A Ballerina Birthday

Charlotte Grace is almost 3! We celebrated last Saturday with a Ballerina themed party for our little ballerina. This theme choice stemmed mostly from Charlotte's love for Angelina Ballerina & partly from the vast amount of ideas on Pinterest that I was extremely excited about following my initial search : ) I love spending time thinking about my girls & planning something that I know will delight them.  Charlotte was definitely delighted as the decorations went up, she was beyond ecstatic when she saw the cake with the mini ballerina on top & smiled sweetly as she put on her tutu. 

I mentioned in the post about the cupcakes that almost put me over the edge, that I grew up in a home celebrating birthdays with homemade cakes.  I really would like to continue that for our family but after the bunny cupcakes I thought a single cake might be a little easier to conquer.  I found the most precious ballerina cake topper on Etsy.  It was listed for $35 but said it had been sold. I emailed the woman asking if she made them any more. She quickly replied saying that she could make me one but would have to charge $45 plus shipping. HA!  I think that is a little extreme for a cake topper.  A few days later, I got a text from my mom that said "ballerina making factory" with a photo of lots of wooden clothespins, wooden balls, paint, pipe cleaners & embroidery thread.  I think she spent around $30 but she could make about 10 cake toppers with what she has. She got to work and from what I heard (from my Dad & brother) is that she spent time each day working on this mini ballerina.  It became pretty humorous actually. I got progress pictures nearly everyday & was shocked when I saw that final product. It is even cuter than the one we found on Etsy and was just perfect for our Ballerina Bash.

She arrived unclothed with nothing to hold onto so we made her balloon & tutu. Isn't she adorable? I could not thank my mom enough for all her hard work on the teeny ballerina! Crazy but the paint colors she mixed from black, white & red ended up matching the M&M's perfectly.  The cake was three layers of vanilla colored different shades of pink with butter cream icing on top.  I found this tutorial  that showed me how to smooth the icing out with a paper towel to make it look like fondant but taste better.  It was SO easy & turned out well, not to mention, it was delicious!

I put the Silhouette to work once again and cut out vinyl ballerinas for the cups.  One of Charlotte's very favorite things right now is marshmallows or as she says " marpillows." So, in order to see her eyes light up once again, we dipped "marpillows" in white chocolate then rolled them in sprinkles. Another delicious treat!

I set out some framed pictures of our little ballerina amongst the ballet/dancing books we have.  Once all the guests arrived, the kids gathered for a reading of Miss Lina's Ballerinas.  It reminded me of Madeline books with all the rhyming.  The story starts with, "In a cozy white house in the town of Messina, eight little girls studied dance with Miss Lina." I could probably write the entire thing from memory since we have read it about 100 times this week : ) 

Here is the Beautiful Birthday Ballerina drinking her raspberry lemonade.

Just like many little ladies, Charlotte loves to dress up.  I have had my eye on a tutu, also on Etsy. It is actually called a pettiskirt & it is $65. I didn't even think of bringing that up Rob guessing he would say it was much too expensive.  So I started looking around online and came across this tutorial.  I ordered rolls of 5 inch & 2 inch non-fray chiffon. I spent about $30 & made pettiskirts for both girls with yards to spare.

Remember how I mentioned in "the madness of bunny cupcakes" that it is good for me to not experience ease & perfection all the time?  Well, I was eating my words as I sewed miles of ruffles, then stitched them on a tier, gathered more miles, stiched them to the next tier, ripped out my thread because I stitched pieces that weren't supposed to be attached....you get the idea.  I seriously looked up how many feet were in a mile because I was just sure I had sewn a mile of ruffles. I was a little off reaching around 400 feet : ) Thankfully my friend Christi had mentioned that she bought a ruffler foot for her sewing machine. I looked in my box that has about 20 different presser feet that were my grandmothers & came across a crazy looking contraption that helped a ton. 

This tutu was basically the bunny cupcake of this birthday celebration. 4 nights in as Rob asked more if I wanted to spend some time with him to which I replied, "I have to work on the tutu again" he said he would have easily paid $65 dollars to have a wife to hang out with for a week. Haha! It really was not that difficult, it was just time consuming & never ending.  Seeing Charlotte twirl in that sweet tutu made it ALL worth it. I remember falling asleep hearing my mom sewing when I was a kid. She did her best work in the nighttime hours & now I get it! It was the only time we weren't needing her full attention or pressing the foot pedal down when she wasn't watching ; ) I so appreciate her talent in the sewing arena. She made Elo's tutu once she arrived. That was a gift!

We asked our friends daughter Trinity who is almost 10 to come and lead the girls in a little ballet dancing.  Trinity is an incredible young lady with confidence balanced well with being humble. She is so considerate & just a sweetheart. She is a great leader & was perfect for the "job" of being our ballerina for the party.  Multiple 1-4 year olds can be difficult to manage for anyone but with her Mom's help, things went very smoothly.  Here she is with her baby sister Samyra. 

We danced to "Flight of the Bumblebee" & stretched for our warm up. The little ones followed along well.  Trinity taught the girls 1st & 2nd position followed by a short routine that proved to be impossible for their little minds to handle in a short time with lots of distractions : ) Trinity was able to go with the flow & we quickly resorted to some free dance & then a game of "freeze when the music stops." PERFECT for the kids and fun for the adults to watch. 

The little ballerina enjoyed opening her gifts. I suspected she might after watching her help baby sister on her birthday ; ) She received so many fun gifts including a few ballerina themed items such as an Angelina Ballerina game, a book & a Dora ballerina doll. My parents got her a jewelry box stocked with some sweet little bracelets & necklaces. The ballerina inside twirls round & round while she watches & gently touches. She has been playing with it multiple times a day, I am surprised the ballerina can still twirl ; )

It was Charlotte was happy to hear the birthday song sung to her by others since she loves to sing it for anyone who is having a birthday : ) It took her a few tries to blow out her candles but she succeeded.

It was so wonderful to have my parents in town for the celebrating! They were a huge help and I know they enjoyed time with their crazy grandaughters. This might be one of my favorite pictures from the whole party.....

our family photo seems so boring compared to the one above ; ) 

Just in case you haven't seen enough or perhaps you would like to see some of the dancing......

It was a great day to celebrate Charlotte : )  We are just a few days away from the real birth-day now....THREE years old!