Number One's Birthday Party

So my sweet little munchkin, my first born, my little baby girl....turned TEN.  T-E-N.  Holy freakin' cow, I can't believe it!!!  I have a child in the double digits.  Well, technically she won't be ten until tomorrow, however, we had a party for her on Saturday.  And a sleep-over Friday night.  Which is why you haven't heard from me.  My very large vehicle was loaded down to maximum capacity on Friday.  Number One had a few friends come home with her, and then a few more come over for her party on Saturday. 

Friday night we cooked hamburgers and hotdogs on the grill, since we had awesome weather this weekend!  Then the kids fixed s'mores. 

Miss Two posing with her "perfect" s'more. 

I'm not sure what made it perfect, other than having chocolate on it, but anyway - that's what she said.  Note the Beiber fever going on.  She wears that shirt all the time.

Nothing is more fun than a FIRE and roasting marshmallows -

(and chocolate of course).  Number One decided she wanted a "baking" party, so I spent the past week preparing 10 personal size pizza crusts, and 10 one layer cakes, and getting everything ready for said party.  My daughter has no idea what goes into planning an endeavor like this.  I was a little ambitious in taking it on by myself as well.  A rum and coke (zero) may have been in order before the weekend was over.

On Saturday, when the kids arrived, they got busy making paper "chef hats".  A big thanks to fellow blogger Jesseca for the ideas/links!  They turned out really cute.  They even made little cupcake liner flowers to put on them. 

Even the hubs got in on the hat making action and helped Mr. Two make one!

without the flower of course ;) And how scraggly do my kids look? Everyone is due for a haircut!

Then the kids made their pizzas.  I pre-baked the crusts so they just added the toppings they wanted.

While the pizzas were cooking, they went outside and played 'Bop-It'.  The kids love that thing!

They had pizza, a veggie tray (carrots and celery with ranch dressing), and chips.  After eating, they went back outside while I cleared the table and got things ready to decorate the cakes.  Everyone had a one layer cake to decorate and then take home, along with their chef's hat. 

The kids were so funny frosting and decorating their cakes! 

After they decorated cakes we brought out the birthday cake. This was not the best order to do this in, b/c the kids had eaten so many sprinkles, M&M's etc, while 'decorating' that they weren't even hungry for cake!

I thought my cake turned out pretty good!  This is the first time I have ever made homemade icing!  I've always thought it was just too much trouble to make when it was so convenient to buy it in a can.  However, it's not hard at all, requires just a few ingredients, taste really good, and have you checked the ingredients on a can of store-bought frosting?  YUCK.  So...it's homemade frosting from now on!!  This one was a little sweeter than I would like, so next time, I want to play with the cocoa to sugar ratio a little.  But, it was very creamy and everyone liked it. 

The flowers are cut marshmallows with colored sugar sprinkled on. You just take a large marshmallow, and using kitchen scissors, cut each one into 3 or 4 slices - depending how thick you want them. Then take the slices ("petals") and dip them in colored sugar or whatever your preference. I placed a piece of candy (M's) in the middle to make the centers. They turned out cute, and helped camouflage the lopsidedness of my cake!  (My chocolate layers were all smaller than my yellow cake layers!)  oops.  I had planned to make cake from scratch, but ended up just using a box mix.  I forgot how I have terrible luck with box mixes.  The chocolate ones I did first, and made according to directions on the box.  They turned out afflicted looking.  So for the yellow cakes, I added 3/4ths teaspoon of baking powder, and added more filling to each pan.  This helped a lot.

So, this was Number One's 10th b-day party!  It was a lot of work, we were all exhausted, but I think everyone had a good time!

The 'after-party'!

Miss Two had another party to go to after her sister's...so she was passed out by 7 o'clock that night!

I'll post some recipes from the party and links later in the week. *Update - you can see them here*

Linking up with Life as Mom - Ultimate Recipe Swap and Mums Make Lists