Evelyn's First Birthday

Evie's first birthday was a couple weeks ago, and all the crafty preparation was worth it, because it turned out great!

Strawberry and yellow cake cupcakes, frosted with buttercream and sprinkled with colored sugar - yum! That's Evie's special cupcake in the middle ;)

The whole setup, minus the lemonade, which I didn't put out til the last minute so it'd be nice and cold!

Evie's cake with the sweet little bunting I made for it:

A tray of "popcorn" cupcakes - they turned out so cute! Sure, I had to cut and arrange 300(!) mini marshmallows, but at least I have pictures to show Evie when she's old enough to appreciate it ;)

The peanut treat bags turned out great too, and were a nice take-home snack for the guests:

Nothing goes better with a circus theme than iced animal crackers! And how nice of the people who make animal crackers to ice them in colors that worked with my theme ;)

Lemon drops! Because they matched and are delicious. Also, I wanted something people could scoop with the adorable little metal scoops I found at GFS.

The lemonade has arrived to join the party! Plain and raspberry, yum!

The lemon slice ice cubes I made a few days beforehand looked really cool floating in the lemonade (and served a purpose in keeping it nice and chilly while not watering it down):

Most importantly, the Birthday Girl had fun, even though she was on a nap strike that whole day :)

That cupcake sure was yummy!!

A banner year at the Crane household*

I wanted a cute birthday banner for Evie and found this lovely one on Etsy. Unfortunately, her shop is on vacation, so I used it as inspiration for my own version. I used some fun circular brushes in Photoshop and some circus animal images, printed them out on card stock, and tied them together with pretty grosgrain ribbon. Voila!

The banner circles turned out so cute I made some smaller versions and glued toothpicks to the back to use as cake/cupcake toppers!:

*10 points if you caught the paraphrased Breakfast Club quote ;)

When life gives you lemons, make ice cubes!

In keeping with the pink/yellow color scheme, I'm going to have regular lemonade and raspberry lemonade at Evie's party. I found a great idea via Pinterest of making ice cubes with lemons and limes frozen in them. I decided to do just lemons and to use some raspberry lemonade instead of water so they wouldn't water down my lemonade as they melt. Of course you could use whatever fruit and liquid combo that sounds yummy to you. Here's how!

I think the hardest part of this whole thing is making space in the freezer to freeze these guys! You'll be using a muffin tin, so I would suggest clearing a nice level space in your freezer and making sure the tray fits before you get to filling it. Also make sure there's room for your fingers on either side when you're lowering it in (I figured that one out the hard way). Luckily, our fridge has a freezer with two drawers, so I was able to rearrange and clear out the top drawer - perfect! :)

First, slice your lemons nice and thin. You want them to be pliable enough that you can push them down into the muffin tin a bit. Tip: save the leftover lemon bits in a baggie in the fridge and toss them into the garbage disposal once in a while to freshen it up! Take your sliced lemons and put them in the tray like so:

Next, pour your water or other liquid (iced tea, lemonade, etc) over the lemons. I used raspberry lemonade and put it in a measuring cup for easy pouring. It took me about three cups to fill all the spots:

Fill them pretty close to the top, and don't worry if your lemons float a bit. Now it's time to carefully transfer the muffin tin to the freezer and let it freeze overnight:

Fresh out of the freezer, nice and frosty!:

If you're using these right away, remove by putting something on top of the tray (I used a plastic cutting board), then flipping them over. It may take a couple minutes for the tray to warm enough for the ice cubes to slide out. Once they do, you'll have sweet little puck-shaped ices like this:

Don't they look pretty?

If you're like me wanted to make your adorable lemon cubes early but can't have a muffin tin taking up a whole freezer drawer for several days, you'll want to put them back in the freezer once they've been removed from the tray. Put the liberated ice cubes in a freezer bag (try to keep them in a single layer so they don't freeze back into one big clump), and store until you need them!

Birthday Crafts, Continued!

Ever wonder if paper lunch sacks will feed through a printer? Turns out they will! I wanted to do bags of peanuts for Evie's party next weekend and knew I wanted to use paper lunch sacks, but wasn't sure how to decorate them. At first I was going to stamp them, but didn't relish the thought of stamping individual letters on 20 bags. Then I thought about using some labels we have here at home and designing something for them, but slapping white labels on these brown paper bags just seemed tacky. As I was sitting there holding a bag, thinking, it occurred to me to cut out the middle man and print right on them! A couple  minutes in Photoshop and I was in business! They've got some flaws where they didn't feed through quite evenly, but it just adds to the vintage theme, right? ;)

Pretty Circus

My daughter Evelyn's first birthday is coming up in a couple weeks, and I've been having so much fun working on it! The theme is a vintage circus in shades of pink and yellow. Yesterday I made a practice run at the popcorn cupcakes I'm going to make:

They turned out so cute! And I got some great lemonade dispensers and glass jars for displaying pretty candies. I'm shooting for something similar to this party featured on The Sweetest Occasion. Adorable!