Ships Ahoy!

Not to be outdone by Anne . . . I too made a cardboard creation. Jonathan wanted a pirate themed party for his 5th birthday. Anne had sent me to the site that inspired her train and I noticed a pirate ship there so I got the plans and started work. My husband procured bike boxes for me instead of the requisite refrigerator boxes so I had to scale the ship down a bit and rework it but after a few days of work the results were totally worth it. I surrounded it with blue balloons which, with a little imagination, was to be the sea. Inside I stashed black balloons to act as cannon balls. All eleven children had a blast with the balloon fight, lobbing cannons at each other and trying to "sink" the ship by filling it up with blue balloons. The cake was a pirate ship, too, courtesy of Martha Stewart. It tasted great! My only complaint is that the chocolate chips were supposed to just get pressed in but they didn't stay. So, I melted chocolate and made them stick. Unfortunately all that melted chocolate was very hard to cut at a moment's notice. Other than that, it was a yummy cake, a fun party, and a jolly good success!