It's Time for Some Magic! Here are my party planning ideas!

My boys are turning 5 and 7! Can you believe that!! My son Jacob is huge into magic right now, so we decided to do a magician party for him. So in case your wondering why I don't blog these days... well its cause I have been photographing all the other adorable kids in Boise Idaho and not my own kids! In fact I accidentally erased a memory card of my son's 7th birthday, and some other pictures of my kids :( I cannot believe that.

So you all know I am a huge party planner and I spend way to much time putting together my children's birthday parties (Remember the Mario and Luigi Party here). I guess I have nothing better to do... that or I enjoy staying up til 3 in the morning decorating dollar store buckets and making fondant cakes... In case you ever wonder what kind of weird party planner I am... I will admit to you that I have already planned and purchased the materials needed for my daughters 3 year party and that isn't till the end of December... and yes I am also the kind of person that has bought about half my Christmas presents already. But in my defense... I am also a "frugal" person and cannot pass up a good bargain... so if it is a price I can't resist then it usually ends up in my shopping cart.

So here are some of my party ideas that I wanted to share.

Here is the cake I am making. It is actually already pre-done for the event and it turned out ADORABLE. This was my inspiration Only my cake will say Ryan (5) and Jacob (7)

Here is my cake that I will complete the day of the party

Invitations already sent and the boys helped make these

So for game ideas to entertain about 20 - 25 kids we are going to do a carnival set up. We will have ring toss, a row of 7 buckets with bean bags and the kids have to try and get them into the buckets (which were purchased from the dollar store and then converted into top hats... they are sooo cute!) All I did was take black cardboard paper for the top and used masking tape to tape on. And for the areas around the bucket just red cardboard paper taped on and since it didn't completely stretch around the buckets I made a black circle center piece and then taped on a yellow felt star. Since there are 7 buckets each star is labeled 1-7 except for the ones #5 which will be Ryan's name since he is 5 and then #7 will have Jacob's bucket instead!

We will also do a jar of black jelly beans and the kids will have to guess how many are in there. They will win the jar of beans if they guess correctly. And another game is bowling. Since it is a carnival set up I hired on my older nephews to run the booths and each kid will win tickets for the games. So if they play ring toss and get 4 out of the 6 rings around the sticks they will win 4 tickets. They will then put there names into a hat and I will draw for prizes at the end of the party for a chance to win these. I found these amazing boxes of magic tricks brand new never opened at Goodwill for .99 each! Can you believe that!

and of course goody bags filled with a magic wand (must have) silly glasses, chinese finger traps, bubbles and a noisy toy (because I know how much parents enjoy these things). I think I will add some candy too.

But the highlight of the event will be the real live magician from Furry Tales Magic Company. We are ecstatic about that! What we will do is set up a stage and then chairs for the kids with some popcorn bags and each kid will have a home made top hat, magic wand and cape. It will be so cute! I am going to make my own hats too. I found a way to make them online. Take a black paper plate and cut out the middle. Then glue on black cardboard around the middle that you cut out and wa-la instant hat. I should have just bought some... but they are a dollar each which gets expensive if you have 20-25 kids!

Oh my gosh am I so excited for the party! We have made other decorations like cut out stars and banners. I am thinking of setting up my backdrop stand that I use for my photography and putting it in an entry way and hanging a bunch of strands of stars from it like a curtain and the kids will walk through it.

So if you are in need of a magic party idea here you go! It was so fun to plan and the boys are extremely excited for the magic show. It was kind of expensive cause the magician was a hefty price... but you can't put a price tag on your kids happiness right!?!

I am also entering my bucket craft idea into Trendy Crafter Contest this week. You must use tape... and I used masking tape since I wanted to be able to re-use these buckets after the party for toys.

Happy 9th Birthday Courtnee

My mom planned a surprise party for Courtnee at my house after the Nutcracker. She was so excited! She has got to be the most expressive little girl I have ever met! Every gift she opened was like a new car for her! it was too funny!

You are growing up to fast little Corkin! HAPPY BIRTHDAY AND HOPE YOUR DAY IS PERFECT!

Here is the cake I made for her special day.

Blowing out her candles! Hope her dreams come true!
Courtnee and Katelyn

Sydnee, Courtnee and Katelyn

She is so happy... can you tell?

Every Princess Deserves A Castle!!

This is how I spent my day yesterday building my favorite little girls a castle! And this is my best cake yet! EVERYTHING on this cake is edible... minus the "towers of the castle!" I went to Zurcher's and found so many neat things to decorate a cake with.

I now understand why wedding cakes are ridiculously expensive. The hours it takes to bake, decorate and put together a cake is so time consuming. And my kitchen was such a disaster afterwards with icing and powdered sugar on every inch of counter space!

And I am so glad I took pictures prior to transferring the cake to the fridge in the garage because as I was moving the cake... some towers fell over... so now have some touch ups on the cake before tomorrow! My next question is how am I going to get this to the party location without it breaking! UGH! I have no idea! It broke on the way to the garage fridge and that's only a few steps let alone miles away!

So if you have seen this cake before... it is because I copied it! It is part of Wilton's Romantic Castle Kit and the same kit is on the front of the box. I just thought it was perfect the way it was so I re-created it!

The Castle Tops are made of purple fondant with glitter candy on the tops. I used almond extract to put the candy glitter on and it stayed on perfectly!

Wow! I just think it turned out so much better then I thought it would! I don't normally use icing on cakes because I think it is hard to decorate with. But got on you tube and watched some cake decorating videos for some tips.

Putting the cake together was fun! The flowers are just made of icing and I found these candy pearls for the middle of the flowers.
Here are the towers for the castle. Aren't they adorable!

Kylie's Candy Castle Cake

Tomorrow is Kylie's 2nd Birthday! I can't believe how fast they grow up!!! Jenny is planning a small get together for her tomorrow but her big birthday party will be in a few weeks with Madison. Madison and Kylie will celebrate their 2nd birthday together.

I made her a quick cake for tomorrow. It was a practice cake because we will use this same design to make a princess castle cake in a couple weeks. It will be much more intricate and prettier. :D I am glad I got in some practice because I learned so much when putting this together!

Here is a picture of Kylie on her 1st birthday party! She has changed so much. More pictures of her after tomorrow!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY KYLIE! I LOVE YOU LOTS!!

RYANS CAKE IS FINALLY DONE!

This has been my work in progress for a couple of weeks now. This cake was quite the adventure for me. It seemed like everytime I turned around something went wrong with it.

1st- After I baked the cake I put it in the freezer in the garage (out of the way from kids...so I thought!). One of my kids pulled up a chair and opened up the wrapper around the cake and ate a chunk out of the side.

2nd- When the cake was found it was freezer burned.... thanks to one of the kids who couldn't resist eating my cake.

3rd- I didn't have time to rebake a cake so I am hoping it tastes good enough for kids to eat so I started decorating it. Thanks to a huge pile of frosting on one side of the cake I was able to get it to look good enough for the next step! But then after I started decorating it I put it int he fridge to take a break and one of the kids took a chunk out of the fondant after it was decorated... (Arrgh!!) I have my suspicions...but no proof as to which child got into it AGAIN! (4 year olds!)

4th- After fixing it with some more fondant to cover up the missing chunk I attempted to make the turtles and flowers that went around the cake... I gave up... I cannot figure out what the professionals do to make these things...

But after getting through all that and understanding that maybe my cake looked too good for a child to resist (I should be proud) then I was pleased with the result.

This is the cake I copied that I found on the internet.

Here is my version.