Candy land first birthday!!

I am a little late blogging this, but my family and cookies have to come first. My daughter turned 1 in June and I knew what I wanted her party to be before she was even born. It turned out just as I had imagined and I couldn't be happier!

My husband, sister, and I worked for a couple weeks before the party to make each character from the game. I borrowed an overhead projector, bought foam board, sharpies, and dowel rods... and this is what we created!

I wanted a dessert for each character so here is what I came up with

Chocolate Cupcakes

Lollipops with personalized stickers

Peppermint meringues

Melted Ice Cream Cones

Candy

Peanut Butter Fudge

Big Turk

Gumdrop Cookies

I always like to have a little "activity center" at each of my parties, so this year I let them decorate their pails for the prizes. I saved a bunch of the small formula cans, took the labels off, covered them with card stock, and attached a ribbon.

My friend Samantha ordered some adorable banners for me from Shannon at Sweet Bug A Boo's! There were three total. Here is what one of them looked like

My parents happened to have some wooden lollipops that they used to use for Christmas decorations, so I used them for her party. Would have loved to have repainted then, but time just ran out. The cotton candy was made using some gathered pink mesh, a poster board, and a dowel rod.

Her outfit was so cute and came from Golden. I made her tutu and it was actually a lot easier than I thought! 

I thought it would be cute to have something on her bottom, so I got Kajun Monograms to add this to her outfit

My sister even dressed up for the occasion. Her shirt also came from Kajun Monograms

I bought a bunch of pieces of 12x12 card stock at Hobby Lobby. I punched a small hole in each corner and tied them together with fishing string to make a path 

I always like to have games at my parties as well. This one was pin the snowflake on the wand

The next one was pop the plum. I just used little water balloons and added a piece of paper in each. They had to pull one off the tree and pop it to reveal their prize

I also had a bowling game called Strikes and Stripes. I had saved the containers that those little puff snacks come in and then wrapped them with red duct tape.

The last game was Gumdrop Drop. I had a small step ladder and a jar. The kids had to drop the gumdrop into the jar.

I have only made one other cake in my life, but decided I wanted to make her cake this year. It isn't technically correct in anyway, but I was still proud of the outcome. 

With all the other stuff I had to do, there wasn't going to be much time to make cookies. I know, I know... how could I NOT make cookies for my kids birthday when that is what I do?? Well when you have an amazingly talented friend offer to make them for you... you take them up on the offer! They turned out so adorable! I couldn't have done a better job than she did! Samantha is the owner of Flour-De-Lis! Make sure to check out her facebook page, website, and Etsy store! Yep... this is the same Samantha that sent me the banners!! How awesome is she!?! 

I also made her smash cake. It was nothing special, but I topped it with one of the cute cookies to dress it up!!

I had TONS of candy at the party! How could I not?? For the kids favors, I let them fill little boxes with the candy to take home. I was at least nice enough to send a toothbrush home with them as well :)

Well... there you have it! Weeks and weeks of work... well worth it!! Everyone loved the party and I was so happy that my little princess had a great day! 

If you have any questions about how I made anything or where I got anything from... feel free to ask!! 

Mason's Magic Party: Part Three

The Food:

His cake is usually amazing!! We have had the same lady make it every year... until this year :( Since she wasn't able to make it this year, I decided to give it a try! Since I had to many other things to make for the party, I decided to order a cake with white icing and piping. I then took candy and cookies I had made and decorated the cake with those. It turned out pretty cute!

I tried to make the food for the party magic themed also.  

For the main entrees we had Disappearing Dogs (Hot dogs), Abracadabra PB and Alakazam PB&J (Peanut butter and peanut butter & jelly sandwiches cut in the shape of a bunny head with a cookie cutter), Hocus Pocus Nachos, and Shazam Chili. 

I also made food tags for each item. Here are a few:

I had a small veggie tray (rabbit food) and Magic Snack Mix. I made this mix by combining pretzels, cheerios, baby goldfish, peanuts, and m&ms. You could throw in or omit anything you want.

I also wanted to do chocolate cupcake since the cake was white. I made Rabbit in the Hat Cupcakes. I will be posting a tutorial on how to make these soon.

The other desserts I had were Magic wands (braided pretzels dipped in chocolate), Top hat cookies (fudge stripe cookies with a chocolate covered marshmallow on top and a twizzler pull and peel around the bottom), and Magic Rings (mini donuts made with my mini donut maker). Store bought donuts could also be used but I wanted an excuse to pull out my maker ;). 

We also had magic potion to drink (lemonade).

We had almost 80 people RSVP to say they were coming to the party, but ended up only having about 1/3 of them show up. Needless to say we had A LOT of leftovers. My poor family was sick of nachos and hotdogs after about day 3. I didn’t want the leftovers to go to waste, so I decided to change things up a bit. I boiled some noodles and put them in a large Pyrex dish. I mixed the cheese and the chili with the noodles. I cut up some of the weenies and mixed those in as well. I prepared 2 boxes of cornbread and poured that over the top then baked it until golden brown. My family really like it and was happy to not have the same thing they had been eating for days! 

How about I end with one more picture of my cuties!!

Thanks for reading!! I will have one more part with my first tutorial on how to make the rabbit in the hat cupcakes! 

8/13/12-8/26/12

Things have been a little crazy around my house lately! Last weekend was my baby's baptism and this weekend will be my son's 4th birthday party! I lost two days of running errands because we had a hurricane come really close to us, but everything turned out to be okay. My nephew had his birthday party on the 19th. It was on a ship that you can play laser tag on. When asked to make cookies for favors, I had no idea what to do... then I finally decided on a vest and gun. I used my airbrush for the first time on this order also. I did some silver with a little black to make it look "rustic". I thought they turned out pretty good being it was my first time to ever use an airbrush!

 

 

 

Here is my adorable baby girl with one of the cookies at the party

 

 

 

This past Sunday, we were lucky enough to have a baptism for that little angel in the above photo. I wanted to make her cake (not sure what made me decide that since I have never made a cake before). I was pleased with the way it turned out, just not overly pleased. My icing roses were sliding off, but it was still edible!

The top layer is all cookies!

 

Here are the cookies I came up with for her baptism.

 

And I had to do a special one to thank our priest for doing the baptism for us!

 

This weekend will be spent working on the magician cookies for my son's party! Check back next week to see those cookies!