60th Birthday Party

My wonderful MIL just turned 60 last month. My sister in law planned an awesome surprise party for her! The theme was "Your 50s are Gone with the Wind!" One of her favorite books is Gone with the Wind so it was perfect! It had a garden party setting and was really beautiful.

I was in charge of the cake so we settled on a simple white icing and some beautiful flowers. I used real flowers to make it really easy on myself! I used the Duff brand icing comb to make the lines. It was definitely a trial and error process! You have to have a lot of smooth and even icing on the cake in order for it to look right. I also should have had it on a turn table to get it to be more consistent. Plus my icing texture needed some work. I still need some practice but I knew that I wasn't going to be able to make it perfect! Hopefully I can make more like this in the future and keep getting better! That's always my goal in cake decorating!

A Ballet Birthday for Maclayne

Maclayne decided that she wanted a ballet party for her 5th Birthday. The only color that she knew she wanted for sure was gold. First she wanted purple and gold, then settled on black and gold. It was really easy to find black and gold decor at Hobby Lobby. They had a gold and white striped poster board that I used for the background. We put "Happy Birthday Maclayne" across it using black vinyl. Our only issue is that the transfer paper took off the gold when we pulled it away. It looked fine from a distance, but you could see it up close. I cut gold ballerinas and triangles from black, gold, and white paper to make the banner. I used black and gold wrapping paper as the runner.

This year she was very opinionated about her dessert! She turned down every kind of cake option I threw out there. She wanted a peanut butter cake, but the recipe I tried did not turn out well. Then I introduced her to the Peanut Butter Trifle and she was on board. It was so delicious!

I also made some ballerina sugar cookies. I decorated them with white royal icing and finished them by spraying on a light coat of Wilton Color Mist. I really love the way they turned out and the mist worked so well (on dry cookies).

It turned out to be such a cute party and she had a blast! 

Horse Party

I'm going back a little ways in our birthday party archives to show you Mackenzie's horse party that we had for her 7th birthday. It was such a fun party to plan and everyone had a blast taking turns riding the horse!

I had the idea to have root beer for our "Waterin Hole." The kids loved having the glass bottles and they were outside so that was nice! I made the sign on my Silhouette Cameo using adhesive card stock. I really love that stuff because it is so versatile!

I used bandannas for a lot of the decorating and we also gave one to each child that came! They all felt like real cowgirls and cowboys then!

I made "Haystacks" for party favors. They were really easy to make. I used this recipe to make them, but left out the peanuts. They were yummy! I found some bandanna ribbon at Hobby Lobby and made some tags on the silhouette that said "Haystacks."

I also made some boot shaped sugar cookies. These were really simple to make. I always follow these directions for the royal icing. All I had to do was flood the cookies with the brown icing, wait for them to dry, and then go back and pipe the detailing. 

The cupcakes were also really easy to make. I just piped the turquoise frosting on top. Next, I used a small horse cookie cutter and cut out the shape from brown fondant. I used an edible marker to create the mane and face details. They were also very easy to make!

I loved the horse theme and it is so easy to find decorations and party supplies! This was definitely one of my favorite parties that we have thrown for the girls!

Under Construction Baby Shower

When my sisters and I found out that our brother and sister in law were having a little boy, we were so excited! There had not been a boy baby since my oldest sister had one 16 years before! We had gotten so used to planning girl baby showers so this was new for us! My sister really liked the "Under Construction" theme, which is all boy and so cute! We had a lot of fun coming up with the decor and food.

We had chocolate donuts as truck tires. I found most of the decorations at Hobby Lobby, but I made the signs on my Silhouette Cameo. They were really easy, just print and cut a diamond shape with the food name. We did Nothing Bundt Cake Bundtinis for the dessert because my SIL loves them and they are so delicious! 

We had different dessert breads and muffins as rocks and boulders and had them spilling out of the back of the dump truck. We gave all of the trucks and tractors as part of our gift. 

A bowl of fruit was nuts and bolts. We also had concrete mix or more appetizing, hashbrown casserole!

The beverages were placed in the fueling station! 

For favors we did Mounds Candy Bars with tags that said "Thanks for the mound of gifts!"

It really turned out to be a cute shower and it was fun to do something that was completely different than what we normally do with all of our girlie parties!