A Slice of Smith Life: cupcakes

A 5th Birthday Tribute to our Sweet One

Dear Sweet One,

As I spent some time gathering photos for this post, it brought back memories of your eventful, long, and exciting birth 5 years ago and I can't believe another year has gone by!

You have grown and changed so much since your 4th birthday celebration (that happened to also be a unicorn theme) and now we are so joyful and happy to celebrate your 5th birthday!

This past year you continued to LOVE gymnastics and do all sorts of crazy moves, even in trees! You are super flexible and just about everyday you practice hand stands, rolls, back bends, splits and your dance moves! You really have no fear!

You continue to love to read with Daddy and Mommy and your siblings too!

You love the beach and swimming at Nana and Grandpa's pool and you are getting really good at swimming. So much so that you have taken off your floaties to swim! This past year in the pool you are swimming a lot in the shallow end and you like to jump off the side of the pool in the deep end so Mom and Dad can catch you! And you love to spin around and I get so dizzy too easily! :)

You love hanging out with your big brother! He is so good to you and all his sisters!

I love when you wake up in the morning and come and snuggle with me.

And at Halloween in 2015 you thought the yucky pumpkin guts were quite funny and it made you very silly. :)

You still love to wear all types of shoes including my black boots!

I love this photo of you from our trip to Charleston, SC at one of your sibling's soccer tournament in Nov. 2015 because it shows just how your hair gets curlier and curlier!

You loved the new kitchen and accessories you got for Christmas 2015...

You love playing dress-up and with your sisters and being silly with them!

Your big brother loves to snuggle with you, but you don't always want to sit still enough for his hugs. You happened to fall asleep on his shoulder so I quickly took a photo of this rare moment where your brother got some snuggle time with you!

You love to roller skate with and without help!

You love going to the park and swinging, climbing and sliding!

You love to help out in the kitchen and you are always pulling up a bar stool to get close to the counter as you exclaim often, "I wanna see! I wanna do it!" Here you are helping out with our traditional Easter resurrection cookies.

You've been talking up a storm, learning your ABCs, counting and doing school work like the big kids. You love to sing your ABCs and you always ask us to write out the alphabet by saying "Do an A." This past year you do really well writing the letter "n" over and over again. :)

Recently you loved going on kiddie rides for the first time at Knoebels Amusement Park.

And you went down your first water slide!

You are growing so fast and tall that you can already touch the ceiling! Well, you can at least touch this ceiling with help from Daddy.

You have grown so much and have gone through so many changes this past year! You don't take regular naps anymore, but occasionally you'll find Mommy and Daddy's bed to sleep in during the day or you will walk downstairs at night and come and snuggle with us! For a little person you sure do take up a lot of space!

This past year you loved to say the "Hail Mary" and "Our Father" prayers even more and during family prayer time you tell us who is next to recite the prayers. We love that you love Jesus and kneel during Mass and sing the "Alleluia" at just the right time. All of us are also amazed that you walk up to communion at daily Mass with your little praying hands folded and bow before the Eucharist, though it is still some time before you can actually receive our Lord at your First Communion. Here you are kneeling at The National Shrine of Saint Elizabeth Ann Seton in front of her final resting place.

We pray and hope that you will always love our Lord and grow deeper in love with your faith and look up to Him and our Blessed Mother as your best role models and friends.

You play and love hard and sometimes you fall and scrap your forehead from playing so hard and then fall asleep from all the playing.

You still love to dress up and this past year we saw you in this outfit a lot!

You loved the snow in January 2018 and we were finally able to put this cute snow suit on you that we got from a friend.

In winter 2018, you enjoyed being around the ponies and horses during your older sister's horse back riding lessons.

You love your family and we love you!

Happy 5th birthday! We had fun celebrating your special day at the beach club and eating unicorn cupcakes!

We love you!

Love,
Mom, Dad and your 4 older siblings :)

Princess Party for our Little 3 Year Old Princess!

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Tomorrow, July 30, our youngest will turn 3 years old! (Her annual birthday tribute post will be my next blog post.) Today we celebrated our sweet girl with a Princess Party theme! I've made princess themed cakes before, but this was the first year I decided to try a princess themed cupcake cake!

After my 12 year old daughter searched Pinterest for me for princess cake ideas, she found this one to use as our guide.

So we got to work and it was so fun to work with a few of my daughters on this cake!
First some Before and After photos, then some details...

Now a few "behind the scene" details...
I had a leftover pizza box top that I first covered in aluminum foil and placed the homemade Hershey cupcakes on the board to make sure they fit. The chocolate cake recipe on the back of the Hershey's cocoa container is a family favorite and very easy to make! I've used the recipe for several cakes in the past.

After I covered the box top in aluminum foil I thought it needed some more princess "fanciness" so my very crafty neighbor happened to have some silvery glitter wrapping paper in her craft room. Perfect! So I wrapped the pizza box with the shiny glitter paper.

Then it was time to decorate with my helpers. To make the flower-like cupcakes I first made homemade cream cheese icing that we love and put in several drops of pink food coloring to tint it. Then we dropped the icing into Cake Mate plastic decorating bags and used the Cake Mate decorating tip that made the icing look like a flower when you swirled it around. As my 12 year old pointed out, we had to fill in the gaps between each cupcake so we just made wider swirls for each cupcake to make them look connected.

Here is the finished princess cupcake cake complete with purple ribbon that I laid on top of 2 cupcakes that I got from that crafty neighbor of mine and we decorated the dress with white/purple Celebration Sixlets. I also bought the purple tiara and wand from the $1 store and my 12 year old daughter hot glued the silver decorative string around the star on the wand. (The icing looks like a different color in each of the photos below, but they aren't. The photo on my left was taken with my not so good smartphone and the one on the right was taken with our good Canon.)

The party was at 3 PM so we had snacks, cupcakes/cake and ice cream. Here's the table set up:

We had "Wand"-erful Watermelon, Castle Cantelope, Prince Pretzels, Princess Popcorn, and Fancy Fish. I made the signs very quickly by just finding free images on my computer and pasting them into a word document. Then glued the images onto card stock and wrote the names of each food. Very easy and quick to do!

We had kids of all ages at the party so everyone mostly just played with activities that I set out. We had dress up clothes available, bubbles, small kiddie pool, and chalk art. We didn't get to alot of the activities that I had planned (like find the treasures in the sand box) because everyone was running around having fun and trying to stay cool on the hot afternoon.

I really fun and easy bubble activity that I used to do with my now older kids is "fly swatter bubbles". Get a clean plastic fly swatter and dip it into a bucket/tray of bubbles and then flick the swatter back and forth fast and it makes lots of small bubbles. Really fun and kids love it!

Cake and singing time!

My 8 year old daughter made a cake for her little sister since we weren't sure we would have enough cupcakes. She iced the cake and used pink and blue Sixlets candies to spell out her sister's name. Then she used small ball sprinkles and laid a wand across the cake then put the "3" candle in the cake.

Our little princess received so many wonderful gifts from sweet friends. Here she is opening up her Sophia the First dress up gown and shoes...

The littlest guests got a princess goodie bag filled with a princess cup, stickers, bubbles, ring, and wand.

Princesses love to party and change into several different outfits throughout the day. It takes alot of energy to be a princess and sometimes princesses tucker out and need their beauty rest...