Ivy in Onederland

A friend of mine recently asked me to help her out with her daughter's 1st birthday party. I jumped at the opportunity because any reason is a good enough reason for me to craft. She asked me to make an outfit for Ivy. She sent me a couple of photos she found online and I blended them together and made one outfit. I used my Silhouette Portrait to design and cut out the image for the shirt then I just made the tutu with some tulle and elastic. She used the outfit for her cake smash photos and I couldn't believe how adorable she looked. Here is a sneak peek at some of the photos from that photo shoot. You can click here to see the rest. The photos were taken by a very talented photographer friend of mine here in El Paso named Tessa. You can see her work here. 

I fell in love with the party theme and basically volunteered to make Ivy's cake. I was pretty stoked when Lanya agreed to let me do it! I jumped onto pinterest to get ideas and instantly became super excited about this cake. 

I made 4 layers of yellow cake with strawberry frosting in between each layer. I added pink heart-shaped sprinkles to the frosting just because. I ended up having extra batter so I even threw in a dozen cupcakes. My cake design ended up being a blend of like 10 different Alice in Wonderland cakes I saw on pinterest. I started making the gum paste figurines about 5 days before the party. My imagination really ran wild with this cake. I love Alice in Wonderland and wanted to make sure this cake displayed as many little details as possible. I even made a little fabric Alice skirt and apron for the glass cake stand. 

The day before the party was spent baking the cakes, rolling and stamping the homemade marshmallow fondant, and hand painting the entire cake. I wanted to make the Mad Hatter's top hat look very worn and fabric-y, if you know what I mean. So I stamped the fondant and then hand painted all of it. The brim of the top hat was made of gum paste because I wanted it to be shaped a certain way that worked better when made with gum paste. 

I just got home from the party about an hour and a half ago and it was so much fun! They had a bouncy castle so my daughter lost her mind and had the time of her life. The food was delicious, the decorations looked lovely, and the guests were wonderful. A great time all around. Here are a few pics of the cake on the party table with the cake stand I made.

Happy un-Birthday to you, little Ivy. 

Superhero Party!

My daughter LOVES superheroes. This is the first birthday party theme that she actually picked out herself. I decided to do a blend of random superheroes because she loves them all. The geek in me originally had a mildly hard time mixing up Marvel and DC as if they're all the same... but I got over it. lol

This party was Rosie's most recent one. She just turned 4 this past November. Daddy was actually home for this party since he returned from his deployment only a few weeks before. 

We hired "professionals" to come dressed as Captain America and Batman but an hour before the party he texted me saying that they can't come. I was beyond livid since I had told Rose for weeks that Captain America and Batman were both coming to her party and she was so excited about meeting them. We had to come up with a new plan so my husband rushed over to Party City to buy an adult sized Captain America costume that he would wear himself. 

Till this day Rose doesn't know it was her dad. She still talks to us about how she met Captain America and that she was so excited about it. #ParentWin 

Batman not showing up turned out to be a good thing anyway. The party guests came dressed up as heroes and villains. One person dressed up as Batman (deep batman voice and all) and Rose was terrified. He was just a kid so I can't imagine how horrified she would have been if a huge adult male walked in our house with that deep batman voice in full costume from head to toe. She loves Batman, in theory. Not so much in person I guess lol

Here are the pics from her birthday photo shoot. I edited them in a way that they'd look cartoon-y and comic book-like since her party had a lot of comic book themed decorations on top of all the superhero stuff. She told me she wanted to dress up as The Hulk so I made her a costume. The shirt was from Amazon, my friend at Ittie Bittie Moccs made her shoes, and I made everything else.

Daddy was the bank robber :) Click on the photo to make it larger.

Party photos:

Dinosaur Party!

I originally didn't plan on throwing Rose a 3rd birthday party because I was super pregnant at the time and my husband was deployed. I didn't have much help and assumed planning a party would be too stressful for me during this time. I decided to just fly home to NJ with Rosie and take her to this really cool outdoor Dinosaur exhibit not far from where my family lived. 

We ended up not being able to enjoy the dinosaur exhibit because it was absolutely FREEZING outside and even though Rosie was bundled up she still kept shivering. We went to NJ for just three days specifically to go to the exhibit and now we won't even be experiencing it. I felt so bad for Rose because I had gotten her all hyped up for it beforehand. The NJ trip wasn't a total waste, though. We spent time with my family so it was nice.

Once we returned to Texas I decided to throw her a a very short notice party. I quickly created the invites with a party date of a week and a half away so I got to crafting right away! If Rose wasn't going to have the Dinosaurs from NJ then I wanted her to at least have a party here at home. 

Here are the photos from the little birthday shoot I did a few days before the party:

Party photos: