A1's Third Birthday

My amazing daughter had her third birthday last week. We had a rather large party with her friends and the pure joy in their little faces was totally worth the three solid days of work I (and a few friends I recruited) put into it. A1's favorite thing recently is all things princess; she requested a crown cake and a princess party, so that's what we did!

The little princesses and knights arrived to decorate their goody bags for holding all the treasure they would soon find.

A real live princess came to read about a princess and a knight that team up to defeat a dragon. (A great, big, gigantic, I-can't-thank-you-enough thank you to my amazing cousin-in-law, the beautiful Princess Gloria, for doing this incredible favor for me.)The guests acted out the story by defeating a dragon......and conquering a castle......in order to be crowned knights and princesses.Then we had the crown cake that A1 had been asking for months to have at her birthday.

I'll admit that I may have cheated slightly by making the actual crowns out of sugar cookies and the cakes to look like pillows, but I think I made up for it by providing each party guest with several personal crown cookies. I had a lot of fun decorating these cakes, but none of it would have been done without a ton of help from my good friend Jaime, who decorated the cookies and did most of the second cake and then watched the kids while I decorated for the party. (Thank you so much, Jaime!)

Happy birthday to you, A1. We love you and are so happy to have you in our family.