red white and blue birthday spend the night party

a mouthful i know!  But that is exactly what MJ wanted for her 6th birthday party.  She redid her cake design (because who uses their first sketch anyway?!) and here was the final:

 

I warned her that I have no earthly idea how to do the columns on the cake so if she was ok with letting go of that idea I thought I could sort of pull it off.

I was given lots of directions and had lots of (2, 4, & 6 year old) help for the actual cake which explains the lack of pictures of the cake baking process.

The cake:  I bought 3 boxes of cake mix (2 chocolate, 1 white) and 3 cans of icing.  I divided all the batter up between a 13x9 casserole dish (chocolate), regular 9” round cake pans (chocolate), a smaller round casserole dish and for the top – large muffin tins (divided the box of white cake between these two).   I did the usual – made earlier in the week and froze (wrapped securely in saran wrap).  On her birthday morning we assembled!

invitations:  She made her own and while they were adorable – they were a little tricky to understand so I attached a note for the moms

decorations   supplies:  red and blue construction paper, scissors, balloons, string, 4 & 6 year old star drawers

    

favors  red white and blue tin buckets filled with red & blue chalk, blue bubble wands.

We put as many blow up mattresses as we could fit into the little room off of our kitchen (which happens to also be my kids playroom).  Look how calm this looks.  I think it just so happens that the one second that they were all laying down watching the movie I took a picture.  Because this is not quite how I recall the night (that lasted until 2 a.m.)

it was more like this (insert squealing as loud and high as you can get it times 5):

 

But so much fun… I think it’s safe to say the girls all had a blast and as far as parties go – it was very low maintenance in terms of prep work and we’ll definitely do it again (in a year. maybe.)