Boys 6th Birthday party

The boys has their birthday party December 19th. I had 16 children in our townhome. It was crazy but it went really well! I had a lot of activities planned. Here's the rundown:

Dinosaur party:
11:30-11:45 Children arrive, decorate their treat bag with stickers, markers and crayons. They can get a temporary tatoo if they want
11:45-11:50 Dinosaur story
11:50-12:30 Games. I divided the kids up into two groups. James and his group went upstairs and played bean bag toss and hide the dinosaur (each kid got a turn to find the dinosaur while the other kids said hot or cold)
Nathan and his group went downstairs and they played pin the tail on the dinosaur and "hatch" the dinosaur, which they did by trying to pop a balloon that had a little dinosaur inside it. This was a relay race. Then they switched and played the other games upstairs.
12:30-12:50 Lunch. Dinosaur chicken nuggets, french fries, juice, and orange slices
12:50-1:00 Make volcanoes. I gave each kid a little dixie cup and some green play dough. They had to shape the playdough like a mountain around the cup. Then we scooped some baking soda in the cup and gave the kids another cup of vinegar. On the count of three we all made the volcanoes explode. They wanted to do it again and started chanting "Vinegar! Vinegar!" So they got to do one more explosion with vinegar.
1:00-1:15 Cake. I made the boys an awesome Volcano cake!
1:15-1:30 Dancing. I wasn't sure how this would be but it was a hit! The kids did the chicken dance, the limbo, and the hokey pokey. It was so cute and my favorite part of the party.
1:30 Parents picked up the kids! Phew! I survived my first party! I felt like I had been working out for two hours when everyone left.
I asked Jason's sister to come help out and I paid our babysitter to help out. I couldn't have done it without them! (And Jason of course).

Here are some pics:


Hokey Pokey

The volcano cake


Making the volcanoes


Decorating the treat bags in the beginning

Audrey enjoying her lunch

Lunch time. I borrowed a table and chairs.

Sitting on the blanket for our story.

The cake.

Here are some cookies I made for the treat bags. I think they turned out super cute.


I went a little crazy with everything but I think it was a success and I had tons of fun!

Visit with Santa

When life hands you collapsing cakes.....

.....Make a trifle instead.

This is the picture of the cake I wanted to make:

This is what happened instead:

However, I think it made a lovely and delicious trifle

Boy, this was a disaster! First, my cakes didn't come out of the pans, so I had to make another batch. Next the ganache layer was too hard to spread, so I had to microwave it and it turned to liquid. Then I had great difficulty cutting the cake layers. They were very fragile. I finally had 4 layers of cake with a ganache layer and a white chocolate cream layer between them. I started piling on the fluffy peppermint frosting and the cake started collapsing. It was literally falling off in chunks, then half of it slid onto the counter. This was all happening just as I was about to leave, already late for my event. My friend and my mother in law were there. I was so embarrassed. I had spend all afternoon on this! Luckily, I remembered my trifle bowl and we managed to save it.
I read the reviews and I'm relieved to find several other people had this problem. Several people mentioned serving the cake out of the punch bowl or a big Tupperwear.
It tasted delicious, I guess that's all that matters.