Happy birthday! Love, NETFLIX

Disclosure: As a member of the Netflix Stream Team I receive special perks in exchange for my reviews & blog posts.  As always, all opinions are my own!

 

It all started with a box.

 

A box about which we were very curious.

Call me clever (which would be nice) but I quickly surmised it was a gift from Netflix.

Don’t ask me how I knew this! I’m just really, really good at guessing.

As it turned out, this particular grab bag contained all the fixin’s for a red velvet cake…

…or, going way way back to my family-of-origin’s vernacular, a “red red cake” which was always served on birthdays and which was providential (in this blogger’s case) because it arrived two weeks before my birthday!

More on that a little later.

* * *

 

Now, the reason for this fortuitous gift is this: NETFLIX has made it a whole lot easier to celebrate birthdays.

 

At this point I want you to do me a favor: Stop what you’re doing and grab your planner. Take some notes and/or write down a reminder or two. In my case? The reminder looks like this:

“Francis is turning 5 in December. Find out what kind of cake & theme he wants; don’t forget to show him the Ninjago birthday greeting on NETFLIX.”

Here’s how I do that: I go to Netflix.com/kids and type the “birthday” in the SEARCH box. When I do that, I see a whole slew of cartoon characters, all of whom have personalized greetings.

And that’s it! We keep birthdays simple around here: they pick a theme (i.e. Ninjago, DinoTrux, RescueBots) and I decorate the cake using a print-out or napkin with the theme and a handful of candles either purchased new or (budget-minded mom admission) recycled.

There’s little stress and not much $$$ involved, which is good given the statistics on this infographic:

I like the idea of a birthday hack! Here are some more ideas if you’re feeling extra crafty:

And hey, happy birthday to them from Minnesota Me!

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Now then…

Going back to how we actually used that bag o’ goodies? I saved all the pretty Netflix candles but let the kiddos use the mix to bake a cake for the Archangels. 😊

They PLUNGED their {butter} knives into the cake, driving out the {red} devil just like their hero.

Please note the blackberries and overabundance of red sprinkles.

It was a very St. Michael moment.

As for me, well, my birthday came just three days later.

On the feast of the Holy Guardian Angels, you see, so Angel Food cake it had to be. 😉