hand stitched living: Maya's Fancy Cupcake Birthday Extravaganza

Since last two weeks have been extremely busy, so I didn't have a chance to update my blog...but today, thanks to steady rain and gloomy weather I can actually do it- write few things about the last party of our family birthday season :)

Maya has always been a cupcake princess. Since she started walking whenever she had a chance she would wonder off with a cupcake in her hand. I think the idea of the having an ownership of a cake ( even the one of the size of a cup) made her very happy. Another big passion for cupcakes comes for the fact that they are just so easy and fun to decorate. My kids have always been my assistants when it comes to final touches and cake/ cookie decorating, and Maya definitely is a leader in this project.

It wasn't a surprise that Maya had decided to have a cupcake theme for her party. I actually I was really please with her choice ! Finally I can make 120 cupcake plus a cake within one night ! I simply LOVE baking challenges. We were supposed to have 4 flavors. Vanilla and chocolate were just obvious choices, after that I had suggested strawberry, which was approved by the whole family... and then we got stuck. I though about lemon flavor, but didn't get much support for that, so I ended up making extra vanilla. In the end, that was the best choice since most of kids loved that flavor.

As usual, I baked through the whole night. Whenever I have to prep for birthday parties for my kids, I have a very strong need to bake, make food and stay up as long as possible. I think for those special days, I'm powered by my inner memories of labor coming back to surface. I get this super powers that make me do extraordinary things for the sake of celebrating birth of my kids. And yes, I do think cupcakes are included in a group of extraordinary things, they make people smile and feel good, just like holding little babies. Sometimes I wonder, if my need to do this crazy work comes from the fact I did have home births and the energy of those amazing and powerful moments in my life is still so alive and vibrant in this house.

So after night in the kitchen, came a beautiful Sunday morning. Perfect day for outdoor party ! Yes, the Universe was very kind to us that day :). I have made usual yummy salads and tarts for lunch, kids and daddy organized furniture outside, few friends came and helped with lovely cupcake garlands decorations :). And soon after guests started to arrive .

Fancy Cupcake Birthday Extravaganza was about celebrating cupcakes and inner baker in every child. Everyone was asked to think of what kind of bakery they would love to have. After that we all designed aprons and logos for individual bakeries and cupcake boxes.All my supplies I got from Oriental Trading Company. Kids were absolutely thrilled with this idea.

And of course the most exciting part was decorating cupcakes.Since it was a bit windy, I put sprinkles in cupcake tins, which worked out just perfectly. Nothing was flying off tables on the ground or into kids' bellies.

I had big plans for running a demo about using different techniques/ tips etc. for cupcake decorating, but since we had about 18 kids, very eager to decorate, not much into listening, I had skipped that part and hand it out frosting to then and let them do the free style decorating. And it was just perfect ...