Back for a birthday

Nothing like a birthday to get me back to posting on my blog again. Our dear Alice turned 9 last week. Alice had to write a paragraph about one of her parents for school last week. She chose me and one of the things she said about me was " My mom loves birthdays and parties". Yup! We started talking birthday in March. We threw around lots of ideas about the things she loves : basketball, swimming, artist, Egypt. She weighed the options. Then I mentioned a model photo shoot party. That immediately became a front runner. She was so excited when her aunt Karen said she would totally do the fashion photo shoot for her. I was a little worried about how it all would go, It was such a girly party, and sometime Alice is not very girly. But them sometimes she is. For example, if you ask her she will tell you that she really doesn't like pink. Yet she bought a hot pink dress for Easter this year. She didn't like the dress until she tried it on, then she really liked how it looked on her. She doesn't like pink, but pink likes her. Anyway, Alice was super excited for the party planning. She had the invitations completed by the beginning of April. She did them all by herself on the computer.

One of Alice's pertinent questions, "For a photo shoot party, what should we do for a cake?" For her rock star party the cake was shaped like guitar. Alice started cooking up ideas that were way beyond my abilities. I should never have let her watch "Cake Boss". I convinced her that we could just make it a fancy girly cake. She thought that was fine, so it was decided :Chocolate wiht pink icing, four layers, with each layer getting smaller like a wedding cake.
So this was the cake I made while she was at a play date on Friday night. Jackie and Eve helped. They were so excited for her to see it. When Alice saw it, she said ,"That will work", which was not the reaction Jackie was hoping for. I asked if that was what she was picturing in her head. She said, " Well, in my head, it looked more like a wedding cake, and I know that isn't really reasonable, it's just the picture in my head that I can't get rid of. But this cake looks good". Don't you just love a 9 year old? (Oh, and don't let your kids watch cake boss. Just don't.) Anyway, the cake tasted good and traveled well. Here they are blowing out the candles at Sam and Karen's. Doesn't Sam and Karen place look like a trendy New York hotel that models would stay at?
The guest list had to be very exclusive, as everyone needed to fit in the van. As it was, Jackie and Alice had to share a seat belt and Andrew stayed home with a very sad Eve. Jessie joined us in Airdrie since she lives close by. Jackie didn't make it into the group shot because she was crying about a hair issue, then crying about not being able to stop crying and missing the pictures. But aren't these girls so pretty. Alice is SOOO lucky to have such great friends. They are all so nice and so good and so fun. And they all loved the party and totally worked it for the camera.
The girls decorated picture frames at the beginning of the party,then we put on Tangled and watched that ( and quoted it) as I did their nails and my friend Jenny did everyone's hair. Each girl got to pick her hair style and then we drove to Airdrie for the photo shoot. The girls had their lootbags to play with and snacks for the long drive. We applied make-up in Airdrie right before the picture. Here are Jackie and Alice putting on lip gloss.

There were so many cute picture. I will put some up in another post.