Anabelle's Ariel Cake

Anabelle is really not that into Arial anymore, but for whatever reason she has been dead set for months that she was going to have an Arial cake for her birthday.  We had no intentions of planning a big party for our 3 year old.  Just figured I'd ask her which friends she wanted to come and have cake with her and we'd do cake and ice cream one evening after dinner.  Well.   Her list literally included about 20+ people- all her little friends and their big brothers and sisters and parents (her favorite "aunts and uncles"- our overseas family)  So we had a crowd.  Still tried to keep it simple and stick with cake and ice cream but Maddie got in on the action so our menu expanded a little...

As for the cake, Anabelle had a very specific idea in mind.  For WHATEVER reason, I decided it would be a good idea to let her sit in my lap while I browsed through pinterest to come up with some ideas.  Good grief.  Of course, she immediately went for the cake that had the actual Ariel doll IN the cake and incorporated into the design.   Those have always kind of creeped me out, but I couldn't persuade her otherwise so I decided we'd have to go for it.

Naomi and Maddie had the idea to paint some of our shells pink and purple for decorating the cake and cupcakes.  We have TONS of shells in our craft drawer from various beach trips so I was glad for an excuse to use some of them!  Here they are painting shells.  

 For the Ariel cake, I made 1 large 9x13 and 2 smaller round cakes that would be the mound that Ariel is sitting on.

We were all a little concerned about the end result when I got started.  And despite the fact that she CHOSE the design, AB was a bit freaked out that Ariel was stuck in the cake...

A little icing (ok, a LOT of icing), and several toothpicks later and it's all coming together...

The "sand" is brown sugar held on by a crumb layer of icing and we also decorated with the painted shells and Anabelles' Little Mermaid squinkies...  That's what the Sebastian and Flounder and Scuttle on the cake are.  

We made cupcakes with the leftover cake batter and decorated them with the painted shells.

And Maddie wanted to make starfish cookies so our menu expanded a little more...

We also had THIS birthday punch that has kind of become a staple at our birthday parties- so yummy!

I've also started adapting THIS popcorn recipe for just about every birthday party or other event involving kids.  It's so versatile and fun to do with different colored sprinkles and you can dye the white chocolate to match what you're doing.  And it's SO yummy..

So the final spread was a bit more than I originally intended but it's a good thing since AB had such a long list of invitees....

Happy Birthday Bella Rose!  You are loved!