A Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Party Theme for my son, Joaqui

In preparing for a party, I really plan ahead of time. I get really excited in planning a party. Maybe because I've been much exposed to party planning early on since my family had always been the host of gatherings/reunion; and the years of arranging meetings, conferences, seminars, formal dinners have further given me skills and experience in handling events. I treat events as special projects of mine. I' always like to be hands-on any preparation. I admit that I'm OC to details. I even organized my own wedding. To show you a bit of how OC I am, for my wedding, I drew a six-month schedule prior to my wedding and made a matrix - indicating the person responsible for a specific task, detailed date/time allotted for it, resources needed and the expected outcome of that activity. I delegated the tasks to my trusted family members and friends, thus ensuring that my wedding and reception went on smoothly. So it comes as no surprise to me and my family and friends,  that I would take pains in preparing my only son's birthday party. 

Six months before my son's birthday, I started asking him where does he like to hold his birthday party and what inspirations or theme he would like to have on that day. He explicitly asked for his party to be held in McDonald's Quezon Avenue. He was very specific about the place. He has good memories of the place because he attended a few of his classmates' birthday parties there.  Since Joaqui absolutely adores Disney Junior; he requested for a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme. It was a good thing that McDonald's Quezon Avenue offers that theme and their party package includes the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse loot bags and prizes.  Thus, it made it much simpler for me to concentrate on the edible giveaways.

Since I had the luxury of time to search and procure the materials needed for a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse theme. The internet has provided me answers how to execute the chosen party theme and where to buy the materials. I thought that I really wanted the party to be "Mickey Mouse kung Mickey Mouse." So, I decided to make these items - Mickey Mouse Character Cake, Mickey Mouse Cupcakes, and Mickey Mouse Sugar Cookies. 

The Mickey Mouse Character Cake pan is one of the earliest cake pans sold by Wilton, so it is not readily available in the local market. I had to order this one from ebay. With the Mickey Mouse Cupcakes, I got inspiration from youtube on how to do different Mickey Mouse Cupcakes. Lastly, I bought the Mickey Mouse and Minnie Mouse cookie stamps, ingredients and packaging from Chocolate Lover. 

I baked a Lemon Chiffon Cake for the Mickey Mouse Character Cake. It took me 1 hour and 15 minutes to prepare and bake the cake. For its icing, I made a buttercream icing or decorators' icing and used star tips to decorate the cake.  This is the arduous task - making and coloring the icing and decorating the cake. Tinting the icing to a darker color may take more than 20 minutes alone, especially the color black. Four hours were consumed alone in completing this task. 

For the Mickey Mouse Cupcakes, I chose to bake a Red Chocolate Velvet Cupcakes with Buttercream Icing. I baked the 80 pieces regular size cupcakes in four and half hours. It's better to bake the cupcakes in the center of the oven. The cupcakes will come out perfectly in controlled temperature of the oven.  It will not have cracks or overflow from the liner. I made the icing and decorated the cupcakes in four hours.

With the Mickey Mouse Sugar Cookies, it took me two days to mix, chill, bake, decorate, dry and pack these cookies.

These tasks may seem daunting at first, but I had my handy helpers - Yaya Jane and Joaqui. We were like an assembly line at home. It was exhausting, but really fun to do. My son had so much fun in baking and decorating the goodies and had the first crack at tasting these treats.

It was indeed a labor of love. Seeing my son smile with much delight on his special day made all the pains and effort worth it.  Also, guests were appreciative of the edible tokens.

Mickey Mouse Party was pure HAPPINESS for my son - Joaqui.