Emily's birthday - Part 3

Emily's birthday theme this year was Alice in wonderland. Here's her party from beginning to end!

I spent the bulk of Friday making Emily's cake. We got the idea from this month's Family Fun magazine - a topsy turvy cake.
Notice how it's supposed to be unlevel!! (My kind of cake!) Well, here's my version.

Instead of buying 6 new cake pans in 3 different sizes, I used 3 different pie pan sizes (also reducing the size of the cake as well - 2 cake mixes instead of 3.) Here they are prebaked.
Here they are baked, stacked, and frosted with the crumb layer, and unleveled.
Then stacked, frosted and decorated. (Using 4 tubs of frosting!!)
Candles and homemade Mexican flowers added. (Flowers represent the flowers in the Wonderland garden.)
A day later after unleveling even more...
The decorations were a bit simpler this year. The stairway had a card garland. We also hung red and black streamers and balloons.
The whole family had costumes this year. Grandma made Emily & Ella's adorable Alice and White rabbit costumes, and Steve and I pieced together the Mad Hatter, Queen of Hearts and Cheshire cat costumes.
(Don't you love her Cheshire smile!!!)
Here's the invitation we sent to Emily's friends. I thought 10 kids would be enough, but we invited enough for 12 in case some couldn't come. However, we ended up with 13 because a couple of siblings decided to stay because it looked so fun!
As the guests arrived, they were supposed to crawl through the White rabbit's tunnel.
We got them started decorating Mad Hatter Hats and coloring Alice coloring pages.
Then I told them the story using a book and their coloring pages in case some didn't know the story. The games wouldn't make any sense if they didn't know the story. (However, I guess it's ok not to make sense in Wonderland!)
First we played the White Rabbit Race using our potato sacks.
Then we played Pin the Grin on the Cheshire cat using a crazy birthday hat as a blindfold.
Steve played Mad Hatter Says (no picture).

After that we played Tea Party Musical Carpets (no picture). As each kid got out, they decorated their own teacup that we later used for cake time.
Then we played Tea Bag Toss with bean bags and a giant teacup.
After that we split up and the boys started with Steve outside to Paint the Roses Red. I had made white Mexican tissue paper flower and taped them on the fence. They were supposed to spray their flower with red paint, but unfortunately the spray bottles gummed up or something, so Steve just did it for them. I played Queen, Queen are you angry with the girls inside, and then we switched.

Then it was cake time!
And then, present time!!! Emily got a lot of fun presents - all very girly. The first thing she played with was this life size Barbie coloring board. She's been very good at sharing and letting Ella open the packages and playing with her toys (when she doesn't want them!)The kids got to take home their Mad Hats, their teacup, their coloring pages, their flower (which I forgot to give most of them), and these treats in a bag with a Queen of heart label on it.
She better never forget these parties I create for her!! However, that's what pictures, video and blogs are for!! We do always talk about past parties, so I do know they mean a lot to her. We didn't buy her a lot of presents and Steve was feeling bad that we weren't spoiling her. However, I feel that I spoil her with all the time I give her creating these "Wonder-ful" parties just for her!!!