We didn’t let not living in our house keep us from hosting Maelle’s birthday party in the backyard. Thankfully, we were blessed with a beautiful day (finally! no rain!), since without the use of the house OR garage, we were going to be in a world of trouble if the weather called for a downpour.
This year has been all about unicorns for Maelle, so that’s what we went with for the party.
I love decorating our backyard and hosting her parties with lots of little friends. I know we won’t do this forever; one day she’ll want some little girls over for a tea party or maybe a sleepover. But for now, we really enjoy having her little friends (and their adult parents!) over to celebrate in the backyard.
This year, we tried something new. We did a separate ‘family’ birthday so that we could spend more quality time with her cousins and grandparents. The big party is BIG, and gets a bit wild, and it’s hard to host groups of people who don’t know each other well. So, we split them up and I thought it was great! I enjoyed both parties more, and Maelle’s family was able to enjoy themselves a bit more (I think) since we could spend more time with each other.
On the morning of her birthday, we made unicorn-shaped pancakes at Gram’s:
We continued the unicorn theme for her family party, also at Gram’s:
She requested a ‘pink’ cake this year, so I made a strawberry layer cake, and did my best to make it look like a unicorn. For her friend party, I bought a sheet cake and supplemented with gluten-free cupcakes (for one of our GF guests), so I saved the decorating pieces from the cake to re-use on her family birthday cake. The hardest part: searching boxes in our basement to find my cake stand!
We celebrated one last time at the Nyes’ house, where she chose to wear her new dress from Paris and her ‘birthday girl’ button.
I can’t believe our girl is already five. The time really does fly…just like my parents said it would.
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