Let them eat cake

My friend's little girl, Makenna, turned three recently, and she asked me to help her with the decorations for the party.  Makenna is as girlie as they come, so it's no surprise that the color scheme for the party would involve the color pink.  Far be it from me to argue with a three year old little girl.  Besides, pink is probably my one of my favorite colors, so I love to get some pink in when I can.  I threw some ideas out to my friend.  She loved them and basically let me loose.

I invited a friend over to come help since I wasn't exactly sure my ideas would work. My friend Mandy is pretty much the only friend I have that I can say, "Um, I've got an idea of what I want to make but it's probably going to take hours and hours to make, and it might not even work because it's just an idea in my head. Wanna help me?" And she'll jump right in, no questions asked. So when I asked her she said, "I can only come Monday, Wednesday and Friday." Awesome.

This is the invitation to Makenna's birthday party as shown on Tiny Prints.   


{image via Tiny Prints}

Cute, eh?  If you aren't familiar with Tiny Prints, they are pretty awesome.  It's hard to justify making invitations when there are invites that cute out there.  And very affordable. 

The stipulations for the party were that balloons are not allowed and that it had to be set up and torn down within 30 minutes since parties were scheduled back to back.  What that in mind, here's the decorations I made.

For the centerpieces, I took the invitation literally and we made cakes using cardboard, toothpicks, and paper.  I used my Silhouette to cut out little flames for the candles and attached those to the candles with floral wire. 

Here's all six of them.  I alternated between light pink and dark pink since the invite had two shades of pink.  I also tried to match the candles to the invite. 

Here's the cakes in action with the rest of the decor.  I kind of wished this was my party, only somehow I don't think 33 candles on each cake would have looked quite as cute. 

And another shot of the party area.  Mandy and I cut wrapping paper to make table runners to lay over the table for all the cafe tables  -- something I love to do for parties because it is very inexpensive and always adds a huge pop of color -- and then punched a million circles out of cardstock and scattered them on the runners to create polka dots.  Have I ever told you about my obsession with polka dots?  I can't get enough.  It's funny.  My twin sister has a thing for stripes.  For me, it's always been polka dots.  They complete me. 

For the tables that did not have cakes on them (my friend wasn't sure how many tables there would be), I used my Silhouette to cut out large M's and we glued those down to large circles.  It took probably 10 minutes to set everything up and about 5 minutes to pack it all up with some time to spare for the next party.     

And I can't leave you without showing you the cake.  My friend had it made.  And I think it was perfect. 

The real cake couldn't have been any cuter.  Love.It.

I think the biggest compliment I got was from Miss Makenna herself.  She was playing with one of the paper cakes and my friend asked her, "Do you like it?" Makenna replied, "I like it.  It's pretty."  My heart melted.

Happy Birthday, Makenna!   Thank you for allowing me to be apart of your life.  I look forward to getting to know you as you grow into strong, beautiful woman.  A woman that will hopefully love to craft.  Know that you are loved.  By so many people.  Eat your cake now, Makenna.  Because all too soon you will start thinking about how many calories it has in it.  :)