Lalaloopsy Birthday Cake

A very special little girl in our family just turned 4 and she LOVES her Lalaloopsy girls! Naturally, we had a Lalaloopsy birthday party for her.

For her cake, I saw an idea for what I wanted to do months ago, and since we have plenty of props for it, I figured we could do something similar.

I started with 3 pans. I used a 6 inch, 8 inch, and 10 inch. I baked Pillsbury Devil's Food Cake for all layers. I used 2 boxes; 1 box filled the 10 inch, and the other box filled the 6 inch and 8 inch. They all took about the same time in the oven. The 6 inch took a little longer because it was thicker, but only by a few minutes.

 

 

I also made homemade buttercream frosting, which was a first for me.

I used Taste of Home's Easy Vanilla Buttercream recipe; click HERE for the recipe. I doubled it and it was just barely enough; probably should've tripled it especially when using chocolate cake, cause those black crumbs are difficult to hide.

It definitely helps to make some room in the freezer to put your cake in after the crumb coat. It helps the final coat to spread and stay put better.

Crumb coat ready for final layer of frosting:

 

The decorating was the most fun I've ever had decorating a cake! I think the most fun I've ever had baking!

In process:

 

I used my handy Wilton Dessert Decorator to pipe the rosettes around the edges:

 

After I finished frosting and piping the cake, the birthday girl helped me place her Lalaloopsy girls (by the way, there are over 50 different dolls, but we have a select number of them so far) around the edges. Then placed the Ferris Wheel which she got last year for the cake topper. Then we got a little carried away and added the pets and some props.

She LOVED her cake!!! And it was delicious too!

I love baking our own birthday cakes cause we can personalize them so much and save a ton! This cost me about $2.50 for the cake mixes. And less than $5 for the frosting. And we had about 16 guests and only ate half of it!



Most of all, I love making memories with my family!

 

Linking up at these crafty parties...


 

 

Lalaloopsy Birthday

My baby is 4!!!!

I am so so proud of this little angel!

She loves pink and purple.
Her favorite show is Team Umizoomi.
She has to watch Toy Story with ALL of her Toy Story friends on her lap!
She loves fruit, especially strawberries!
She loves to pretend play with her kitchenset, play school, play house, and play doctor...in other words, she likes to PRETEND! Which is great for her growing imagination!

Here are a few "Laila-isms": see if you can figure out what she is trying to pronouce: roller poster, hanitizer, it's froggy out, bisgussing, bessert, and kepuch. Okay, she now says "ketchup" correctly, but sometimes we still call it kepuch cause its just cute. :)
 

 

 

 

First, I like to look back at her first few birthdays...

LOVE that one in the middle of her first birthday cake!

Chocolate Face!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So, this year she celebrated at school on Friday and at home on Saturday.

On Friday morning she brought donut treats to preschool...and then spent the afternoon at big sister's school helping with the fall festival. She got to wear a birthday crown but since my camera died, I'll have to wait until I can get pictures that her teacher took.



On Saturday we celebrated with family and food!


Emma had her last soccer game of the season and was getting her medal.








It was a little chilly...but Grant was nice and warm...

Then we celebrated at our home for the afternoon. We got to love on baby Grant some more...

Laila LOVES her Lalaloopsy girls, so naturally, she got plenty of Lalaloopsy gifts to open! And also a few other things she loves, like playdoh and a Jessie doll (from Toy Story).

And for the cake...I saw a picture months ago that gave me the idea. And since we have no shortage of Lalaloopsy items, I figured I could do something similar. I will save the details for a separate post later this week, but here is a sneak peak...

If you've never heard of Lalaloopsy before, they are a wildly popular set of dolls, each with a unique personality and pet, which came to life out of the fabric they were created in. Here is more of a summary courtesy of Wikipedia:

"...designed to teach kids that everybody is unique in their own special way... promotes the idea that old things can become new again, everything can be repurposed and nothing should ever go to waste"... to "encourage a child's imagination and creativity" and "teach important life lessons such as diversity, individuality and the idea that everything deserves a second life."

Just to give you an idea, the names of some of the ones we have are Crumbs Sugar Cookie, Spot Splatter Splash, Bea Spells a Lot, Pillow Featherbed, and Jewel Sparkles.

Happy Birthday Laila!

Felt Flower Pillow

 

I'm so thankful for a great evening on Friday night. Our church hosts "Art & Soul" , which is a ladies craft night held once a month. I have been wanting to check it out for so long, and I finally went this weekend and I'm so glad I did! I wanted to bring a simple project to work on, so that I could get to know people while I crafted. So I brought a pillow and some felt to work on a pillow project. I actually finished it in about an hour!

I am loving gray and yellow these days. And I had a plain yellow square pillow already at home. I bought some dark gray felt (technically "smoke") from Michaels. I used 3-4 sheets of it which cost about $1!

First I cut 3 sizes of petals; 1 inch, 2 inch, and 3 inch. I started with the outer layer, laying them down in a circle, and moved toward the center, overlapping the petals as I worked around. For the center, I just folded some of the 1 inch petals in half and glued them down.

Sorry for the lack of "in process" pictures, but I didn't take my camera with me and I honestly didn't think I would get it all done while I was there! I had kinda planned on just cutting felt and chatting away all night. :) But one of the ladies had glue (E6000) so I borrowed it to tack them all down, and I finished! But if you would like some "in process" pictures, go HERE to see the steps I found on pinterest.

 

 

So there, I can finally check off one of my pillow projects off my list! Yay!! And I met some great talented ladies and can't wait to go back next month!

Happy Fall Y'all!

The leaves are falling (so are those wild acorns!), air is cooling, and the furnace has been kicked on! My house is finally ready for Fall!

I finally finished the final touches on my Fall decor today.

I really wanted a monogrammed pumpkin this year, and I wanted a big one so that you could see it coming up to our house. So we picked out a beautiful 28 pounder at the pumpkin patch last weekend. My family thought I was crazy when they saw that I had spray painted it black! I told them, just wait and you'll see. There's a method to my madness! I printed off a gigantic  letterK (French Script font), placed it on the pumpkin, and attached thumbtacks where the K was. Neat, huh? See, you just wouldn't get that same effect on an orange pumpkin.

And my Halloween wreath that I made a few weeks ago is greeting everyone at the front door. You can read about how I made it HERE.

Inside the front door...

 

In the dining room/kitchen...

Cookie Jar!

In the living room, I have my candy corn tree on the TV stand...I just hot glued candy corn onto sticks from the yard.

Then the part I had the most fun with, the china cabinet display (since I don't have a mantle)...

I found 2 fall printables that I really liked, so I framed them. I couldn't pick just one! One is a fall themed subway art. The other is a trick or treat sign with a spooky little owl on a tree branch.

On the right is framed art by Laila! She brought home these pictures of pumpkins, acorns, and leaves that she colored and cut at preschool.

In the center is a large hurricane vase that I filled with a candle, and lots of acorns from the driveway.
On either side of it are mini pumpkins and 2 candleholders that I spray painted black.

And everything is sitting on my new burlap placemat. I just cut to size a piece from my scraps, sewed around the edges, gave it a little frayed edge, and there it is! I am thinking that it might need some kind of stencil detail, I just need to decide what to stencil onto it...FALL? BOO?

Is your house ready for FALL? What is your favorite fall theme? I think my house is screaming PUMPKINS!!!