All Hail The Birthday Girl, The Maker of Wishes, The Opener of Presents...

And here is the Birthday Girl, I bet you couldn't tell that from the picture.

This is from her 3rd birthday. It's funny, every past picture you look at of your kids you say,

"They were so little back then!"

You can't help yourself, it just comes out!

So let me get to the point of this post...drum roll please!

Here is the princess crown birthday cake I made for her last year,

and when I say "I", of course I mean "my husband and I".

I saw it in the Family Fun Magazine and knew I had to do it for her. What I didn't know was the amount of work that it was going to take. They make it sound so easy, "just do this and that, use this and that...blah, blah, blah", and I admit, the concept is "easy", reality is a little different.

It's a simple, two layer cake from a box (don't judge me, I wanted to keep it as simple as possible) frosted with canned frosting, that was the easy part. Then you take a roll of sugar cookie dough and using a template from their website you cut out the pieces of the crown. Here is where I spent hours trying to get the perfect cookies. They spread and I had to re-cut the hearts out of the middle AGAIN and trim the sides so they would be straight. Some of them weren't hard enough to stand up, some ended up crumbling, I was getting frustrated. But eventually, after the help of my wonderful husband, I had enough cookies to finish the cake and I could calm down. It turned out cute but boy, was it a pain! At least we have some good pictures of it and more importantly, my daughter LOVED it.

And one more picture, I just had to throw it in, my husband Jason and my son.

Thanks honey, couldn't have done it without you!