Birthdays NEVER end!!

Around here your birthday can drag on for a week or more depending upon where in the week your birthday lands. DD#3's birthday was last Tuesday - she had her class party and my in-laws came over for dinner to celebrate with her on her actual day. All very nice and cozy and my daughter loved it.

Round #2: The Friend Party

We had her party for all her friends yesterday which entailed another cake. She has always admired those "doll" cakes with the barbie sticking out of the top and the skirt being the cake so.... I made one for her.

The cake before any type of frosting. It is not a diet cake - lots of butter, eggs, and chocolate and more chocolate - it is her favorite cake so I had to use that recipe. I should however say that this cake recipe is for a bundt pan and usually takes 50 or so minutes to bake. In the "skirt" pan it took 2 and a half hours to bake all the way through - AAARGH!!!! It is extremely amazing (and also very lucky) that after the center was cooked the outside was NOT hard as a rock. It worked out just fine, but next time I use this particular pan I will choose a different recipe!! DD is helping to decorate the cake. We made the bigger flowers out of fondant and the really tiny ones are sprinkles that I found in the baking section of Safeway. She had a great time putting all the flowers on and really enjoyed being part of the process - from selection to completion. It was a lot of fun for me too :o)

Ta-Da! The finished product!

I don't know why she didn't want any of the little flower on the back, but it was her decision.

The second cake because I didn't think the doll cake would be enough to feed the kids and their parents. It turned out that I was right.

Very basic decorating. I was tired and out of creative juice by the time this one came around.

Instead of treat bags this year, I decided to assemble these and hand them out. They are little note pads for the kids to draw on. I printed the labels and stuck them on and for a little extra pizzazz I added the stars. The yarn so that they can wear these like a necklace is the yarn I dyed at knitting camp (she thought that was so-o cool) and there is a colored pencil stuck in the top of the spiral so the kids can take these with them anywhere and have an implement to draw with. All in all I think it was a success!!

NOW....that is not all said the cat in the hat, that is not all!!!!!

We still have lunch today at the house for her "family" party. My mom, sister, brother-in-law, nephew and in-laws will all be here around noon-time to celebrate. Good thing there is left-over cake from yesterday :o)

Not much knitting I am afraid to say :o(.