Catching Up - Caroline's 9th Birthday!

Caroline turned nine on March 21st!  She wanted to have a spring/flower themed tea party, which ended up being very easy to do: flower shaped cake made of cupcakes, tea sandwiches and that sort of thing for lunch, and tea in the old teacups I had been collecting from thrift stores and antique malls to use for our Little flowers Tea parties.

Here are some photos from the day...

Flower-shaped cake... made by arranging cupcakes into groups and frosting over them.  They were chocolate with strawberry icing.  Although the leaves and stem were made with plain frosting tinted pale green with pureed spinach.  Yes, spinach.  The pink color resulted from the strawberries in the frosting, and the purple outline was tinted with grape juice concentrate.  The gunny thingies at the center of each flower are pure artificial color goodness, ha.

The birthday girl serves herself some tea party foods

Lunch was a team effort... grandparents brought chicken salad on mini croissants and crab-filled flaky pastries, to go along with the egg salad tea sandwiches, fruit, crackers/veggies with cream cheese bacon dip, tomato-bacon appetizer thingies, hummus and pita chips... I am going off the photos here and not my memory.  What I do remember is that it all tasted delicious!

Caroline and Cecilia enjoy lunch.  My brother Mike's truck photobombing through the window to advertise his employer on the license plate, ha.

Presents!

Caroline got a big illustrated Audobon bird book...

...a How to Find Flower Fairies detailed pop-up book...

Apparently Lucy was so bored she went to sleep, ha.

Cecilia gave Caroline a detailed underwater scene she had drawn.

She also got a journal, a craft kit, and a new bag for dance class.

As you can see, the two year olds were thoroughly impressed by the present-opening.

She also got American Girl accessories for the doll she had gotten at Christmas from grandparents.

Her doll, Josefina, all dressed in her new outfit with her new pet goat.

Dessert Time!

Along with the cupcakes, we had flower-shaped cookies that the girls had decorated and chocolate-covered "cookie dough" balls... oh, so yummy!  They are made of chick peas and honey, believe it or not! 

The dessert table

Blowing out the candles

And here is Caroline wearing her Josefina dress up outfit, a birthday gift from Mommy and Daddy, ordered from Etsy at the same time as Cecilia's colonial dress up outfit.  They are so well-made and the girls have loved them!

Happy 9th birthday, Caroline!