Frozen Winter Wonderland Party

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My baby girl just turned three, and since her birthday falls in winter, and since she loves Disney’s Frozen, we threw her a Frozen Winter Wonderland Third Birthday Party!  It was a huge hit, she was so excited to see all the decorations and the Christmas tree when she woke up. And bonus for me, half my holiday decorations were done for the season!  Be sure to scroll to the bottom for one more picture and an extra special announcement!!

As you can tell from the pictures, it was a subtle Frozen theme; no Elsa shaped cake or Anna balloons or “Pin the Nose on the Olaf.” I wanted something simple and sophisticated, and honestly I didn’t want to have to buy any more Frozen things than we already have. So, I just kept everything white and turquoise and I used her own toys as decorations. It was all she needed and it was perfect!

For food, I bought yogurt raisins, vanilla wafers cookies, snowflake Ritz crackers, Jones Cream Soda, Hershey’s Cookies and Creme bites, mini marshmallows, Ju Jube Nougat, and mini donuts.  Basically, I went down every aisle at the grocery store and grabbed anything white!

I baked the snowflake sugar cookies and boy did they turn out fantastic!  Knowing Christmas was coming I actually tripled the recipe and froze two batches for holiday baking, a very wise decision because they are delicious!  The sugar cookie recipe is from my go to baking book, “Back to Baking” by Anna Olson, and the royal icing recipe is from Ms. Martha.  I plan on doing a whole post on this recipe once I start doing the Christmas baking, so stay tuned for that!

The cake…oh boy, that cake. Baby J specifically requested raspberry cake and I found a recipe for Raspberry Ruffle cake in a Martha Stewart entertaining book from 1994 called “Special Occasions, the Best of Martha Stewart Living.” It was the most complicated and time consuming cake I have ever made!  You wouldn’t know to look at it because it wasn’t anything special in the looks department, but you can tell by the change in lighting that the cake wasn’t done until just before dinner!  Everyone said it was absolutely delicious and totally worth the effort, it was very light and airy like a shortcake.  But this thing required browned butter, eggs beaten and warmed over simmering water, 5 x sifted flour, syrup, warmed jam, whipped cream, and meringue buttercream–which I mistakenly made with real eggs and had to throw out since I couldn’t eat it (can you guess why?!  Keep reading!).

You may have noticed I haven’t posted in a while.  It’s been a really busy few months: We moved to a new house in a new city, did a pretty big diy renovation project (blog post to come!), completely unpacked all our boxes (with multiple trips to Goodwill), I ran a Halloween 10k race…and surprise, I’m pregnant with baby #3!  It’s been something moving and unpacking and looking after two sweet babies while being first trimester exhausted, but I somehow managed!  Since we already have one precious girl and one precious boy, we will NOT be finding out the sex–there aren’t many things in life that are truly surprising, and this is one of them!  We are all so excited, Baby J even pushes the button on the Doppler machine to hear the baby’s heartbeat and it’s all so lovely and wonderful!

I will definitely be updating on the pregnancy so stay tuned!  Next up I promise to do a little Christmas home tour and some holiday baking posts, hopefully before Christmas is over hahah!

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Snow White Tutu Dress (one of four new dresses she got that day!): Party City

White Christmas Tree, turquoise ornaments, turquoise nutcrackers: Bouclair but I got these a few years ago and I’m not seeing the same stuff on their site anymore.

Anna and Elsa dolls: I got these at the Disney store last year, but these ones on Amazon look pretty similar, Elsa and Anna.

Little Kingdom Frozen characters: these were purchased as two sets at Winners/Home Sense, I found one set on Amazon

Camera for the birthday pic: my iPhone 5 (you read that right…)

Camera for the announcement pic: Olympus O-MD E-M10 Mark II with 14-42mm IIR lens