I had a whole pre-party post ready to go on Friday where I talked about how good the cupcakes smelled & also with pictures of the birthday tutu & the awkward Buzz Lightyear doll, but then my computer needed some hand-holding in the annoying way that PCs sometimes do, so I lost the post & now I feel all out of order.
Here is the last remaining cupcake, which smelled very good indeed while cooling & which also tasted mighty fine:
Dark chocolate frosted with a pink cream cheese buttercream & topped with pink cake sparkles (which were not as sparkly as I would have liked, but still festive) -- these were a big hit, thank you so much for the recipe, Sara!
The other big hit was the party activity of gluing plastic rhinestones onto some foam magic wands I'd gotten from Michael's, because three year olds + sparkles + wands + glue = automatic good time. I wasn't sure why I'd bothered with an "activity" (since my son's parties are usually free-for-alls), but when it came time for a small herd of post-cupcake little girls to "negotiate" over who got to wear which princess dress or etc, I was glad that we'd used up part of the party time with cheerful gluing.
(Of course it was overcast on Saturday, so my pictures are all too dark or super-flashy.) I ended up gluing the glitter letters to 1/4" ribbon & stringing them up that way -- which worked out really well, except that I kept overestimating the amount of space I should leave between the letters. Good thing I have a lot of ribbon.
This is one of the pictures I tried to post on Friday, the birthday girl in her sparkly new "ballet skirt," pajamas, & new bike gloves (she has officially been welcomed into the cycling geekery that enchants much of our household). The skirt was plenty easy to make up as I went along, though wrangling that much netting was kind of a nightmare, plus I need a giant paper cutter or whatever it is they use to get the bottom edge nice & even.
&, working backwards, here, finally, is the dread Buzz Lightyear doll:
You will note that I am not a genius artisan of stuffed toys. He's a little pigeon-toed, & I lost the directions for a while in the middle of putting him together & so failed to gather his neckline before adding the head (though it gives him an appropriate shouldery look, also an appropriate homemade look (&, yes, I'm distinguishing between homemade & handmade here)). On the other hand, I think his face turned out pretty well, my son embraced my efforts, & when he was passing it around to his friends after preschool the other day, the other five year old boys accepted it as Buzz without any open mockery or anything, so I'm content.
Looks like it was a fab party! I need to get some bike gloves for my 4 yo - he wears his winter gloves for biking! The Buzz is quite dashing :)
sara
Posted by: Sara | May 08, 2006 at 03:47 PM