Berkli is 8!!!

Here is her cake. It was my first time with fondant. Which was SO fun! I made a homemade marshmallow fondant, with almond, butter and vanilla flavoring. The cake was three layers, one chocolate, one vanilla and one strawberry.

Love this amazing girl!

The girls played hopscotch, Berkli and Camry made the board and the arrows showing everyone where to line up.
Berkli with her cousin Camry. These are Hello Kitty Pizzas, Oval pizza shape with small points for the ears, olives for the eyes, pineapple tidbit for a nose, slices of olives are the wiskers and a pepperoni bow. The girls got to take turns making their own.
We made mini magnet boards by mod-podging scrapbook paper onto sheet metal and painting a 5x7 frame, and glueing it in place. We also made magnets with clear marbles and scrapbook paper. We tied ribbon on the top for hanging. They all turned out SO cute, and somehow we don't have a picture :(
We had an indoor pinata, where each girl takes a turn pulling a string, one lucky string pulls the pinata open. We made it all the way to number 11 :) (unfortunately we had 12 girls, but Alyssa was a trooper!) (This is also the only shot of my amazing friend Jani, she came and helped me. Without her I don't know what I would have done!!)

Berkli's friends spoiled her. It was such a fun day!
Tips I learned:

The cake is everything.
Make sure it is even and smoothly cut, make sure your frosting is smooth. Make sure you take the time to freeze the cake so it is easy to cut.

Also, make sure you give yourself plenty of time to freeze the cake before cutting so it is easier. (I would also recommend leaving it in the freezer until right before you cut it -I got in the shower and by the time I was done, it was soft around the edges and hard to cut)

If you are doing multiple layers, I would stack them all (with frosting in between the layers, then trim the sides off all the layers at once. THEN ice the sides all at the same time with a crumb coat. Make sure your crumb coat is smooth and even.

Before adding the fondant, make sure all your surfaces are clean and free of crumbs. This is VERY IMPORTANT!

Also, I like to make the cakes a three days ahead and then freeze them wrapped in plastic and aluminum foil. Two days prior I like to stack my layers, do the trimming and crumb coat of frosting and put it back in the freezer. Then the day before, I do all the frosting and detail work and put it in the fridge overnight. The only pain is that the cake was SO big, I had to put a bunch of my groceries in the freezer to fit it. Once the cake is done, it takes SO much stress off.

Some people suggest not adding the fondant accents until the day of, I went ahead and did it, but some small accents did come off (I also did not know you were supposed to glue them on with frosting....) I guess I watched one too many episodes of cake boss!