our forest party (and an anniversary + a soon-to-be-here babe...october is quite a month for us)

well, the birthday party was on sunday (a beautiful day!), and it went off just as planned...in other words, wade and i actually got to be there as i was not off having lily and eme's baby sister! i say this because i really had an overwhelming feeling that we were going to have a repeat of what happened for lily's second birthday party, which we had decided to have a week early so that we wouldn't be too close to eme's due date. and then eme decided to come 3 weeks early, so there was a whole other kind of party. anyway, no new baby sister yet, along we are well on our way with 2 weeks left to go.

for a change, i actually got to use the camera. usually, it ends up sitting on a table somewhere and gets picked up once or twice. this time, i made a real effort to get some shots, and i think that i got most of the kiddos that were there. so get ready for a lots of photos. first, here are the cakes...

this one made the perfect fairy ring...a yummy pound cake baked in a bundt pan. the recipe for this cake is so very special to me as it was given to me by one of my best students ever at the end of her sixth grade year. her family's gift to me was the super-secret family recipe for this cake, along with the loveliest note (i keep the recipe tucked inside of the card with some of the most wonderful words a teacher could ever hear). every time that i make this cake, i think about emily and her mom, linda, and i know why i loved teaching so very much! oh, and the icing on top (because i needed something to stick all of those super cute mushrooms into) is the buttercream recipe from magnolia bakery in nyc.

then of course we needed a chocolate cake with lots of icing, so again with the vanilla buttercream for the outside and a double chocolate toffe on the inside. for all of you baking purists out there, don't read this next sentence. the triple chocolate cake mix and icing were both from the grocery store, and honestly, i don't think that i could have made it taste better had i made it from scratch...super moist and deliciously chocolate-y. for the filling, i just added a bag of toffee bits (found in the baking aisle at the grocery store, too) to the canned icing...so easy. the hardest thing was to get the cake iced without any of the chocolate crumbs coming through. to accomplish that, i iced it once (with canned buttercream icing) and put it in the fridge to set for half an hour, and then i iced it a second time with the vanilla buttercream that i had made. green apple decorating sugar was the perfect spot for the mushrooms to grow and the forest floor was crumbled-up chocolate cake leftover from the cake bites (more on those in a moment).
i also made itty bitty individual cakes for the girls...

lily's cake with 5 candles (and mushrooms)

and eme's cake with 3 candles (and mushrooms).

and now for my newest favorite treat to make...thanks to martha stewart having bakerella on her show. if you have never seen this blog or made these cupcake bites, you need to do yourself a favor and get over there right now! while you're there, check out her halloween cupcake pops...so cool (i don't know if i'd ever have time to make these guys as they are rather involved, but i adore them anyway!). so, the ones i made are supposed to be (or at least resemble) mushrooms. the inside is the same chocolate cake mix as before with a can of the chocolate frosting. now that i'm writing this, i realize that i should have put the toffee chips in this, too...hmmm. anyway, these were set into the white chocolate candy melts, and then dipped into the red candy melts (with a bit of red coloring added) with white chocolate dots added to the top. if i could have found round, white candies, i think that they would have turned out cuter (and not taken as long). you did know that they were mushrooms before i told you, right? good, thanks for being so kind!

i think that my most favorite part of getting ready for the party were making the favors for our little guests. these guys deserve a post of their own, but here's a picture of the forest prince, the gnome/tomten child, little red riding hood, and one cute little mushroom. you can sort of see the rest all packaged up off to the right. we also included a wooden ball...forest friends bowling. see those green trees with the details painted on? those were mine when i was lily and eme's age! that's why i love well-made wooden toys so much. i'm sure that these were from FAO shwartz. pops (so-called by lily + em), my dad, used to travel every week when we were kids, and he always was bringing back something special for us. i still have so many of these gifts (and memories) well over 30 years later. it has been wonderful to share these with the girls.

of course, the best part of the party was having so much of our family and also our dear friends spending time with us. the kiddos ranged in age from 11 weeks to 5, with stops at all years in between. unfortunately, i missed a few...dylan and celie made it to the party a bit late, and sam was off pushing his big truck here, there, and everywhere...sorry, you guys!
and i can't help but think ahead to next year and wonder if if we will be having one big party for three girls, which i guess that we will if their 3 birthdays end up being all in october, just weeks apart!
and there's one more very important date in october, too...october 16, which is our 9th anniversary! how terrible is it that i don't have any pictures of wade and i together? very. we did take some at celie + ghazi's wedding last weekend, but we don't have those yet, so here's one of my favorites from our wedding day. i adore the moment that is captured in this picture...it really is worth a thousand words! how is it possible that we have been together for 20 years? probably because we are amazing (and realistic. and meant-to-be). xoxo!

just one more thing...i'll have the tutorials for the skirts (and hopefully a full-size image of the deer and rabbit that i gocco-ed for the invites and used on the girls' shirts that you can use for your own embroideries) and for the forest friends party favors, oh, and templates for the buntings, too (which i really loved and plan to hang in the playroom). i'm a busy little bee, i am.
i'm still trying to figure out how to do the whole pdf thing. i want to type it all up and add the pictures in my wordprocessor, and then save it as a pdf. i think that's probably the easiest way to go, but i still need to work on figuring that out.