Happy Days Are Here Again

Look at me!  Blogging about good stuff!  Like I used to do back in the day!

First of all, Dorothy found her glitter heart sunglasses and is wearing them always, which is fantastic.

 Second, I spent the last few days ignoring my impending miscarriage by prepping Dorothy's 4th birthday party, a Trolls tea party, which was AWESOME and really fun and totally cute.

I started with these completely delicious but totally ugly Trolls cut out cookies.  I used this recipe which is my go-to favorite and Bob's Red Mill gluten-free flour because one of the party guests has a gluten intolerance.

 I almost ordered her a cake from a bakery, but when I went on their FB page to check out their Trolls cakes, I was stunned by the $75 price.  And also, I had to buy my own Troll for the center, so the total cost would have been $90.  There was a time when I would have forked over the cash without a second thought mostly to impress the other parents, but I am out of fucks to give these days, so I bought a pretty cake stand (because I keep breaking my footed dessert plates) and some cool paper flowers (and you can bet I scraped the frosting off of them and saved them) and a GF cake mix and a Poppy doll and greased up my ancient bundt pan.

 And breathed a HUGE sigh of relief that it was cute.

 I also prepped a cupcake frosting activity for the kiddos

 And made about a million cupcakes.

 Then I did my favorite thing which is to make treat stands out of cute tea dishes.  But!  I was doing all of this on Saturday morning, so there was a moment when I was like oh crap how am I going to store all of this until the party?  Carefully. Cloaked in cling wrap.  In the basement fridge.  I baked cupcakes on Thursday night and frosted them on Friday night, so they were nice and hard by Saturday morning.

 Everything was just so damn cute.

 Ben even made candy flowers.

 Then we threw plastic over everything and went to our favorite bar for his birthday party.

 Totally fun.

 Especially the face coasters.

 Today was not a totally ideal day to lose an hour, but we woke up and threw ourselves into party preparations.

 And then everything was so cute I took tons of pictures of it and will bore you with all of them.

 We surprised Dorothy with a costume for the party.  She liked it sort of. (Kidding.  LOOK AT THAT FACE).

 We had everyone decorate a little box for their cupcakes-- it was like herding cats to engage them in the activity, but then they went for it.

 And then they decorated cupcakes to go in the box.  Cooper was committed to frosting his.

 They spent most of the party playing in the kids' rooms and the toy room.  We had a few old school party games prepped, but we didn't need them.  They spent about 20 minutes having cake and snacks and then they played again.  It was great!

 I noticed my DIY cake stand was starting to slide.

 After everyone left, Cooper sucked down the rest of the frosting which was gross because I made seven bags full.

 But even the leftovers were adorable!

 I forgot to take pics of the favors, but they turned out great-- decorated tiny takeout boxes stuffed with the kids' decorated cupcakes, flower balloons (I heart the Dollar Tree) tied to the handles, and a Trolls coloring book/crayon/sticker pack (Michaels!!) for everyone.

Even the sink full of hand-wash tea ware was adorable.

 Seriously, I love these dishes. They are my favorite first birthday party supply EVER.

 One more party shot-- the kids cornered me, and I was kind of scared.  But it was a perky kind of scared.