3rd Birthday Party

My daughter's 3rd Birthday Party was themed around Dora the explorer. A TV show that teaches children Spanish. She has learned several words from the show. Sometimes I'm not sure if she's speaking Spanish or just saying gibberish so sometimes I need to look up words too. Guess it's educational for me too ha ha. 

I had a great time working on it and honestly I'm really proud of my swiper.  He's a character on the show that steals things. 

I thought I had pictures of my cupcakes, they turned out great... expect they melted a bit in the hot sun (next time I should bring them in a cooler)

 I just wish that I had taken more pictures. I thought I had several but apparently not.

 I made Swiper out of the box that the trampoline I bought my daughter came in. I printed a picture of him and then drew a grid and used it as referance, if I made him exactly to scale I would have needed a wider box becasue he has an extrodiany long nose and huge tail, but he looked just like him when I finished painting him. I used white spray paint and little acrylic paints I bought at the dollar store. Then I outlined him with markers with matching colors.
Contrary to the picture I cut off the top section. It was just about the height of my toddler. The kids actually really liked it and two of the girls were trying to feed swiper cookies ha ha.

 

Swiper the fox!

We made rings in the colors of the show. Strung them up in the trees at the party. We also had streamers in the same colors. A purple table cloth, pink cutlery (which they used to try and "cut down a tree"), and tons of balloons. 21 filled with helium, more filled with air and even more filled with water. Yay for water balloons (they kept drinking the water from the balloons)

Another key character on Dora is Backpack. So I made everyone little backpacks. I bought sheets of felt and cut them out and sewed them together and then hot glued the faces on, made with other bits of scrap felt. Finally I hot glued little bits of velcro on to hold the backpack closed. Stuck a "map" in the side pocket. I filled the backpacks with Dora shaped fruit snacks and Dora tattoos.

 

Here's my little princess at her birthday party!

(The other pictures have other kids in them and I don't want to post them online without permission from their parents)

Watermelon Pops!

Ok here's what you need to know: I LOVE watermelon. It's an addiction really. A secret addiction. As in everyone knows but no one really knows ecstatic I get about watermelon things. I have been more and more open about my watermelon love as I get older. As I get more open about it however, I feel like I actually care less about watermelon. I like anything to do with watermelon, but watermelon flavored thing are generally yucky. Actual watermelon is hard to like all the time, you never know what your going to get. It's kinda a crap shoot, maybe you get a good one, maybe you don't. 

There is 2 things to look for when buying a watermelon:

1) one nice yellow spot, that means it's been resting on the ground and absorbing water (which is a good thing)

2) It's really heavy for it's size - which means it's got a lot of water. 

You can also knock, but from my experience unless you knock and eat and knock and eat how do you know what a good knock sounds like? Anyways you can also look that information up on the internet. 

So food that looks like watermelon I also love. So cute, so fun. Now you see where I'm actually going with this. 

This is what I made.

Here's what they look like according to Kraft.

As you can tell I choose not to add chocolate chips. I think that's weird to have random chocolate in your frozen treat. (unless it's ice cream)

Also it calls for some weird cream cheese mixture, which I'm sure is delicious to some people.

Not I, I find that so gross. So I substituted whipped cream.  I was worried that it wouldn't hold up becasue cream doesn't freeze exeptionally well. However as you can see it held up quite well. 

The only problem I ran into is the molds. I used my regular molds for popsicles, what would have been nicer is one with a longer handle that went farther into the popsicles to support it better. As when I pulled a few out the red part got stuck in the bottom because the stick didn't reach that part at all. As long as I ran it under warm water long enough to really unstick the top it was fine. Also the molds I used were skinny and it was harder to make each layer smooth and fit as a clear layer - I ended up wiping the container after I filled each layer. It did't take long but if my molds were wider it would have been easier.

Banana Cream Pie

Bananas! Cream! and Pie!

 

This is the recipe I used

Next time I think I would prefer one that the bananas and the cream are together rather then separate.

Should have cooked the pie crust longer - still tasted good, just could have been crispier. 

and the bananas on top didn't add to the flavor or taste. Looked good, so maybe put them on top of the cream.

This one was alright - coconut cream pie was better in my opinion.