Yes, we are talking all things dog birthdays today. Small scale birthdays. Some people like to go all out with invitations, dog guests, and doggy bags (see what I did there), but we are talking small scale family birthdays for our favorite four-legged friends. Fitz, our Golden Doodle turned 7 this week, so we had to make sure to celebrate him in style! 1. Make a Dog-Friendly CakeThey sell some dog friendly options at pet bakeries or even PetSmart, but we prefer to bake our canine friends their special treats. The boys love to get involved. I am much less stressed about the accuracy when they measure and they really feel like they've contributed to the party. Pinterest has all sorts of dog friendly cake recipes. This year's cake was: a pumpkin dog cake from Busy Little Kids. Ours didn't turn out quite as picture perfect as hers (below), but we had so much fun putting it together. Teddy is allergic to peanuts, so we have to be extra careful with recipes involving peanut butter. In my experience, dog cakes are notoriously dry. Fitz loved his cake though. We've made this Crazy for Crust cake before. Or even these banana nut dog cupcakes. Usually Fitz isn't too picky on his treats. The smaller, shihtzu Cash tends to be much pickier on what he will eat. 2. Make Kid-Friendly Treats tooI usually go to the Dollar Tree and buy a small cake mix and frosting combo. They usually sell a Pillsbury Funfetti cupcake mix for $1.25 and a small container of Vanilla or Cream Cheese frosting. Trust me - the kids will NOT want to eat the dog cake. Dogs can't eat much sugar, so it's not very sweet. They will want treats of their own to celebrate the big day. We always make sure to make some sort of special treat for the kids. Even if it's not a cake or cupcakes, think ice cream, candy, or even banana bread. 3. Dollar Tree DecorationsWe always decorate for birthdays and I always save EVERY. SINGLE. DECORATION. The kids have a tub of decorations to pull from. The generic birthday decorations (most from the dollar tree) are all in a tub. They get to choose from streamers and signs to hang up. (Any decoration that is too little, I hide it away so as not to tempt them to decorate too much). Even for this last birthday, I stopped by the Dollar Tree to see what other birthday decorations they had in stock. I picked up an extra banner. They even have birthday number candles and small blow-up number balloons. For whatever reason, they were out of the number "7" in everything, so I had to settle for no number decorations this year. 4. Presents!Finally the kids have an excuse to wrap presents and I don't care what they look like! They get so excited to grab some scraps of wrapping paper and cover a chew toy or two. I always pick up a dog toy here or there at TJ Maxx or Marshalls and store them for later. On some birthdays, I've even let the kids come with me to choose the dog birthday toys. Honestly, I think we could wrap some of Fitz's hardly used toys and he'd be just as happy. Teddy got so into the present experience this year, that he even made his own present for Fitz - a dog picture to hang about his water bowl! 5. Have Fun!It's easy to sound overwhelming, but we hype up the dogs's birthdays as they approach every single year. Our Alexa Echo sings happy birthday with us. We even bought Fitz his own cake hat for the occasion. The kids get so excited. I know the magic of a dog birthday is only short lived, so we are enjoying them while we can!
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