Families Belong Together: Elí’s 4th Elephant and Piggie Bday Celebration

Last weekend we celebrated my wonderful little man’s 4th Bday, Elephant and Piggie style! The birthday boy requested that we use his party to promote families belonging together. So we used Gerald, Piggie, Duckling, and Pigeon to tell the story of family togetherness. The beautiful photos were taken by Tequila Graphics.

Elephant and Piggie Cookies
The royal icing cookies always take the longest, so I made these 2 weeks in advance. This was my first time making the cookie cutters myself. I really like how they turned out. Will definitely continue to make my own cutters in the future.

Pigeon Cookies
I made these cookies the night before the party as a last-minute edition. They are chocolate-covered double stuffed Oreos. You can’t get nearly the same detail as you can with the royal icing with melted chocolate, but they are still super cute and literally take 10% of the time it takes to make the royal icing ones.

Elephant and Piggie, Families Belong Together Painting
This painting was inspired by The Thank You Book by Mo Willems. I painted this in the days leading up to the party as my gift to Elí. I also made a slightly modified version of this, with less prominence to “Elías’s bday” and added the big heading EVERYONE IS WELCOME HERE, which I turned into 11×17 printed posters for the kids to decorate at the party and hang up at their own homes.

The Gerald and Piggie Band
This painting featuring Elephant, Piggie, Duckling, and Pigeon, was Adán, my wonderfully creative 6 yr old son’s gift to his brother.

The Gerald and Piggie Band, Friends Belong Together Cake
At the request of Elías, I started by making his vanilla buttercream cake blue and then realized that it looked very similar to Adán’s painting. So I decided to add grass, and then made cut-outs of his characters from his painting on my diecutter, and added them as toppers to the cake. Adán was so proud :).

Duckling Cookies

We hung up my children’s posters from the last immigration marches by the art table where the kids made posters and puppets.

I made little Elephant, Pigge, and Pigeon cut-outs with little talk bubbles for the kids to color and turn into puppets. In some of them, the characters were happy and in some they were sad. Some of the talk bubbles were blank and some had pre-written statements matching the party’s theme like Families belong together!, EVERYONE is welcome here! End family separation, and Close the camps!

The bday boy with his Abuelito

Elephant and Piggie Cake
A few days before the party, our ped put my son on a lactose-free diet (due to tummy aches) which meant he couldn’t enjoy any of the royal icing sugar cookies, chocolate covered pretzels, chocolate covered Oreos, or the main cake, so I made him this extra special decadent lactose-free, gluten-free chocolate cake, with delicious vegan buttercream icing with Gerald and Piggie fondant cake toppers to match his painting. He LOVED it :).

ALL kids are welcome here!
I actually never finished this painting. I started it with the intention that it would be a photo backdrop for the kids. But I had open wall space and this fit perfect, so we went with it.

The party was a huge success! The birthday boy was delighted and many many critical conversations were had around our current immigration policies and ways that we as a community can and should be responding.

Close the camps cake

It’s become a tradition that every year I make a garish 4th of July cake. This year the kids and I decided to make our most important cake thus far.

This year we made a close the camps cake.⁣

The cake has since been consumed, but the conversations remain strong!