Hannah's Birthday...A Beautiful Mess

Hannah turned 4 recently.  It was the birthday that just kept happening...in ways good and bad!  After all, when it comes to celebrating birthdays, the more parties the merrier, right?  But there comes a point, when the first party has been canceled because of the stomach flu, and two cakes have been baked, and the edible favors have all been gobbled by someone (I couldn't possibly have eaten a whole pan of chocolate-covered Rice Krispy treats, could I?), when it's just time to have the party already.

So for your entertainment, here are all the lovely details of (both) of Hannah's birthdays.

My mom came for the week of Hannah's birthday, and she and Hannah made the super cute crayon cake that you see above.  She found something called sugar paper and edible markers, and she and Hannah actually drew the picture on the top of the cake! 

I suppose this is a good time to mention that Hannah wanted a "painting party."  I tried to sway her toward Mermaids and Pirates, but she thought of this wonderful theme on her own, and it stuck.  So we did all things painting.  My little arts and crafts apprentice was in seventh heaven!

Hannah, my mom, and I did a test run of all the art projects before the party.  This was one of the finger paintings.  We made this by applying vinyl letters on a canvas, and after the paint dried, peeling them off.  (And yes, that's the second batch of Rice Krispy treats.)

Here are all the kids, finger painting their hearts out.  Each kid's canvas had their name on it.  I made little paint aprons for each guest from old jeans, following this pattern.

These are ice cube paintings.  Almost as fun as actually doing the painting was hanging the papers out of the clothesline to dry!

 And our final art project was bubble painting.  This was really fun, and the photos don't do justice to how cool they looked.  (If you do this, it took a lot more food coloring the bubbles than I expected!)

Here's the cake (reprise).  And after the candles were blown out, all the kids - so excited about the cake - just couldn't keep their hands away.  Check out Hannah: she's like, "Get your hands off my birthday cake!!"

 And last but not least, what's a painting party without paint invitations?  I printed these on paint chips, and couldn't be happier with how they came out.

The best part?  Every morning for about a week after her birthday, Hannah woke up and said, "I'm FOUR!!!"

Lydia's First Birthday!

I cannot believe it, but Lydia's first birthday is on Sunday.  Where has the last year gone?  We celebrated yesterday with a few friends, some pinwheels, and all things rainbow.

After watching countless moms eat countless cupcakes from which the icing has been licked off by tiny tongues, I decided to make mini cupcakes.  This way, the kids could have their lick of icing and one bite of cake.  Then, the moms could leave them on the plate guilt-free, and have their own cupcake too.  I busted out my Silhouette and made some rainbow cupcake toppers.  There were chocolate covered Oreos for the party guests to take home, and some rainbow fruit skewers to round out the afternoon's snack.

Hannah and I decorated the driveway with sidewalk chalk.  (See Aurora Bear in the back there?  Hannah got really excited, straightened Aurora's crown, and announced, "I think Lydia should have an Aurora party, just like me!")

When it came time for the cake, Lydia was just as cute as could be.  She sportingly wore the hat, and scarfed her cupcake by the fistful.  She also devoured several pieces of watermelon and a number of blueberries.  Honestly, I think the kids liked the fruit as much or more than the cake.  Go figure...

A friend brought her super fun parachute, which made for a great game. 

And everyone got a rainbow pinwheel.  See Lydia with her hands over her ears?  That's what she does when she's excited.  I'm not sure where she learned that, but it sure is funny!

Happy birthday, sweet Lydia!  It's been a fantastic year with you in our family!

Half a Birthday

Can you believe it?  Lydia celebrated her six month birthday this week.  In honor of the occasion, Big Sis and I whipped up a half a birthday cake.  Of course, Lydia didn't have any, but that didn't stop her from launching herself across the table during mama's photo session, and trying to plant her face in the middle of the cake.

I made a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing.  Since Lydia wasn't eating any, I picked the cake that I wanted.  (Incidentally, if you make a similar cake, I would definitely not recommend this combination: putting white icing on the cut part of a red cake was a nightmare.)

In any case, we had a very nice litttle birthday celebration, complete with a rousing rendition of "Happy Half Birthday to You," followed by an Alice in Wonderland-inspired, "A Very Merry Half Birthday to You."

 Like I said, Lydia (who has developed quite the knack for grabbing cereal bowls, cups of water, and anything else within her surprisingly long reach right off the table) was not content to sit in daddy's lap and look at the cake.  She wiggled right onto the table and almost crawled toward her destination. 

Even Hannah, who usually eats only the icing, devoured her whole piece of cake, and then asked for more.  Quite an occasion!

Sleeping Beauty (Birthday Party) Awakes!

Well, I hope you haven't been holding your breath waiting to see the rest of the pictures from Hannah's third birthday party. They're worth waiting for, but it's been awhile, hasn't it? So, here they are, in all their glory.

