FOUR!

The girls are finally four - that magical age that I had in my head when they would be finished with the toddler tantrums, bedtime battles, and dinner refusing.  Yeah, still not past those trials...but we've moved on to add a lot of fun firsts that I foresee to keep on coming as they become "big kids".  Like playing with the tiny Lego sets, riding a bike (with training wheels), using a big kid scooter, doing the monkey bars, and actually drawing some things I can identify as more than just scribbles.

In the past, when moms with older twins would see me struggling in the stores with my two crazies, they'd always smile and say it "gets better" when they're about four.  Now I know they were just throwing out a random number for me to look forward to because things never magically change to be perfect.  It's just different.  Different struggles and different things that make your heart melt.  And it's finally going too fast for me!

For the girls fourth birthday, I went with a Frozen theme.  If I would've listened to them it would have been a Frozen How to Train Your Dragon Rainbow Unicorn Purple Yellow birthday party.  I did listen to a few of their requests and melded them together.

There was a giant castle bounce house like last year, complete with slide inside.  We had it for nearly a whole day, and they made sure all the adult relatives worked off their cake that day.

Speaking of cake...

I made a dutch apple cake this year (a request from one of them) with salted caramel butter cream frosting and marshmallow fondant snow.  The top layer was just a cake tinted purple (the request from the other one).  I've worked with packaged fondant before, but the marshmallow fondant is a little different.  I read a bunch of tutorials and tips online before making it and had no issues.  The snowflakes where made with a fondant shape making plunger - I'm not awesome enough to cut those buggers by hand!  The snow was finished off with pearl shimmer dust, my favorite to add a little something to fondant.  Oh, and the Frozen figures were from a set found on Amazon.

I didn't stop at cake.  Dessert is my favorite so it was my job, and I took it seriously.  

There were extra tie dyed purple/blue/white cupcakes, white chocolate snowflake pops, candy melt away mints, frozen jelly beans, blue sixlets, frozen hearts (err white chocolate strawberries), and Sven cookies (nutter butters dipped in chocolate with pretzel antlers and chocolate nose).  The cake and snowflake pops were inspired by this party.

See the How to Train Your Dragon cupcake rings?  They were a special request from some obsessed little ones!

The desserts were rounded out with some home made purple ice cream (blackberry) and yellow ice cream (banana chocolate chunk).  There was real food too, but I didn't get a photo.  It included some Jello blue "ice" blocks, snowflake fruit wands, snowman snack mix (crunchy Cheetos, pretzel sticks, chocolate chips, and mini marshmallows), and two kinds of chili (ha, get it - chilly/frozen).  I also made some melted Olaf yogurt cups.  Inspiration from these, and the kids loved them. 

Enough about food.  Besides eating and jumping in the bounce house, we had a Frozen piñata and played pin the nose on Olaf.

Olaf was made with a wall decal stuck onto some foam board.  

The piñata I did not DIY (obviously).  I had to drawn the line somewhere, though I really wanted to try to make one for the first time.  Next time!  The kids liked hitting it with a bat as much as expected, and the parents got to take home a ton of candy to hide.

The favors were these Olaf bags the girls helped me make that were filled with rock candy sticks, stickers or tattoos, a toy slinky, a princess candy necklace, and homemade glitter play dough (snow dough).  I meant to add some peppermint extract to the dough but completely forgot.

The girls had a great day with their friends! - jumping and eating all the snacks and candy they could get their hands on.  I tried to get some pics of the party dresses I had made them but they were a little exhausted by then.  The dresses were requested in each of their favorite colors, and they even picked out the fancy skirt fabric from JoAnn's.  I used the Caroline Party Dress pattern, my go to dress pattern for them lately.

Enjoy the final picture dump :)