Par-TAY!

On Saturday we had a birthday party for Brielle.  Matthew gave her the choice to have him stay at the party, or to go somewhere with Joshua so she could have some 'girl time' with her friends.  Any guesses what she chose?

Yep, that's her saying good-bye to daddy and Joshua.  :)  She loved the idea of not having him mess up in the middle of her tea party birthday.

Uncle Chris had to work, but, being the bestest most awesomest uncle in the world he managed to switch his lunch break so he could come for at least a little of her party.  :)  His fiancee', Shevon (or as Brielle says Fa-jon) was able to stick around for the rest of the party.

Brielle and Uncle Chris

We invited her little girl friends for a tea party.  Well, they used a tea set... but actually they drank pink lemonade.  Yes, it HAD to be pink.  :)  Surprisingly, I didn't get any pictures at all of them having their 'tea' party.  Yeah, I know you're all shocked by that one.  They were so cute though, using their best manners and passing the tea pot around.  We had used mini cookie cutters and cut cheese into flower shapes, turkey slices into cupcake shapes, and fruit leather into high heels.  The crackers were boring old ovals because hey, have you ever tried to cut a cracker with a cookie cutter?  It ain't pretty.  With the cake and all those little details, I was not about to set about making my own crackers.  Yeah, I'm a rebel like that.  HA!

 

Here's the banner I spent way too much time making for her...

The top piece is 8' long, and her name is 4' long.  Yeah.  I hand cut all the letters out... twice.  I could barely let go of the scissors.  :P

 

So anyway... I had made a tea pot cake to go with her tea party birthday.  I admit I was very intimidated by the thought of doing this cake.  I was so sure it was going to be a total failure and we'd end up just eating regular ol' rectangular sheet cake.  My biggest dilemma was what to make the handle and spout out of.  It needed to be sturdy enough to hold its shape, but light enough to be held up by the cake.  I finally decided to try marshmallows of the homemade variety.  I whipped up some fluffy pink marshmallow goo. (with much thanks to Miss Tiffany for letting me borrow her KitchenAid!) 

After the marshmallows set up overnight, I made a stencil and 'drew' it onto the marshmallow with a knife.  Then I used handy dandy (clean) kitchen scissors to cut the gooey sticky stuff to resemble some sort of handle and spout.  Here's what I ended up with.  (The bowl is what I used for the cake, I was comparing size... and yes it's blurry.  My phone is not all high-tech.)

So... I baked cakes on Thursday afternoon.  The first one was perfect.  The second one totally fell apart when I took it out of the bowl.  Ugh.  So I threw the broken one out (because we really didn't need the extra cake) and started on another one.  Thankfully that one turned out well.  I had initially planned to just frost the cake, but then I got all brave and decided to use my piping tip and get all fancy.  lol.  I used a set of circle cutters for the polka dots and got to work.  Here's what it looked like before the polka dots were filled in.  (Brielle was VERY concerned at this point that it wasn't going to look good.)  :)

The next day though, when we mixed up the colors of her choice for the polka dots and I started filling them in, she decided it met her demands.  **While mixing the colors, she kept wanting to taste each color, she didn't believe me that the coloring didn't make the flavor change, lol.**  We baked some chocolate cupcakes, used a hot glue gun (again, thanks Tiffany!) to add handles to them to make them look like teacups, and then added a rich dark chocolate ganache to look a bit liquid-y (like tea... Matthew said it looked more like very dark coffee).  At any rate, it worked.

 

So here is the finished cake.

It tasted pretty darn yummy too... kind of like a cross between a sugar cookie and cake.  Definitely my go-to recipe for white cake.  Yum!

 

Brielle opened presents, which I think she enjoyed.  :)  She went so quickly that I had a hard time keeping track of who gave her what!

After she opened presents, we had cake.  She grinned her way through everyone singing to her, and then had a rather tough time blowing her candles out!  I had considered getting the trick candles, and I'm glad I didn't... we'd have been there all day!  I had recruited a guest to record the singing etc. with my camera... so all the moms (and kids) were so kind and humored me when I asked if they'd mind me relighting the candles (no singing necessary) and having her blow them out again so I could get pictures as well.  :)  Don't I have great friends?!  They all know I'm a little crazy and they just go with it and don't ask too many questions.

So that's it.  Happy birthday little girl!  Wonder what kind of cake she'll come up with for me to attempt next year... ?  She's already got big plans for Joshua's birthday cake!

 

Oh, here's a couple other random pics...

 First Barbie... from grandma and grandpa Shear

 Sad face... Brielle wouldn't let him play with her Barbie.  He sat there like this just watching her play.  Poor kid.

 What's Barbie going to do now?

I'm pretty sure her Barbie is glued to her hand now.  lol