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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.)

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.


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...


Sweet dreams little princess.  We had so much fun celebrating your special 3rd birthday with you!  We love you so much!

Also, I am thankful for my blog nomination for the Homeschool Blog Awards this year!  The winners have been announced and all the nominees are listed here.  Even though my blog didn't win in the "Best Encourager" category, I am thankful that my blog was listed with so many great blogs and thank you to all those that voted for my blog!  Congrats to all the nominees and winners! 

I am thankful for our 3 year old princess who turned 3 this past Friday, Nov. 19th.  On Saturday, family and friends came over for a princess party.   I used this Family Fun cake idea to make this princess castle cake:


Then in the cake decoration section at Wal-Mart, I stumbled upon these great edible rings (that were on clearance) with edible ink markers that the girls decorated, then ate!  Wilton makes these rings and they were a hit!

It was three years ago today early in the morning (1:41 AM to be exact) that our 4th "cupcake" was born!  Like Cupcake #1 and #2, she was born on the 19th of the month.  What are the odds that three out of four of our children were all born on the 19th day of their birthday months? 

We are thankful that God blessed our family and friends with our beautiful gift and she is looking forward to her Princess themed birthday party on Saturday!  She loves to dress up!  Can you tell?

Happy 4th Birthday Cupcake #1! May 2004

A Cinderella princess cake fit for a "Rachelella" princess! I made a 9x13 cake at the bottom, then used a Pampered Chef 8 cup glass mixing bowl and baked a cake inside the bowl. Then I took a Barbie doll from my daughter's room and stuck it in the center. I dyed the icing blue and iced Barbie's chest area too. I then decorated her with small marshmallows around her waist and the bottom of her dress. I decorated the cupcakes with Cinderella clipart from my computer. I printed the clipart, cut into small squares, and taped them to a toothpick. Instant (and inexpensive) cupcake topper for any themed party!