So...I have a confession. I wasn't thrilled when I asked my two year old what she wanted for her birthday and she said a Barbie cake. My first thought was, "who the heck told you about Barbie cakes?" Then I realized about after 5 times of asking her what she wanted and she continued to say Barbie cake, that I had to make one. Therefor, the party themed morphed from burlap and lace to Barbie. So, as I said, I wasn't thrilled, but getting everything together for it ended up being really fun and I loved how it turned out :)
My only rules were to not make it too theme-y by using store bought Barbie paraphernalia and to not use hot pink. I actually initially didn't even want to use black, but that came together like this naturally so it worked for me ;)
As for the cake...I knew I could probably get away with making one on my own. I had never done one before, but I was pretty good at making rosette cakes, so I figured I would use the same idea and just stick a Barbie in it. The only thing was getting the shape correct. So, I bought a Barbie baking pan from Michaels. I made a mistake and added some pudding into the cake mix making it way to dense and it didn't rise high enough. So, then I had to make a second round cake and piece them together, then shape it. I stuck the Barbie in it, and you could still see her crotch. So, yeah. I had to figure away to cover that up using left over cake.
So, to say the least, I'm amazed it ended up looking decent lol. Frosting covers a lot :)
I made the frosting out of the Wilton buttercream frosting recipe. After adding the rosettes I threw some little candy pearls all over it. Serious...threw them :) Made a mess on my counter but it was the only way to get them on there lol.
I usually put the food spread in the kitchen, but decided to put it on our table this time and I'm so glad I did! This backdrop is so much better than kitchen cabinets :)
On all of my candle holders, I placed pink or white tissue pompoms on them instead. The stands for the food are just bowls turned upside down with plates on top of them. Easy!
I cut out some black Barbie silhouettes using my Silhouette and placed them around the house. I had this frame from when my little one was a baby for a photoshoot and decided to finally put it to use again here. It's from Ikea.
I also placed the silhouettes on the popcorn containers. I found these containers at Target I believe.
For the food I made some pretzels with melted Hershey's hugs. I then placed a pink Sixlet in the middle. To make them, just place the hug on the pretzel for 8 minutes in a 200 degree oven. Then place the Sixlet or M&M on it when they come out.
For the popcorn, this amazed me. I found THE best and easiest way to make popcorn :) I'll blog about that soon. This is popcorn with white chocolate on it and sprinkles.
I also made some pink cookies using strawberry cake mix and chocolate chips.
I love how this cute little area was transformed with all the pink and black!
For the chandelier, I hung some more tissue pompoms and her initial.
As for the rest of the house. I wanted this to become a Barbie dream house for her. When she woke up, I wanted her to be all surprised almost like Christmas. So, of course, I was up way late the night before doing all of this. But she LOVED it when she woke up...and had a huge freak out when I took it all back down a few days later lol.
The first thing was to add pink...everywhere. I sewed together some cute pink damask pillows and found this other flower pillow at Hobby Lobby.
I took all my flowers out of their vases and added faux pink ones.
Thee tulips for her 3rd birthday, of course :)
As I said before, I put pompoms all on top of all the candle holders.
I even changed up the mantel a bit, hanging some pink and white bunting. Added a Barbie silhouette; changed out the flowers.
I even added the tissue pompoms to my shelves.
I added some sparkly, pink mesh curtains to all the curtains. I just bought the mesh from Hobby Lobby and sewed them up real quick.
Truth be told, I was kind of digging all the pink myself lol. My inner 5 year old coming out.
For the favors, I used the same containers I used for the popcorn and placed some pink tissue into the bottom. I then added some pink Hershey's kisses and hugs into them along with a pink sucker and a wand. The wand has nothing to do with Barbie, I just couldn't resist not doing it when I saw them. And the tissue was so I didn't have to fill the whole thing with candy...cuz that would be like a bag of candy for each one. That wasn't going to happen :)
For the drinks, I made pink lemonade and put them in mason jars with cute straws I found in the Target dollar spot. I have no idea what happened to the picture! When I find them, I'll add them here :)
I gotta say, decorating for birthdays is almost more fun than decorating for anything else. I had a blast! The only probably is taking it down so quickly after :) Well...I admit, I left the curtains and pillows and flowers up for like a week after. I was tempted to leave them up until Valentines Day lol.
All the pink worked out so well thanks to my all white house! See, having a white fetish pays a little :)