Princess Party!

This smile is worth all the work!

It was my littlest daughter's first ever birthday party. She turned four and after watching her sister have parties she had quiet a wish list! It definitely had to be a princess party, with lots of pink. After planning out the cake, she saw this cake topper online and fell in love. Soon after however, she began to change her mind about so many of the details and it took plenty of talking to convince her she could not have a sleepover. She also decided she wanted cupcakes, but couldn't decide on chocolate or vanilla cake. So there was a compromise that worked out well. The cake was both chocolate and vanilla layers which I torted (cut into thinner layers after baking) in an effort to get more frosting into the cake and make DH happy too. There were going to be 9-10 kids plus the parents so I was happy with this option too.

 FOr the cake I used chocolate frosting instead of my traditional homemade chocolate ganache but I have to say. It really wasn't any easier and I had such a difficult time putting the fondant over it! For one thing the consistency stays the same throughout instead of the ganache which goes on soft and goey, allowing you to spead it well. But then Ganache hardens just right to make it easy to cover. Lesson learned! I didn't end up saving any time.

 The cupcakes were super easy but I couldn't find the right tip for the frosting and ended up just cutting a hole in my plastic bag and then topping with some edible silver glitter. :) My soses were super simple gumpaste. Just  a strip rolled and pinched at the end...the Wilton brand in the plastic bag is so nice to work with.

 After perusing blogs for a while I found an idea to make little take home skirts for the girls which doubled as chair decorations. It was super easy to simply tie the tulle strips onto the wide ribbon that I got from one of my favorite sites, Papermart.com. I literally buy hundreds of yards of ribbon at a time and this stuff is delightful!

 The young Prince who was invited got a shield cut with my cricut cutter from the Blackletter solutions cartridge with silver paper which is difficult to see. I used two loops of ribbon to make it easy to carry around and then tied it on as well.

 Her's the whole table I was able to lay out...

 Each guest sat down to a place mat which was actually a silver cake board. The crowns were from the dollar section at Target (what a find!) and even the prince got a handsome one. Then the plates were layed and my oldest daughter made paper "flowers" from the napkins. The castle box was actually a juice box holder with "handles" so that there were no spills from squeezing the drinks. :) I printed the images onto cardstock using a set of graphics from Lettering delights and used a punch to make scalloped circles.

 Thanks to an idea form a friend, I put some tulle in various colors tied to the ceiling. The kids loved the effect so much that my G wnts to do it for her party too. Hmmm somehow these things are getting more elaborate each time

 I was able to find a unicorn to make a poster for "place the horn on the unicorn" and it was so funny to watch them learn this new game....

And what is better than a simple white bag? Only one with a beautiful ribbon tied to it. So I broke out the good old standard and just put the goodies in with the wands peeking out and loved the basic look.

*Note: This is a rewrite of my original post which got accidentally deleted. :( Sorry to say this isn't as good a tale as the original but I still wanted to share this with my readers.