This is Hannah's look of absolute joy and excitement: mouth open in the world's biggest smile! She wanted an "Aurora Cake," and she got her birthday wish! (Even though Hannah helped bake the cake layers and add some of the icing, this was the first time she saw the finished product.) In fact, she was so excited that she got up and ran around the yard for awhile. Finally, we got her settled down enough to sing "Happy Birthday."

And to blow out the candles. (By the way, don't you want to know what Ella's thinking? Look at that face!)

After opening presents...

...and some boy time, because all that princess stuff was getting a little too girly for some of the guests...

...there was a lot of running around in the grass...

...and playing in the pink castle.

We had so much fun with this party, and I hope you had fun seeing the pictures of it.

Our Desert Travels

Looking out the airplane window as we approached Tucson last week, Hannah observed, "Those are dirty mountains!" That pretty much describes the difference between the mountains in Tennessee and those in Arizona, doesn't it? Tennessee is as overwhelmingly green as Arizona is predominantly brown.

Hannah's birthday week continued, as we spent time with grandparents - including the actual day of her birth, which we celebrated with three of Hannah's four sets of grandparents, a great-grandpa, and an aunt-uncle-cousin set.

We also had a fabulous birthday breakfast, which included eggs benedict for the grown-ups, and scrambled eggs and toast for the birthday girl. (Hannah asked for her favorite breakfast, and my mom and I improvised.)

And what's a birthday breakfast without cake? Or in this case, cake balls a la Sleeping Beauty?

Awwww...I just had to share this moment!

Next, it was off to visit Jonathan's mom, where Grammy and Hannah were very busy making stuff. They made some tutus (which were worn for the remainder of the visit)...
...and brownies...

Have I ever mentioned that in spite of Hannah's manic love of baking, she doesn't really like baked goods (with the logical exception of chocolate chip cookies). She does, however, love to lick the beater.

We also chatted with Jonathan's brother and nephew over the webcam. The best part: Brady showed Hannah is belly...

...and she showed him hers. Don't you wish you were three?

It was also Cousin Zane's birthday, which was celebrated with the classic party game of Spin the Lettuce. Who knew that would be so much fun?

On the other hand, check out Zane's new ride. He can drive surprisingly well for a four-year-old.

A Big Oops

I have two oopses to report.

First, literally seconds before the first party guests rang the doorbell for Hannah's birthday party (and I mean, they were in the driveway), I was trying to get down some lemonade mix from the top shelf of the pantry, and instead dumped a container of oatmeal everywhere. Jonathan couldn't believe that I was taking pictures of it, but I'm kind of glad I did, aren't you? Thanks to some really fast vacuuming, no one was wiser...until now!

The second oops is, I uploaded all these birthday party pictures minutes before we left for the airport on our way to visit grandparents in Arizona. The idea was that I'd get the pictures done, and write the posts from my mom's computer. Our ride to the airport was in the driveway, while I was desperately working at the computer. Do you see a theme here?

Turns out, about half of the pictures didn't upload. So I've shown you all of the party that I can...until we get home, that is. Thanks for reliving Hannah's Sleeping Beauty birthday party with me, and hang in there for a few days. I promise more when we got home. (It's worth the wait to see the look on Hannah's face when she saw her "Aurora Cake.") In the meantime, I'll show you some of the fun we've been having on our vacation.

That Takes the Cake

This is the cake that started it all. For months, when Hannah's birthday was mentioned, all she would say is that she wanted a cake like Aurora. She didn't mean the nice cake that the fairies made using magic. She meant this one. Turns out, it's harder to make a falling-down cake that it looks! Here's what happened...

We started with eight, 7-inch layers of orange cake.

After leveling the tops, we covered them with butter cream frosting. Hannah helped up to this point (she loves baking almost as much as I do).

I let the butter cream set for several hours. Meanwhile, I made some runny, blue royal icing. Like the favors, this tip came from a desperate Facebook post. (Thanks for the tip, Erin! She used this technique to make blood on a Halloween cake. Clever, huh?)

So here it is in all it's glory! Six layers high, I started to get nervous about the cake's stability, so I stopped building. About 15 minutes later, it was getting tippy, so I skewered it, with the hope that as the royal icing set up, it would become sturdier.

Turns out, that wasn't the problem. (Anyone who knows about cakes probably already knows what went wrong, right?) My cake needed to be denser to support the weight of all those crazy layers. An hour later, the whole thing had fallen over.

I was too sad to take pictures of that, but here it is the next day, after I had salvaged they layers that were still intact.

Oh yeah, I also ate some of broken layer. That's why half of it's missing.

So literally minutes before we served the cake, during the party, I ran inside and constructed this cake out of the remaining five layers. We raced it outside, to a delighted little birthday girl who was so excited that she couldn't sit in her seat long enough to blow out the candles!