Brigid's Birthday Party // Part 4

Hello again!

Today, as the final installment of my birthday party pictures, we have the decorations and cakes for our feature!

On the morning of the day before my party, all of us girls went out and picked the wildflowers and grasses in our nearby fields and on the side of our road. It was so refreshing to be up so early in the morning, our feet bathed with dew, picking such beautiful wild flowers. The only thing that went wrong, was that Jessica and I accidentally stepped in some poison ivy, so we had to run home and wash off. FAST! Don't want poison ivy for a dance party! Thankfully, though we didn't get it. Phew!

That afternoon, while I was baking cakes, Jessica and Charlotte arranged the bouquets, and we kept them in the basement until right before the party. Didn't they do a beautiful job?

We also had candles in some of the mason jars.

For the table runners, Mom and I raveled the edges of some rectangles of cream burlap, and, though you can't see it in the pictures, I wove a strand of a different color of burlap at the ends. On top of that we placed a rectangle of brown cotton, and then stuck in the leftover burlap flowers from decorating the cakes.

You can see the brown burlap thread at the left hand side of this picture.

For the vases we just wrapped some mason jars and random glass bottles with some painted burlap ribbon, which we got at the craft store, and secured it with some old metal dressmakers pins that I had on hand.

You can see some more of the burlap hydrangeas and their leaves on the table here.

I made all of the cakes (not entirely from scratch, thank goodness!) for my party which included: one chocolate layer cake (my  official "birthday" cake) with rasberry and chocolate filling, and frosted with chocolate frosting; one chocolate Bundt cake, also frosted with chocolate frosting; One Vanilla Bundt Cake, frosted with vanilla frosting; One 9 x 13 vanilla cake, also frosted with vanilla frosting; and last but not least, 18 chocolate cupcakes, piped with chocolate frosting! All coming up to a grand total of 4 cakes and 18 cupcakes!

WHEW! That's a lot, isn't it? Well, we did have almost one hundred people coming, so of course we had to have a LOT of cake.

I actually have a funny story about the making of the two chocolate cakes:

I decided that I wanted to bake both cakes at once, but we only had one electric mixer. So, While one was being mixed in the mixer, I mixed the other one by hand. Then I would have to stop the mixer at the right time, add the next ingredients, add the ingredients to the one I was mixing, start the mixer, start mixing, etc. etc. Thankfully both cakes turned out the same, but I did not repeat the process for the vanilla cakes, because my arm got SORE.

Beautifully decorated cakes. Just in case you were wondering, the vanilla bundt cake has chopped up pretzels on top.

Jessica decorated some old windows that we had, and hung them up above the food table. Didn't she do a fantabulous job? I absolutely love how she drew the caricature of me. :)

Our Yummy menu.

FOOD!

The Saturday before the party, Mom and I spent the morning wrapping place settings. They were just plastic utensils, wrapped in paper napkins. But what makes them look so fancy was Mom's genius idea of wrapping them in brown paper (cannibalized from some brown paper bags), tying them with some jute string, and tucking in a sprig of flowers that we had bought from the craft store.

And last but not least, we have the lovely picture that Charlotte took of me, printed out, decorated and framed, just for me! Isn't her illustrating style so unique? I wish she would do more of it...

I hope you enjoyed the photos of my party! And if you want to see more of our lovely friend and photographer, Joanna's, work you can go here:

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Blessings,

Brigid

The Middle Sister and Singer