A purple birthday party

This year for Hadley's birthday party I went with a color instead of a theme. Not only was it easier to plan, but a lot more fun. We had it at the park again since our house is so teensy, and I decided to do a dessert table instead of a bbq, again mostly for simplicity, but it's a lot more fun to plan that too. I decided on purple/turquoise since we already had a lot of purple decor to reuse, and her super cute invites were purple and turquoise.

The birthday girl getting ready to head to the park! I made her that rosette shirt, for like 25 cents. We already had the white long sleeve shirt, and I made those rosettes in seriously less than 5 minutes (all 3!) and then just hand stitched them onto her shirt.

The dessert/presents table (minus the cake - we'll get to it!). The purple and white roseballs are left over from the bridal shower I helped my sister plan. I bought the silver and plastic platters at the dollar store.

Close up of the rosette balls. Those suckers took forever. So if you'd like to rent them out please let me know, but don't ask me to make you any ;)

Chocolate covered marshmallows were a huge hit with the kiddos, and super easy to make. Much easier than cake balls, and pretty inexpensive. I'm sure all the parents are very thankful for the sugar rush I sent their kids home with!

Aside from the cake, this was definitely my favorite thing I made. I just made rice krispie treats the normal way from the box, and pressed them in muffin tins to get a cupcake shape, and frosted the top and added sprinkles. Talk about easy peasy and super cute!

White chocolate covered pretzels are one of my all time favorite treats, and oddly enough were the most time consuming thing I made (along with the lollipop cookies).

And now for the piece de resistance - the cake! I am soooo proud of the cake and how it turned out, and that I didn't stress out over it at all. Even though it looks really difficult to make, it was actually super easy, just took a lot of steps. I made it over a period of 3 days, mostly to allow room for errors :)

 

It's a 4 layer purple ombre vanilla cake with raspberry filling and white chocolate buttercream frosting! (Now that is a mouth full)

If I make an ombre cake again, I'm going to try and make the colors a little more defined. It felt like I was using a lot of the purple dye, but when they came out of the oven they weren't quite as prominent.

The rosettes were actually really easy with a pastry bag and tip. Frosting the cake first was what was annoying. Frosting kept falling off my knife and getting EVERYWHERE. So for my next cake I will definitely be purchasing one of those fancy frosting spreaders (whatever they're called).

All in all we had a great party. The weather was absolutely perfect, and everyone seemed to have a great time. Hadley was spoiled beyond belief, and filled to the brim with her favorite sweets!