkle on the table cloth as well as a 3-pack of small silver bags for gift bags  and a few trinkets/candies to go inside. I printed off the children’s names in the minecraft font and glued them on. Lord knows the kids always forget which bag is theirs and inevitably fight over the bags. The last thing I needed to do was make invites and a cake. He and I sat down and designed the invites together. It was actually my favorite part because I enjoyed the time together and seeing how much he actually knew about old-school computers. I also liked teaching him how to create a foldable invite using Microsoft Word. We found some free clip art and the Minecraft font to keep with the “Old Computer” theme. It didn’t take long before he was happy with the result. The cake was a little more tricky than the invites. I decided to make a laptop cake because I thought it would be fun to have a screen to write happy birthday on. I cut a box so I could have the screen and planned to cover it with cellophane and then fondant. I baked a cake using a 9×13 pan and sliced the top off to level it. I placed it on a piece of cardboard covered in aluminum foil taped to the cardboard ‘screen.’ I frosted the cake with black frosting (I started with chocolate and tinted with black wilton coloring. It’s quicker to make black by starting with chocolate. ) Next I made fondant for the keyboard. I like this easy marshmallow recipe. I colored half of it black and kept half white. I used a pizza cutter to create the keys on the keyboard and then decorated the base of the cake using wilton tips. I rolled out the white fondant creating the computer screen and used white frosting as the ‘glue’ to adhere the fondant to the screen base. I then used the black frosting to frost around the screen and the edges. Last I used a small round wilton tip to write Happy Birthday on the screen of the cake doing my best to create a similar font to that used on the invites and banners.                 He was so thrilled with the cake he and said, “Mom, it’s way better than I imagined!” My heart was happy too.