Happy Birthday, My Kiyra Girl!

Oh, I love my little girl. I of coarse love my two sons as well, but there is a special place reserved in my heart just for her. I remember when we found out we were having another child and how heartbroken she was. When we found out it was a boy she rejoiced when I told her this would mean she would forever be my baby girl. I love that she WANTS to be so badly. <3 January 18th is Kiyra's birthday. I'm actually NOT the best at putting together parties, but I did do this last minute and it went swimmingly. We had two different parties - one for her and her school friends and then another which was for Framily (friends who are family). This actually worked out really nicely. During Kiyra's school friend party we made some really fun chocolate bowls out of two things - Melted Chocolate (both semi-sweet and white) & balloons (blown up small)

I melted the chocolate in two pans - the one below this one holds water.

Once it was completely melted I let it sit for awhile so it wasn't piping hot.

Then each kid got to take their balloon and put the bottom into the bowl and roll it around until the bottom was coated with chocolate. I then put a spoonful of chocolate onto the wax paper on the table and then plopped the chocolate covered balloon on top of it.

After this the kids took off to play and I cut up the wax paper and placed all of them on baking sheets to go into the garage (where it was FREEZING - so they got to sit really well).

The cake also ended up being experimental. For some reason the cake was falling apart VERY easily and I simply could not frost it - so - taking a tip from Bakerella (where I also got the chocolate balloon idea) I instead dumped the cakes in a bowl and added some frosting. Then I ground it together like it was a meatloaf. Once the consistency was even I put it on my cake plate and basically molded it into a heart. After that I placed it in the fridge to set for a minute and then frosted the cake (or what was now a bit of a a brownie cake). It was a great save!

I even used the little bit of chocolate from the balloons to drizzle over the cake! YUM!

Before long it was time to open presents!

She is now the proud owner of a whole colony of My Littlest Pet Shop's. 

Finally the kids were ready to pop their balloons. Each was given a pin and they popped them easily. Taking out the balloons from the chocolate took a bit of finesse, but we did it. Some needed to go back into the freezer for a moment, though and this seemed to help a lot. 

I think the kids really dug it!

Time to blow out candles.....

and go CRAZY building their sundaes!!

I'm SURE they had fun with this one...

Overall it went really well....

and she is so lucky to have so many people who love her - and TWO cakes!

Thanks Frantie Sarah!

I love you, Kiyra. I hope your 9th year here is as awesome as you are!