Kayla's Birthday Pawty

We celebrated Kayla's 2nd birthday this past weekend...and you can probably guess her theme...If left completely up to her, I'm sure it would have been Dora again, but I couldn't bear to make that same cake yet again! So we went with her other obsession - dogs!

On with the de-tails...(ok I promise...no more !:-P)

We went around the house and rounded up all our doggy related items...which when all put together was quite the mother-load! Over 30 stuffed dogs accumulated over the years, plus my childhood collection of Sandicast and glass dogs, with the addition of a multitude of tissue paper pinwheels, and a few streamers and balloons, we were all set! 

I put the streamers on the banisters earlier in the week, but didn't have any other decorations up and Kayla woke up from her nap and immediately said "soooo beauuuu-ful!!!!" "I wuv it!" - kids are so easy to please!:-)

The pinwheels went up mid week...and then realizing that hanging like 2 per room looked stupid...resulted in a tissue paper folding spree (thank goodness American Idol was on to pass the time!)

I hung the streamers/balloons the night before the party - and they were met with gasps and squeals of delight in the morning when the girls realized that the long-awaited Saturday had finally arrived!

Kayla's favourite food is probably pizza, but even though it was just a family party I did spaghetti instead because it was easier:-) Kayla happens to love salad though, so she was thrilled with the caesar salad  and filled up on that. 

Then we have the main attraction...the cake!!! Mark's mom baked the cakes, white for the head and chocolate for the bum:-) and then I iced them with pink buttercream and covered with marshmallow fondant. The feet, head, snout, tail and decorations on the dog are all fondant. The base is rice krispie squares covered with blue fondant, just to give the doggy a bit of height without having to have another cake!:-)

It wasn't perfect (and hindsight, I should not have put him on this particular corner of the base:-P) but whatever! This is only my 2nd fondant cake so I was just happy that it actually looked like a dog!

I also made red velvet cupcakes, with pink buttercream and fondant doggy bone toppers. Earlier in the week the girls and I made sugar cookie dog bones...and I found doggy bowls at the Dollar store, and filled them with Nesquick cereal for puppy chow - it was disturbingly authentic!

I made doggy ears out of felt for all the kiddos, and Canaan was the cutest puppy of the bunch!:-)

The birthday girl had a very over eager helper...who was having a hard time coming to grips with the fact that it wasn't HER birthday...

She did a pretty good job with her cake...but being notorious for her messiness...she asked for a bib moments after this picture:-)

And with only a few cousins at the party...who could resist giving out a Doggy Bag? Especially when I found the dogs at the Dollar Store! The girls got a pink bag and the boys got blue - Oh and for the curious...the puppy treats were gummy worms and the puppy vitamins were gummy bears:-)

All in all it was a really fun day and was really fun to prepare for too actually! Mind you, I'm pretty glad that my next one is not until July...:-D I've been hearing about her grand plans since last year!!! and they just keep getting bigger and bigger! Yay:-/