We were invited to celebrate Paul’s 50th birthday with him on Saturday which meant that not only did we get to meet his family and friends and celebrate Paul’s ‘half century’ as he described it, but we also got to see the cupcakes and their related themes enjoyed by all his guests.  When Tracy and Paige were discussing the themes for the party, they came up with the fantastic idea to have a table decorated with each of the different passions in Paul’s life. Having so many passions and accomplishments meant more cupcake challenges for me, loads more photos to take and yes you guessed it … a longer post for these cupcakes!  Aside from Paul’s greatest passion in life, his beautiful wife and gorgeous daughters, he has a love for music. Tracy decorated a music table with music notes, cd’s and a music book to pay tribute to this aspect of Paul’s life and I decorated these music cupcakes with black and red music notes and black and sugar beads.

When he is not singing and playing guitar, Paul puts on his running shoes and trains for his next marathon.  When most of us are still in dreamland he is out on the road with his other dedicated running mates clocking up the kilometres.  These cupcakes with the medals represent the four Comrades Marathons he has run and the shoes represent the hours of training he puts into this sport.  It was appropriate in this case that the flavour of these cupcakes was Passionfruit and White Chocolate for such dedication to running.  I think that only your running mates were brave enough Paul to sit at this table with your running shoes as they could relate to the many hours of love these shoes have given your feet!  Tracy reminded me to include the Voltaren in the photo too as it is a reminder of the pain that goes hand in hand with the ultimate glory of winning your medals.

Paul has to take off his shoes for another passion of his and take bare foot to the water to win medals.  He loves water-skiing and boating and also takes part in open-water swims.  Tracy very cleverly had flippers, swimming goggles and cap for the decoration on the water sports table and I made yellow and blue flippers and water splashes for these cupcakes.  I couldn’t resist photographing them with a blue and yellow glass paper weight I own as it enhanced the water feel of these cupcakes along with my trusted beads from my beaded cake stand. How cute are these flippers which I actually moulded from a glove mould. I cut the yellow sugar  paste ‘glove’ to the same length for the toes and flattened the edges and added blue straps to look like flippers. The water splashes and sugar beads for water droplets gave a bit of aqua energy to these blue and yellow water cupcakes.

Paul is also a dab hand with power tools and when he is not putting his blood, sweat and tears into his sports he gets out his tools and becomes the neighbourhood handyman fixing things around the house.  Occasionally Paul puts his feet up and becomes a couch dad as he loves to watch his favourite sports on TV. Tracy included a table for these sports and I made a couple of cricket, tennis and rugby cupcakes to go with this theme too.

Paul you posed quite a cupcake challenge for your party with so many interests in your life but I thoroughly enjoyed both making and photographing these cupcakes. It was great to see you swop your running shoes and bare feet for your dancing shoes and see you celebrate and have fun with all your guests. Thank you to you and Tracy for inviting us to celebrate with you.