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!

Sneak Peek

I am so incredibly thrilled with how everything turned out for Hadley's birthday party on Saturday, and that almost never happens. The weather was gorgeous, and everything I made turned out (almost) exactly how I envisioned it, even the cake. And the cake was very ambitious for me as a lower than amateur status baker. I'm so excited, that I'm going to share one of the treats I made before I even had time to get the rest of the pics and details in order.

I decided not to do a theme this year, because that can actually add on more stress. So instead I just decided to have a color scheme, and went with Purple (to reuse some decor from the wedding shower) and turquoise because I found super cute invites in those colors. This year instead of trying to have bbq-esque food at the park I went with a dessert table. Much easier to execute and a lot more fun to plan :) The first idea I came up with I thought would be the easiest, and turned out to be the hardest, so I had a lot of last minute changes goin on. Without further ado, a lil sneak peek:

Lollipop Cookies!

Now these are not near as pretty as the inspiration photo, and were kind of a pain in the rear to make, but still turned out really cute. In theory they sounded really simple. There's like 4 steps to the directions. 1. Make your cookie dough. 2. Dye your cookie dough. 3. Twist the colors together and roll up like a lollipop. 4. Insert stick and bake. 

A couple of things to note here though - 1.Making the cookie dough was easy (not to mention yummy) 2. Use gel dye. It's AMAZING. And there are SO many colors to choose from, also I should've made the purple darker. 3. Shaping the lollipops was a royal pain in the rear and took a very long time. They're incredibly sticky and break very easily. even after being refrigerated for a while. So i got impatient, and started just combing the dough and making them tie-dye-ish. Still looked pretty cute and tasted delish. 4. when I rolled them up they were about half that size, when I baked them they basically doubled in size and I was not anticipating that. After the first batch came out ginormous, I made some mini sized ones as well. So even though they're not exactly as I imagined, I still think they're pretty cute and perfect for a 3 year olds bday party. Here's a pic of the inspiration (I swear they took these photos before baking because it's no where near as smooshed together as mine - either that or they used some magical cookie dough for lollipops I'm unaware of)

How is it still perfectly coiled?!? The world may never know.