PB's 1st Birthday Party: an ice cream party!

Here is PB's 1st birthday party. Can I just say first that I was really stressed the day of and things didn't go as smoothly as I had hoped but do you know why I threw the party? For the pictures. When PB looks back years from now she will know how much I loved her and wanted her to have a special day. We had an ice cream party. We also had hot dogs and chicken salad. We had it at a park since our house is currently on the market. 

I was running a little short on time so I just made one invitation, scanned it, and sent it out. The stickers are Martha Stewart and the bow tutorial can be found here. 

Recognize this? To get this up I had to throw the spool of ribbon over the rafter. I felt like I was TPing a house.

I painted these frames and glued the foam number ones inside. The centerpieces for the tables were balloons and candy jewelry. In each corner of the pavilion my tall dad taped up white table clothes and tied bows with tulle -under my close supervision ;) All together there were 9 tables with pink table clothes and I used 4 white ones- one for each corner.

Party favors. There was pink (white chocolate dyed) and milk chocolate popcorn.  Use quality chocolate and a bit of salt. To melt the chocolate I microwaved it for 30 seconds, stirred well, and put it in for another 15 seconds and that did the trick.  Decals were cut out with my Cherry Limeade Cricut font with miscellaneous number ones printed out for the center. 

Pink s'mores with kisses for the chocolate. If you look close you can see little bows on those skewers. Why yes I did stay up late (after 1 am...) the night before making tiny bows and hot gluing them to skewers.

Pink lemonade with lemon slices. Pink straws purchased from Michael's

The sweets table minus the ice cream which was in the cooler. There are butter mints and toppings for the ice cream. 

The A.M.A.Z.I.N.G. cake my mom made. Check out how to here.

The pillowcase romper I made her. Do you see her "1" button? She didn't take it off the whole time. It's a dollar store baby shower button I glued one of the favor decals on. I would share with you the tutorial about how to make the romper but guess what- it was far too wayward for me to pretend I did this the "right" way. You are far more likely to figure it out on your own! I would search for a romper tutorial and a pillowcase top one and combine them if you want to make a similar outfit. After all my searching I couldn't find one just like I wanted.

Look at that cutie!! Aren't those jellies just  the best?

Can I toot my own horn for a moment? So I about three months ago I featured this post. Soon after I went to a consignment sale in search of some dolls. It always go on the 75% off days because that's how cheap I am. I'm going to stop the story right there because I'm going to finish the rest next week. Just know I found a doll and I made her a matching outfit. Her little dress was just a pillowcase dress. 

Tune in next Wednesday to hear about PB's dolls! 

Polka Dot and Ombre Cake

Brooke had a very PINK party for her baby last week and asked me to make an ombre cake for it. It was easy and turned out OK. (This is about wayward crafts, you know.) Now that I have done it once, I know I could do it better the next time.

The cake needed to feed about 40 people, so I used a 10" round pan. I used 1 cake mix to make 2 thin layers. I used gel food coloring this time, but if I did it again, I would use liquid because you can measure liquid more accurately.  So...add 4 drops of food coloring to the cake mix and mix as directed. Pour 1/2 of the mix into a prepared cake pan. (It will be about 2 1/2 cups) and bake according at 350 for about 18 minutes. Since I only have one pan, I had to wash the pan now to use for layer two. Add 2 more drops of food coloring to the remaining mix and bake. Continue increasing the amount of food coloring each time. I made 6 layers. I would have liked to have had more variation in the color, but you take what you get.

After I stacked and frosted the cake, I decided to decorate it with pink polka dots to match the birthday girl's romper. You could use fondant, but I decided to use white chocolate which I dyed. Follow the directions for melting a small bit at at time. I added just a touch of gel coloring each time. I spread the melted chocolate onto wax paper. You have to watch the chocolate carefully so that you cut it with a round cookie cutter at the right moment--right before it becomes completed solid. Once you have your polka dots, add them to the frosting immediately after you frost the cake.

Use a round tip to make a dot border and enjoy.