Our Beautiful Blessings!: Ella's Cowgirl Party

Friday, March 7, 2014

Ella's Cowgirl Party - Finale!

For our little family party that we had on Ella's actual birthday I made her the lemon cake she requested. This time around she wanted rainbow chip with pink frosting.

Lisa one of the mentor mom's at my MOPS group just recently did a demonstration about cake decorating. She shows us how to do lots of stuff, but one of the tips she gave me was to take your frosting knife and just pat it on the top of the cake. It pulls the frosting up into these little peaks and adds a fun look to it. I couldn't think of anything to put on the cake that would be cowgirlish...I could have gotten a plastic horse, but Ella doesn't really play with that stuff. So instead I used my stamping supplies and borrowed a punch from Kim and made this cute little banner.

Chowing down on their cake!

I knew this one little cake would not feed all the guest so I decided to make a chocolate cake. Another tip Lisa gave us was that the best chocolate cake recipe ever comes off the back of the Hershey's Cocoa box. I thought I would give it a whirl. I thought it would be fun to do a bunt cake, but I don't have the right pan for that so I ended up making cupcakes instead. I evidently filled the cupcake liner more than 2/3's full because the cupcakes were spilling over the side of the pan. Oops! I ended up having to scrape them out of the pan so the edges didn't look so pretty, but the cake....oh my! YUMMY! I also used the recipe on the cocoa box to make the chocolate frosting. In my opinion the cake was awesome and it didn't even need the frosting, but if you are a chocoholic you will absolutely love this recipe!

Silly cheeser!

On a side note...this cute boys top right front tooth has been practically falling out of his head, but he would not let us pull it. A couple weeks ago he jumped on Jack and ended up really hurting himself. He put his teeth through his lip and almost knocked his tooth out. It was bleeding like crazy and the gums were very bruised. Right after the cake he ended up hurting himself...not sure how...and his tooth was bleeding like crazy again. Michael told him the tooth needed to come out. Owen immediately covered his mouth with his hands. Michael decided to pay Owen $1 if he let him pull his tooth. Owen shook his head. So Michael up'd it to $2 to which Owen said, "$3 is better!" Oh he's good!!! This was going on while Ella was opening her presents. When Owen came out to the garage this is what I saw.

The adult tooth is no where to be seen. His poor baby teeth have just taken a beating. I sure hope he's more careful with his adult teeth.

Back to the party....

Ella sat on the present table in the garage to open her gifts. The first one was from Papa & Grandma Martin. She got a little coloring kit and a puppy pillow pet....she obviously loved it!

Aunt Stephie and Uncle Ry got Ella this cupcake game and this cute pink top.

Uncle Jon & Aunt Becky got her $5.

Ms. Jen & Logan got Ella a Barbie beauty kit and this BFF necklace!

This is just the cutest thing ever!!!

Ella also got a Hello Kitty coloring kit & reusable stickers, a cute skirt outfit and Sofia The First dolls and castle and a make-up bag filled with also sorts of girly stuff...lip gloss, fingernail polish, lotion and tic tacs.

And in keeping with tradition at the 4th birthday we always have a pinata. This time around Michael made a cluster of gold nuggets. From just the right angle they looked like real "gold nuggets", but you know Michael did his best!

Birthday girl got to go first!

After that we lined the kids up according to height. They each got 3 swings. We also had the kids all stand behind a chair. It gave them a visual of where they couldn't go. At Jack's 4th Birthday poor Kendra got a little to close and was whacked in the head. Thank goodness no one was injured this time!