Tag: castle cake

I can’t believe my little Ava is now 33 months old–pretty soon the toddler days will be over and she will be a big girl! I remember when she was first born like it was yesterday. In my eyes, she was a perfect angel! I also remember like it was yesterday planning and throwing her One year birthday party, which was an Enchanted Forest and Fairy Garden party! (Toadstools anyone?!) If you don’t know me, then you don’t know how much I love throwing parties, especially birthdays! Since Ava’s birthday is in late April, we weren’t sure if we were going to have Spring showers or a perfectly sunny day. Turned out we had both, so it was a good thing we ordered a tent. We wanted her party to be at the house, it made food arrangements, and Ava’s nap almost seamless (in fact, she missed the whole first hour of her party as she was napping lol).

Little Ava somewhat resembles a baby snow white (dark hair and very fair), so I decided to go with an “enchanted forest” birthday. I tend to take on a lot of do-it-myself work, so of course I had to do most of the decorations from scratch. To save on costs, I used 40% and 20% coupons for most everything I bought at Michaels and JoAnn Fabrics. I just signed up for mailing lists and whenever I got a chance I would order online and just pick up in store. So easy!

My husband and I went to Home Depot, purchased plywood and 2×3 wood stud. Out of this we made a dwarf’s door and window, and a welcome sign reading “Ava’s enchanted forest”.

It is my belief a party is not a party without cake, and lots of it! I decided to challenge myself to a cake throw down, featuring…myself. I bought a winston castle cake set (which really just contains the plastic turrets, plastic windows, and decorative pieces to cover in fondant). I decided to do a 2-tier cake; chocolate 9″ on the bottom and lemon-casino 5″ on top. All in all, baked 4 cakes with filling. It was such a challenge and such a mess!

And I also made another cake, a story-book cake, with Ava’s face on it of course. This one was strawberry flavored. I ordered her picture off amazon, edible pictures! This cake was fairly easy, I just filled cake batter in the winston book pan, shaved off excess cake and covered it with buttercream and fondant. Then I adhered the edible picture of little Ava!

Here are some of the pictures from the day–the table settings are all from Michael’s. I just picked up fake grass rolls for the centerpieces, added fabric butterflies and voila!