Pink Party!

As most of you know the past few weeks have been quite eventful.  We had my grandfather's memorial, my step-dad is recovering from a heart attack (and doing QUITE WELL thank heavens) and Luke broke his arm in a blaze of glory attempting a dunk in his varsity basketball game (surprise!  You readers didn't know that one yet!).  In the midst of all of this we (it was definitely a group effort) pulled off a Pink Party to celebrate Audrey's second birthday.

Our Pink Party Family

I've posted about a million pictures of the attendees on Facebook.  This post is dedicated to all things pink that made the party so much fun! 

The theme came about last fall when I made some pink garland for a friends baby shower.  I saw an idea on Pinterest, played around with the sewing machine and set to work creating garland of all different colors of pink circles.  Even thought the theme was pink I also LOVE the color of an ocean-blue, and because Audrey is still small her friends are really my friends, and since she technically almost stole my birthday I make the final decisions and decided the theme would be pink AND a little ocean blue for good measure :)
The garland turned out beautifully, especially when professionally photographed :)

Pink Garland

Next I set to work planning a pink menu.  I knew I wanted rice crispy treats but then went out on the search for pink snacks to add into the mix.  We found berries, gum balls, m&ms, and made some cupcakes for good measure (thanks Valentines Day, for also choosing to color coordinate your colors with my birthday party plans!).  I was going to make some cake balls and had big plans for what they were going to look like but in the end, these were the first and really only thing to be cut.  My mom and I were able to knock out the rest on a Saturday as Bob was resting at home after a really long few days.  It gave my mom and I something to focus on besides worrying, and I'm actually really thankful for the tasty diversion.

*A Side Note.  I've learned I'm 100% a stress eater.  To prove this revelation, I can attest that I was left alone with a bag of blue icing.  Once I had decorated the cupcakes I proceeded to sit on the couch and squeeze and squeeze and squeeze the icing into my mouth until I was sick.  It was the best tasting icing and was well worth the stomach ache later in the evening





                         


 
  Audrey's favorite food in the world right now is M&M's.  Lucky for us we have photographic evidence that her hand, in fact, was caught in the candy jar.  We had the table set up a few minutes before the guests arrived and Audrey could be found happily perched beside the snacks in a very precarious position...


The final touch to the Pink Party was the pink birthday cake.  I saw an idea (again, thanks PINTEREST!) where the icing was piped in swirls all around the cake.  My step mom had a great recipe for a stiffer icing and it worked great!  My mom and I baked a vanilla cake, dyed pink of course, and mixed the thick icing.  I set to work making swirl after swirl and was really impressed with the final result!  This is the same icing that we made later, that I piped directly into my mouth, for the record, so it not only decorated well but tasted delicious! 

In the end the best part of the Pink Party was having my family in attendance and having all of my friends over for the afternoon.  I have a wonderful group of friends and they have wonderful and adorable kids.  It was a much needed break from some of the less pleasant things going on to spend a couple of hours really laughing and spending time with friends and family.