PSP Birthday Party Recap

While I think I’m a good designer, I don’t actually have the skills in photoshop or illustrator to make my ideas come to fruition–which really needs to change–but I know enough to make a simple invitation using pages on my Mac.  For the decorations my Silhouette was once again the MVP of this venture.

First I found these great gem images and paper cuts from MinieCo. and used the printable paper as the gem image in my invitations and added wording on the left. (Again, I created this in pages using the event postcard template in about 10 minutes.)  Then I used the paper-cut gems and made a file for my silhouette, and proceeded to cut lots and lots of paper gems. (I mentioned how I turned images into cut files in my heart-glasses post.  Take the same steps and apply it here).

While I used most of the cut out gems for decorations, we also glued diamonds to the back of the invitation envelopes.

Probably my favorite detail of the party were the cupcakes.  I am not a big cupcake person–I don’t get the hype–but these have been my very favorites since I was a little girl.  They are chocolate with a cream cheese chocolate chip filling.  Boom.  One of my earliest memories is of a 3 year old me sneaking down to the fridge early in the morning and dipping my finger in the filling, then dipping it in the batter… so good.

Here’s the recipe, ready?  Get a box of devils food cake and make the mix according to directions.  Then take an 8oz block of cream cheese add a little powdered sugar to mix in a mixer until smooth.  Add more sugar if needed.  Then add about 1/2 bag of chocolate chips and mix again.  Now follow the direction for cupcakes on the devils food box for oven temperature and times.  Using cupcake liners add a little chocolate cake batter in the bottom, them a spoon size scoop in the cream cheese filling, lastly cover the cremates with a large spoonful of batter.  Then bake.  So easy!

I usually don’t put any frosting on these because they’re so rich, but for the rock theme I spread a small amount of frosting to act as glue, then placed broken bits of rock candy and these awesome Kimmie Choc-o-rocks on top.  They were a hit.

Like I said, for the garland I used these paper-cut gems printable from MineCo and simply turned them into a cut file for my Silhouette.  I sewed a bunch of the gems in a row for a garland, spread some on the table and even made little diamond shaped stickers using my Silhouette and contact paper for the gift bags.

I snapped so many photos of the actual party, but since it’s pretty dark inside and the kids are running constantly, it’s pretty tough to get a decent picture but I thought this one was cute.  She had a great time and as usual was a great hostess.

I have an 8 year old.
Turns out, 8 is great.