Lulu’s 4th birthday was a lot of fun! I had a great time planning and I thought I’d share some of the highlights here.
I made the invites from some old digital scrapbooking designs I created a while back (the strawberry picnic digital kit is available in my freebies section).
For snacks we had fresh blackberries, raspberries, strawberries, veggies with a yogurt ranch dip, chips and Pirate’s Booty, and some berry flavored candies displayed in up-cycled Starbucks frappachino jars.
We also had yummy strawberry lemonade served in mason jars with cute old fashioned wax paper straws.
I made my favorite cupcakes, from Bob’s Red Mill Gluten Free Cake Mix, and made a strawberry buttercream frosting. The frosting melted a bit in the heat, I had added a bit too many strawberries to the frosting so it was softer than I had intended, but still tasted delish 
I also made a great new-to-me recipe from Pioneer Woman, a Strawberry Shortcake Cake. Lulu wanted strawberry shortcake, but I wanted to make a layered cake, so this was the PERFECT compromise. This recipe is delicious and easy. I totally recommend it! I did substitute the cream cheese frosting in the recipe with a stabilized whipped cream frosting to keep it more like a shortcake. I love topping cakes with whipped cream instead of buttercream and even cream cheese frostings, they are just so light. With a little piping gel, they whip up nice and sturdy and look great too!
JT was such a great big brother and provided some of the entertainment by painting the kiddos faces with butterflies and their arms with hearts and pirate tattoos, LOL.
All the decorations were handmade, except the balloons. I had visions of this wall of streamers & pom-poms, but my vision fell over, literally, before the guests arrived, but I know how to do it better next time.
It was a great day filled with lots of friends and family and I am so glad we did it! This was her first real party and it was perfect.
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Thanks to the following for crafty DIY tutorials and inspiration:
Happy Birthday Banner via Cake Events Blog
DIY Paper Pinwheels via The Sweetest Occasion
Tissue Paper PomPoms via Martha Stewart (dot) com
Candy Favor Jars via You Are My Fave Blog
Paper Straws from The Party Fairy on Etsy
That all looks sooooo cute, Tania!!!!!
So fun! Wow! You really went all out! I LOVE that JT did face painting. How awesome is that?!
The cake looks scrumptious! I need to find a new frosting recipe. My standard one just doesn’t work all that well anymore. My mom was saying something about they’ve changed the way the shortening is made these days.
how CUTE!! you did a great job! happy belated birthday little gal!
your kiddos are the cutest. : )
I think it should be possible to try a potato cupcake don’t you? which is purple too, but it seems we can’t find purple anyway
I’m not sure that comment was meant for my post, but thank you for the link to the frosting recipe anyway.