The Friday before her birthday we invited a friend over and went swimming and then had pizza and cake. We had a great time. The pool wasn't very busy either.
Birthday balloons have become a tradition in our family. Dollar Tree's totally the place to go! The star shapes also last better than round. Not sure why, but it's true.
Mary combined a gift card she got from her friend with the money from us and her grandparents and bought "Heartlake High." It's one of the Lego Friends sets. She ADORES Lego Friends sets. The fun thing about this set is that it can hook onto her "Olivia's House" set that she already got for Christmas. You make each little room in a block and then can put it on however you want so she made a castle for a while and called it Hogwarts. It was pretty cute.
Mary originally wanted to make a swimming pool cake like we've made for her before. You basically make a white rectangle cake, cut out the middle, and put blue jello in there so it looks like a pool. Things didn't quite work out as planned with the cake, and the middle was going to be the best part so we decided to cut off the worst edge and turn it into a beach cake instead. It turned out pretty cute actually and much easier than the pool version anyway.
I was a little disappointed in myself for the way I cut out part of the cake where the "water" was supposed to be, but it turned out pretty cool. The ocean floor isn't exactly smooth and level either.
I used a recipe for pudding frosting that I found a few months ago. I found it when I was desperate for Adam's birthday in March when I discovered I was nearly out of powdered sugar in the middle of a snowstorm. I used vanilla pudding but put a bit of cocoa powder in it and crushed up chocolate cookie crumbs so it would look more like sand for the beach. It turned out pretty well if I do say so myself. I let Mary put on all the swimming gummy bears in their life gummy saver life preservers or on their fruit by the foot towels.
In case anyone's interested, here's the recipe for the pudding frosting. It came from Kraft's website. My hubby's not a big fan of cake, but he actually helps us eat the cake when I use this frosting.
1 package (3.9 oz) instant pudding
1 cup cold milk
1/4 cup powdered sugar
1 tub (8 oz) Cool Whip
Beat pudding mix, milk, and sugar with whisk for 2 min. Stir in Cool Whip.
Look at you, Mrs. Ace of Cakes! That is the cutest cake ever....the frosting souds yum...i will have to try this one!
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