Birthday Cake and other rituals kids need

If TSHTF or any other situations come along where we hit a ritual time, if sure would make things easier if we could still celebrate, even if just in a small way.  One of the things I've done since I got the grand kids was to have them help with celebrations.  In this case, Girl recently had a birthday. She designed her cake and then had to make it.  No mixes, all from scratch. 

I don't know how well a solar oven would be able to make a cake.  I know I can make brownies in it but they don't have to rise as much.  We have electric ovens in the house but the trailer has a propane oven, so theoretically, at least for a year or so, we'd be able to make cakes.  The only extra ingredient that wouldn't normally be in the food storage is powdered sugar.  But it's not hard to store powdered sugar.  If you figure 1 pound can frost two cakes then you may really only need to store a few pounds per year. 

Anyway, I just wanted to show off Girl's cake and to remind people with kids that some things just shouldn't be overlooked, whether you have a bunch of money to spend or not, whether times are good or bad, they need a few little things to keep them in a good state of mind about the future.  Crayons, tape, glue, a few toys, will all go a long ways to keeping kids happy.  Not overindulging also helps.  She's not having 20 kids over.  We are not bringing a bunch of people to some amusement park to celebrate her birthday.  I didn't spend hundreds of dollars on her presents.  She did get to make chocolate chip pancakes for breakfast.  She got to make macaroni and cheese for lunch.  It's chicken nuggets (her favorite) for dinner and her cake for dessert.  She got out of her morning chores but otherwise she did all the cooking!

Her presents?  A bigger bird cage for her parakeets.  A new pack of underwear.  And her very own bottle of  smelly, girly hair conditioner.  Can't get much better than that!