Valentine's day, part 1

I have to admit, I have NOT been a Bad Blogger recently.  No posts, no pictures.... but we WERE working on this insane huge birthday party for my sister, who turned eight yesterday (the fourteenth).  Being that her bday is on valentine's, we always have some sort of valentine-y something for her.  This year, a mega party.  Cooking and such started friday night.

 Roo loves chocolate, so we made her chocolate petits fours.  A bit complicated, but worth it.  Also see the red heart cookie cutters?  =my bffs for this party!methey used real teacups, of courseMum made the petits fours, since I couldn't really do it since I'm HORRIBLY allergic to chocolate.  lovely, really, though.  She was wearing just the right shirt to match the molds.Here's what the Little Brothers did friday nightMe and ned.  Making stuff for the party.  This was a giant dice for a huge board game outside.  Conveniently, I'm holding it upsidedown.  Charming.And I had to make glitter placecards... if you've ever hosted a kiddie birthday party, everything is a MESS if you don't specify where everyone is going to sit.  They all fight to sit next to the birthday girl and it's a disaster and everyone's unhappy. =(The table(s).  We didn't have a single table long enough for 13 girls.Petits fours frosting is really weird.  It's a mixture of powdered sugar, water, and regular sugar, plus a bit of vanilla flavoring and cream of tartar.  It gets hard really quickly so you have to put it on your cakes fast.Note heart the beaters made!  So cute!The frosting is designed to pour over the cakes.  This means in order to get it thick enough, you have to pour several layers.  You can see two photos above I'm scraping hardened frosting back into the pan for reheating so I can pour again.   Meanwhile, brother neddie was hanging up balloons.  Balloons that were getting away from him.  Luckily he thought of getting one of those guns that shoots foam pellets and pushing the balloon to where he could reach it with those foam pellets... photo credits go to him for this, thensister liked her petits fours.  She also liked making a Very Strange Face as older sister took the picture.  And isn't her dress darling?  Brother making mini pizzas.