Simple but Special Birthday Breakfasts

James' birthday was yesterday and my very favorite birthday tradition is birthday breakfast!! 

It's a tradition that my parents started with my brother and me. Whenever it's someone's birthday, the whole family gets up to have breakfast together and everyone has to be there, so it has to happen before the first person needs to leave for work or school. For many years our dad had a long morning commute so we'd all get up for birthday breakfasts before the crack of dawn and it's pretty much like that for us now! 

It's kind of like saying "We love you so much we'll sacrifice that extra little bit of sleep to get up and sing you Happy Birthday over a plate of pancakes! Except you have to get up too. HAPPY BIRTHDAAAYYY!!" 

It's the greatest. 

 

Pinterest is full of ideas for fun birthday breakfast treats. Yesterday, when I was up in the dark, early AM before the rest of the family, I eyed the Pinterest recipe for funfetti pancake muffins on my "Birthdays" pin board and I was liiiike... Nah. Probably not.

Not that the recipe was complicated... I am just not really into baking and I like to keep things super simple and familiar (read: lazy), especially at 6 AM. But for birthday breakfast I still want to do something to make it special.

So here are some ideas for some simple (lazy) but still special birthday breakfasts. Most of them involve boxed pancake mix. We're into pancakes around here.

- Toss some sprinkles into box pancake mix. Boom. Funfetti pancakes.

- Put cake icing on pancakes. Bonus points if you put a few drops of food coloring on the icing and swirl it around. You could also add sprinkles. Because sprinkles.

- Make your breakfast look like an animal. This could get complicated, but it doesn't have to be. This birthday pancake bear I made for Calvin was not hard to do.

- Hit the donut drive through. Our favorite is Krispy Kreme. You can even go the night before and reheat them in the morning. Bonus points if you stack them into a donut cake.

- Have cake for breakfast. Go for it. As the saying goes, life is short, eat dessert first!

- Just stick a birthday candle in any breakfast food. Except probably cereal. Once I even did birthday breakfast chicken biscuits for my brother. 

What do you think? Do you prefer whipping up a special recipe? Any other lazy cooks out there? 

What would you want for birthday breakfast?