Princess Party!

Yesterday was Princess Party Day!

The invitations invited the girls to dress up as princesses, to tie in Halloween a little bit:


I made these cupcakes, and then we ordered this creepy Aurora cake from the grocery store. It tasted kind of gross, so we didn't eat it...and now we have a weird plastic Sleeping Beauty torso left over. Too bad we didn't think to remove it and stick a Darth Vader action figure in there instead, just to throw people off:


I found the idea for these "magic princess wand cookies" online and baked them the night before, and then Keira applied the glitter sprinkles (liberally):


We had five little girls over, and then invited the two little boys from next door over to join in the fun--they didn't appear to mind all the princess stuff when a bounce house and free cupcakes were involved!

Keira wore her new Sleeping Beauty dress for a little while, and then changed into a regular dress following a brief "No, you cannot be an underwear-butt when there are people over here" discussion:

The Royal Court:

Okay, the castle cake. As you can see, Take Two still won't be winning any prizes: the frosting had a weird, frothy consistency, I ran short on time and ended up having to use green decorating gel to write the message on the cake, and it just generally wasn't all that impressive to anyone but Keira. Here she is, "reading" the message aloud (according to her, it said, "Dear Keira, please come to my birthday party, Love, Mommy.")...I think her Reading Face also serves as an appropriate reaction to the cake itself:

Instead of a guest book, we had everyone sign the inside of Keira's copy of Sleeping Beauty:

The kids and their parents left around 2, and then the families came over around 4 for a BBQ, more presents, and more fun. Whew! By last night, I felt a lot like I did after our wedding--exhausted from all the planning, preparation, and partying, but happy with how it turned out. Who knew a kid's birthday party (okay, two parties) could be so much work?! Keira loves all of her presents and had a great time. Thanks to everyone for making her birthday such a fun occasion!