Happy 3rd Birthday Big Girl!!!

My "baby" girl turned 3 this past Sunday! Unreal!! I'm amazed when I think back to everything we went through to have her - 3 miscarriages which included - having to meet with a geneticist to find out if we could even have children, many, many tears shed, lots of medical testing (for me), and of course many prayers (by us, our family & our friends)! She was well worth the wait! Love you Buggy Girl!  (baby brother is no less special - he is baby #6 but only child #2).

Now to celebrate the birthday girl!! If you know us, you know that there is never a dull moment with us! Last year Buggy spent her 2nd birthday in the ER with a dislocated elbow instead of at Sea World (thank you SW for giving us another pass so we could go back!).  This year was *much* less drama, however we did have to reschedule her party because she got sick 2 days before the party was to commence! Once we were finally able to celebrate she had a party fit for a Princess! (I like exclamation points in case you haven't noticed...it's just me, get used to it!)

Singing Happy Birthday & blowing out her candles on her "Bepunzel" cookie cake (Rapunzel in Buggy girl speak)

The family

She loves her "Bepunzel"

Love the shades! She's all about her accessories! 

The little man "Boogie Oggie Oggied till he just couldn't Boogie no more!"  

Some of the details that went into the party...

Instead of a traditional cake I wanted to do cake pops (white & chocolate cake)

I didn't get any pictures of the process of making the chocolate cake pops, but of course it's the same as this one.

These are the ingredients I used. Instead of making the cake the way the box says to, I followed the recipe on the Wilton website (thanks to my sister for the tip!)

 Very important! DO NOT USE WHIPPED ICING FOR THIS!! Get the creamy recipe!!!

Ok, so bake the cake & let it cool completely (I made the cakes well in advance - remember I had to reschedule the party last minute...)

Crumble the cooled cake into small pieces (I prefer to wear gloves while doing the next few steps)

 Make sure there aren't any large pieces

 Then add the entire can of icing & mix well with your hands (see why I like gloves!) Make sure all of the cake is mixed into the icing!

 Now you're ready to scoop. I used this scoop to get the proper amount & then rolled them in my hands (again had the gloves on for the messy factor)

 Place the balls on a parchment paper lined cookie sheet & place in the freezer for at least 2 hours. Both of my cake mixes made about 64 cake balls each and they were the perfect 2 bite pieces. 

 (due to the chaos of things I got pictures of the chocolate pops for this step instead of the white...)

In a double boiler on the stove (or a small bowl in the microwave) melt the Candy Melts of your desired color. 

These next steps you'll want to do in smaller batches...pull about 10-15 cake balls out of the freezer, dip the candy sticks (make sure you get candy sticks & not cookie sticks like I did) in the candy melt & insert into the cake ball.  Now place the cake pop into a piece of foam so it stands up (but doesn't touch it's neighboring cake pop).  Once you have the 10-15 made into cake pops place them back in the freezer.  Repeat until all of the cake balls are now cake pops.

Now comes the fun part!! Once the cake pops have been in the freezer about 30min - 1hr take them out, in small batches again.  You're now going to dip each pop into the candy melts, thoroughly covering the cake ball.  Gently tap the stick on the side of the pan/bowl to get any excess coating off. I wanted super sparkly cake pops (party theme was Princess) so at this point I rolled them in sparkly sprinkles & then placed them back in the styrofoam.  Aren't they pretty?!?!  (thank you Kelli for letting me play around with your lenses & giving me a quick lesson in how to use my camera!)

Of course I didn't stop there with the craft projects for this party! The birthday girl needed a birthday outfit! So I employed the help of my sister, Kelli (I needed her seamstress skills cause I didn't trust myself for this - Yes, she is a great seamstress & an even more amazing photographer!). 

I did help out some with this shirt! I took care of cutting the 3 out & adhering it to the shirt, then I handed it over to the seamstress & let her do the aplique stitch around it.

At the last minute, cause that's my style, I decided she needed ruffle socks (watch for the tutorial for that in the near future).  This meant a very fast run to Hobby Lobby to grab the ribbon & then me staying up *way* to late to make them! 

The complete outfit...OH, but wait! The birthday girl had her own idea of how things should be!! 10 minutes before we were to leave for the party she decided she didn't like the white socks she wanted pink! So of course since it was her birthday I grabbed a pair of her pink socks & whipped up another pair (that's how easy these are to make!)

The crafts didn't stop there...I had wanted to make everything for the goody bags, but in the end I only had time to make one of them.

Crayon Hearts (I made circles for the boys) Sadly my pictures of this aren't very good because I have horrible lighting in my house (if you haven't noticed).  However, I followed her instructions exactly!  The silicone cupcake "tins" I used were found in the Target $1 spot (they were actually $2.50 but still a great deal!) during valentines.