Three!

My little babes are 3!  They started off their birthday celebration last month with surprise donuts and candles to blow out when they woke up.  I really could've stopped there they were so thrilled.  But then I wouldn't get to make a bunch of stuff so we had a pretty big party that weekend.  This post is a little recap of some of the things I threw together.  I really wish I had better pics, but at least I got a few!

If you have been following on instagram you may have seen the several birthday project pics I posted.  I really could have kept going and creating but had to cut myself off.  It all started when they settled on a theme - knights and princesses.  and dragons.  and unicorns.  and rainbows were also requested.  I tried to hit them all without going crazy.

So of course we started off the party with a castle - a bouncy castle!  We had this thing for a couple days because it rained that night and they wanted us to keep it until it dried.  They loved their personal  bounce house!  It was humongous - with a giant slide.  I always thought it was weird when people rented bounce houses, but I get it now.  Perfect activity for their age and really fun (even for adults when no one's watching).

I've been told that 3 year olds are really into pretend and dress-up, so I knew right away I wanted all the kids at the party to have knight and princess outfits.  I didn't have time to make a bunch of puffy princess dresses, so I went with no-sew tutu's - my fav to make.  The knights received purple tunics made of felt and ties at the waist with fun ribbon.  Girls were encouraged to be knights too!

I have a thing for party hats, so I ordered some knight hats and made a bunch of princess hats to decorate with stick on jewels.  That was a lot of hot glue fun for me creating the hats!  Last year's hat is still my favorite though - a shark!

There were also plenty of necklaces, rings, and rainbow hair extensions too.

The kids also went home with some foam swords/shields and a mini dragon for their adventures.

Too much?  maybe, maybe not enough :)

Last I want to share is the cake!  I love making (and eating) birthday cakes.  Here's the one from their 1st birthday - Rainbow Cake

And their 2nd - Ariel/Shark Themed 

(that was chocolate with salted caramel icing - yum!)

And this year's cake - Purple stars, rainbows, and a Unicorn 

This isn't exactly the cake I had in mind, but it was what they requested.  Actually, they requested a rainbow cake but I already did that 2 years ago and I didn't feel like repeating it.  The cake was apple with apple pie filling and salted caramel icing.  I have a thing for salted caramel.  It goes with anything!

The kids actually got their own little cupcakes.  Hard to see, but I used food spray paint to make ice cream cones silver and filled them funfetti cake mix.  They were topped with whipped cream, rainbow sprinkles, and chocolate unicorns.  In my mind the ice cream cones were castle towers and the whipped cream was a cloud.  I loved how the cupcakes were baked into the ice cream cones.  It was a little less messy I think.

We also made some blackberry ice cream with colored sugar sprinkles mixed in - aka purple princess ice cream.  They love purple right now, if you couldn't tell already.  

I wish I got more pictures of the decor and the food, especially the fruit wands (fruit on bamboo skewers with a watermelon star).  We had so much fun with all of our friends even though it poured much of the time and everyone was stuck in our tiny house.  The girls loved having all of their friends over and especially the part where they got to blow out a candle again!  

Can you believe they used to be less than 5 lbs?  Which is why I'm so happy to see them grow and thrive :)