a happy birthday indeed!

*Please go to the end of the post for the winners of the Freschetta Pizza coupon giveaway!*

Evan's 2nd birthday party turned out wonderfully! Everything turned out great* and as far as I could see, everyone had a fun time. As I mentioned in my previous posts, a lot of the party assembly was done during the week so when party day came around, there wasn't too much left to be done which is always good. I made a trip to Costco Friday afternoon for some of the food and then spent most of the rest of the afternoon and all of the evening in the kitchen baking up cupcakes and Evan's birthday cakes...yes....cakes, plural.

*Last year, I made Evan a cupcake cake with my cupcake cake mold and he just loved it! I decided that this year, I'd make him a cute little round layered cake with one layer in blue and the other in orange. I purchased a cute cake pan set from JoAnn's a week or so ago and started on the cake. I was a little disappointed that the directions for use didn't specify how high to fill the pans so I just filled them to the top. Wrong. I soon had a cake volcano in my oven. Luckily, I placed the cake pans on an aluminum foil covered cookie sheet so the mess was minimal. I wasn't too worried about the overflow because I figured I could just trim the excess off with a knife and start icing the cake. Well, as I was carrying one of the layers from the oven to the counter, the darn thing slipped and fell face down in the sink. Now, I don't know about you, but to me, sinks are dirty. So I was quite irritated at this and this just added to my frustration with the pans so I decided that I was going to can that idea and just go with the cupcake cake again.

After all the cupcakes were baked and iced, I started on the cupcake cake. I colored the layers the same as the other cake and popped them in the oven. An hour later, it was done and I took it out of the oven. Since I was getting really tired and my feet and back were aching like none other, I left it to cool in the pan. Later that night as I tried to remove it from the pan, it just wouldn't budge and suddenly I realized that I had forgotten to spray the pan with cooking spray. You have got to be kidding me. Another cake down the drain. Well I knew I had some time in the morning to run to the store, purchase a new cake mix and run home and bake another one up and get it all iced before the party. No problem.

Well, the morning turned out to be very busy (no surprise) and I needed to run a few extra errands in the morning like running to the party store for balloons and Michaels for some miscellaneous items. I popped the third cake in the oven and asked Ben to take it out of the oven when the buzzer went off. When I returned, I turned the cake over and the crappiest (sorry) thing happened. The cake fell out in pieces and didn't resemble a cupcake at all. I was immediately in tears. I had only two hours until the party started and I had no cake for Evan. I was freaking out.

Ben walked into the kitchen and saw me crying and asked what was wrong. I was so upset I just let it all out on him. He was so kind and just listened and then did the most amazing thing. He was able to get me a 7 inch round cake AND have it decorated in the surfing theme of the party. Talk about amazing. The cake actually turned out better than what I was planning and was very happy. At least someone knows how to bake a cake.

After the whole cake fiasco, everything went smoothly and the party started. We set up a shade tent over one of the tables at the park and decorated two tables in the surfing theme. It was so cute! After the decorations were up, we set up all the food on the table, put all the drinks out and Ben brought in some pizza from Costco. They have some good pizza! On the second table, we set up the favors for the kids and later the cupcake tower and Evan's professionally baked cake.

Here are some pics of the festivites!

The banner I made with my Cricut!



The main food table with place setting centerpiece!



My brand new drink dispenser (I can't remember it's official name!) from Costco with lemonade! Yum!



The beautiful and most of all delicious fruit kabobs!



 The veggie platter!



 Yummy pizza!



And the favor table!



I have so many other photos to share so I think I'll continue this post in another one. I'll let the suspense kill you! haha!

*Giveaway winners!*
Since there still weren't four correct answers and more importantly, because I'm running out of time, I thought I'd just randomly pick the last two winners for the Freschetta pizza coupons. In an attempt to be fair, I have removed the entries for the two winners who guessed correctly.

First, the winners who guessed the correct answers are....

Entry #6 from:

And entry #12 from:

And the winners picked randomly from entries on both posts:

Entry #8 from:

And entry #13 from:

Congratulations to all the winners and thanks for all the entries! This was a fun giveaway!

All winners must get back with me within 24 hours with mailing info as the coupons will expire on May 31 (one week from today) and I really want you to enjoy your free Freschetta pizza!

Thanks again!