Miss Alexandra turns 10

Sunday after church before Mima and PopPop left, we celebrated Alexandra's Bday.  Her B-day dinner request was ribs, fruit salad, asparagus, and brussel spouts.

 

 For her cake we tried a copycat recipe for that delicious mandarin pineapple cake from Marilyns bakery we had for Katy's bday.  It is actually very good and not difficult at all

 The following Friday, she had a friend bday party.  We went with a pink and black fabulous theme

 After the girls arrived they could use nail polish, lip gloss, bracelets, sunglasses and rings on the table to get their "bling" on.

 I had not planned for any specific games and was going to just let them have a dance party but the night before Xandy asked what games we were going to play.  So, we quickly put some together starting wih "hot potato"

 We then had a crazy game of musical pillows.  Actually we played about each game 2-3 times per the girls request

 The cupcakes ended up doubling as both decorations and pin the candle on the cupcake.  The girls each decorated a candle while getting blinged.

 We then moved on to the presents and cake.  Xandy had seen a cake in on of my cookbooks that was chocolate and pink.  She thought it would fit in good.  But when I looked at it, it was peppermint.  She's not a huge fan of peppermint, but it got the wheels in my brain turning.  I ended up making my own cake up.  I used my largest spring pan to make 2- 12" chocolate cakes.  Then I made a cream filling with vanilla pudding mix, coolwhip and strawberry sauce.  I should've added food coloring to keep it pink.  The strawberry sauce color was very diluted and almost ended up pale orange.  The fillinf went in between the two layers.  For the top, I made a chocolate ganache.  Pink candy beads and sugar crystals were sprinkled on top.  She was really happy with the way it turned out.  I must say it was incredibly delicious!!!

 The girls had so much fun with the games that we only had about 5 mins for a dance party.  We've had some parties were the kids were so out of control I couldn't wait for the party to end.  Not this one, it went so fast and the girls were all so polite yet still were having lots of fun.  I definately like her friends here.