Simply Party:: {Balin's 4th part 1}

Four years and 1 day ago I was pregnant with my second baby. I went in for a Dr visit and got the best birthday present of my life. She sent me into the hospital! We stopped and had icecream with Ayden to celebrate first, and then took him to a friends house where he spent the night. The next afternoon I was holding my sweet babe.   This weekend was a BLAST. We celebrated Balin with a so- much -fun pirate party. (Ahoy!) Here are a few details in case you want to throw your own!

There is nothing I enjoy more than a planned party. Kids tend not to get  bored. Your house stays clean (at least the parts you want to keep clean) and everyone has a better chance of going home happy :-). Pirate themes are super easy for summer birthdays, and we had good fortune by finding tons of favors and props at the dollar store!
 For today I'll give you just the food.

First:the cake. The cake is always the center of parties I throw. I'm learning new methods all the time, and really think any one of you could actually make a better cake than me.... I'm just crazy enough to do it! This was a three day cake. The first day I baked the cake and dirty iced it. I used chocolate cake mix (duncan hines) nd then made my own banana cake mix for the "lid".. recipe will come in another post. The icing was banana butter cream, which I tinted yellow for my four year olds sake. The second day I made marshmallow fondant and then layered four sheets of cake for the base. The top sheet got a square in the middle cut out to make a place to store all the treasure. The treasure is, of course, the best part! We used Hershey's pot of gold chocolates and chocolate coins my husband bought while in the big city at a World Market store. I threw in some unwrapped ring pops and clear jewel toned jelly belly's for fun. Balin wanted crabs, so while I was making the red fondant for the "leather" strap I gave Ayden a ball and he made crabs. Request completed. As far as snacks go I had the party starting at 10:00 am. I knew parents might want kiddos to have something on their tummys before cake so we made fish shaped pb&js ham and cheese triangles and lots of fruit. I served chicken salad premade at the H.E.B (the rotisserie one, so good) on croissant "shells" for the grownups. Pinterest showed me a pirate watermelon fruit bowl. Goldfish finished us off!

For my basic table settings I used mostly items I already had. Under the cake I used a tan sheet and layered it with brown (non sparkly) tulle. I tore some holes in the tulle to look like netting. I had the conch shell laying around and then surrounded the cake with ground up Graham cracker to look like sand. On the snack table I just threw down a strip of burlap, used serving trays from the dollar store, set out the pinata when we were done and called it complete!