Waffle Party

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Last night, the girl finally got her waffle party.  While I was uploading and slightly editing the pictures, I noticed a great mothering fail: I took a ton of pictures of the set-up and hardly any of anything else.  It isn’t that the set-up was the most important thing to me -it’s just that once the party started, everyone’s hands were busy and hardly any pictures were taken.

On second thought: that’s probably the real sign of a true party.  We were livin it up SO MUCH we didn’t have a chance to take pictures.  You believe me, right?

Growing up, my mom always made our birthday cakes. I’ve mentioned before how much I loved it. Trying to carry on that tradition has been harder than I thought it would (thank you, fondant). In years past, Lacy’s cake requests have been pretty easy to fill.
First birthday: Elmo cake. Bought a cake pan and frosting at Michaels (because I can’t seem to make red OR black frosting). No problem.
Second birthday: Cinderella Cake.  I used my mom’s Barbie cake pan and just decorated her to look like Cinderella.  Ta-Da!
Third Birthday: Star cake. Easy enough. I baked a round cake for the center and then cut another round cake up for the points. I frosted it all white. It looked pathetic, but we all ate it anyway.

Fourth birthday: Rainbow cake. We were all sick for pretty much the entire month of January last year. Lacy made her own cake. It was supposed to look like this:

But it ended up looking like this:

Ah, life.
For her fifth birthday, I had to talk her OUT of a He-Man cake. How the hen would you make a He-Man cake? I have NO idea. I had seen this cake on pinterest, and it looked easy enough.

(image from recipegirl.com)
I gave it my best shot.

And I’ll say this: EASIEST CAKE EVER. I was so happy to get something so adorable out of something ridiculously simple.
I woke up Friday with pretty much no idea how the waffle party was going to turn out, but as the day went on, things came together. I didn’t have ribbon to tie the cake with, so I dug through my fabric stash where I found this cute striped fabric and two big hunks of burlap. And just like that, I had a table clothish thingy. I had no idea what the syrup was going to go into until I looked up while stirring the buttermilk syrup and saw Grandpa’s old milk bottles from the dairy.
Light. Bulb.

The waffles were put on my Goodwill cake plates (candlestick + plate + E6000 = cake plate!), and I loved how the pile of plain waffles were piled so high… until they toppled over. So we rearranged them. Two cake plates, one regular plate.

Don’t you love the pink chocolate chip waffles? We call it The Lacy Special. I got so wrapped up in throwing a party together that I forgot to take Lacy to preschool.
Wow, I’m just RIFE with mothering fails.
I took her half an hour late, and while she was gone I painted a banner in red -her favorite color (lately).

Can I just say? I have no idea what I would do without a good roll of butcher paper. I use it all the time! It covered the tables last night and made for a perfect tablecloth because it entertained while it covered.
Multi-tasking miracle!

The adults had more fun with the crayons and butcher paper than the kids did, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
Our decorations consisted of balloons. That’s it.
There’s something about this picture that makes me want to sing Dashboard
“This is about as [festive] as I get now.”

Before I go on, I have to post one more picture of Grandpa’s milk bottle. I love his old milk bottles. Love, love. LOVE.

We also had an old wire hen holding the napkins and forks. I got the hen at a yard sale.

But wait. This post is NOT about my love of old things. It is about a birthday party, right?

Here’s a few guests. Remember Beki? The Price is Right Contestant sitting RIGHT ON MY COUCH. And she’s about 20 weeks pregnant. It’s not obvious, but I swear it’s true. She’s having a boy!

After everyone left, I snagged the camera and took a few pictures of the art left behind:

I had such a great time last night, and I LOVE living here! Last night I dreamed that my husband was pricing farms for me. I was so touched that he would do something like that for lil’ ol’ me. Then I woke up, helped put the horses in once, then twice. My husband started painting our soon-to-be chicken coop while I shoveled manure from the driveway into the garden (fertilizer! [when I typed that, I accidentally typed “fartilizer” which I think might be more appropriate]). After I was done I came inside, washed my hands (thoroughly) and made biscuits and gravy.
We are literally LIVING my DREAM. Well, the one I had last night anyway. Although: my dream was more like the first rainbow cake picture… picturesque. While the reality is much more like the sawed up second cake: manure, rogue horses. But given the choice between the two of them, I’d pick the sawed up cake every dang time.
It’s just more my style, manure and all.