Event 2--Evie's 3rd Birthday!

So I came home from Eli's Easter party exhausted.  I put everything from the party on the kitchen island and on the floor and rested for the remainder of the day.  I didn't want to clean a single thing.  You know that feeling when you come home from a trip...you're tired, but you know you need to unpack and do some laundry, but you want to avoid it for as long as possible?  Yea, that's the feeling that I had.  I didn't want to move, but I knew that on the following day (Friday) I would have a lot more to do to get ready for Evie's party.

Luckily, J was in town, so on Saturday morning she had the energy to make Evie's purple birthday pancakes (they were purple, but in the picture, you can't really tell).  What would I do without her??

Since Evie has been showing so much interest in the alphabet, we decided to throw her an ABC themed birthday party.

The invitations were pretty simple.  I bought some inexpensive stationary from Michael's that had the letter E on the cover.

Then I handwrote a cute little rhyme inside

and then printed out the party info on the bottom.

During the week leading up to Evie's party, B and I had already been hard at work making Evie's party favors.  I bought some ABC silicone molds and we made our own recycled ABC crayons.  I wanted to give each kid their name spelled out in crayon letters.  It is amazing how many letter A's I had to make!  But they turned out really great.

[On a side note, I read lots of posts about making these crayons and here are a few things I learned--

1. You can only get the ABC silicone mold from one company, Sillycone.  And FYI, the owner is super-duper nice.

2. If you decide to use cheapy crayons (like I did), don't try to take the crayon paper off by placing the crayons in warm water.  This only works with Crayola crayons...because cheaper crayons glue the paper to the actual crayon.  I used the Michael's brand of crayons, Creatology, and all I had to do was take a box cutter and cut a line down the length of the crayon paper and then 99% of the wrappers ripped right off.

3. You don't need to use cooking spray or anything inside the molds.  I did a test and the letters popped out easily with or without the spray.

4. For some reason M and N never came out with a smooth top.  The tops always came out looking like I dripped acid on them....which is not an attractive look.  So B worked his magic with a heat gun to smooth out the tops for me.  Phew!

So those are my pointers for making recycled alphabet crayons.  Now you can go out and make your own!]

On Friday morning, I dropped the 3 kids off at AJ's house for a playdate so that I could run to the grocery store and to Michael's for last-minute party things.  AJ was nice enough to take the kids so that I could do everything a little quicker.  Everything took forever though because it was Good Friday and everyone was off from school and out shopping to get ready for Easter.  Ugh.

I finally got home, threw Eulee in for a much-needed nap, and started baking Evie's cake.  Since Evie's favorite color is purple, I decided to make her a purple ombre cake.  It was going to be 4 layers, starting with white and then going to a dark purple.  This cake was much easier to make than the rainbow cake because it had fewer layers and because I had four 9 inch round pans so that I could bake all 4 layers at once!  I saved so much time this way.

Once the cake was baked, I picked up the kids and let them play Wii the rest of the day while I put the layers together and put a crumb-coat (thin layer) of icing on the cake.

I couldn't finish decorating the cake that night because I was using Kit Kats to decorate the cake since that is Evie's favorite candy right now.  I saw this cake when I was looking up Easter cakes, so I knew exactly how I wanted to decorate it...but I couldn't do it until the morning of the party.  A few years ago I learned that if you ever decorate cakes with candy, remember to put the candy on the DAY OF the party or else the candy will be stale. [BUT, what's good to know is that kids will still eat the candy whether or not it is stale.]

On Saturday morning, I got up at 7am to finish off the cake.  I iced the cake easily (I think the crumb-coat is the secret to a beautiful cake!) and started putting all the Kit Kats around the cake.  I ended up being 2 Kit Kats short of circling the whole cake!!  AAGGHHHH!  So I sent B out to the gas station to pick up some Kit Kats.  In the end, it turned out beautifully.

We got to the Kiddie Park,

set everything up, and then let the kids get on the rides the rest of the time.

It was funny how closely Evie stuck to Eli at the party. She rode most of her rides either with him, or with Eli's best friend RM. I thought she would stick with friends her age, but she just wanted to be with the 2 boys.

Since the party was from 10am-12pm, we didn't have a set time that kids had to regroup to eat or anything.  We provided breakfast tacos (yum!), fruit, and some of Evie's favorite snacks--popcorn, Teddy Grahams, and peanut butter filled pretzels.

Then it was time for cake.

It was a little breezy that day, so every time I lit the candle, it would go right out!  It went out while we were in the middle of singing "Happy Birthday" and it just wouldn't light anymore.  So at the end of the song, I told Evie to just pretend to blow out the candle.  She just frowned (like she was going to cry) and shook her head 'no.'  It was really the saddest face ever.

So I tried to re-light it one more time and it lit up, so she then she blew it out and smiled.  Phew!  Everyone knew that the inside of the cake would be a surprise, so after I cut into it, everyone ooooooh'ed and ahhhhhh'ed when they saw the purple ombre!

We all had such a great time at the party.  The kids played, the adults chatted...J and I were saying that this party was actually kind of relaxing.  Usually we're running games and activities, so it was nice to enjoy ourselves for once.  I'm still torn though.  I like parties where the kids interact with each other more directly, but I also like parties where I can talk to the adults and relax.  Either way, this one was a fun one!

When we got back home, we all rested while the kids played with some of the new toys.  When I finally sat down, I suddenly felt like I had been hit by a truck.  My whole body was exhausted.  I felt completely out of it.  I think all the adrenaline had vanished.  That's when I realized that I wouldn't be able to make anything cute for our 3rd event--Easter Sunday.

That night we also took Evie out for her birthday dinner at a Japanese restaurant.  Girl wanted her udon!  Then we ended with some green tea ice cream

and she just slurped it right up!  Yum!

 What an awesome day for our 3 year old!  Happy birthday, Evie!!