Family: Sofia’s 4th birthday party!

Happy birthday my baby!!! We had an amazing party!

Now that she’s 4, I had to think about activities for the kids other than just running out with her friends. Since we’ll going to have a big crowd, I still wanted to host at home, so I hired a lady who does face painting and balloon twisting. It HIT the spot among the kids!!!

We started the day with nail painting, a long time promise for the special day

then party started at 4pm!

we ended up having more than 50 people in the house, so I was really happy that the deck was an attraction with the balloon lady.

younger kids were happy playing in the play area while parents hang out

kids had face paint one after the other… without parent intervention, they formed a line

the second round was balloon twisting with their favorite colors!

my baby was the princess! 🙂

we hosted the party on Saturday 9/24 (her birthday is 9/26) so I took Friday off to prepare the food

green tea magic cake

Argentinian empanadas

bite size cheesecake

aduki bean rice cake

cheese, hams, nuts and crackers

apple pie

biscottis

we also had fruits, chips with guaca and hummus and puffs. Once again I baked the cake, a lemon cake filled with strawberries and lemon cream cheese frosting. I wanted to make the cake pink (Sofia’s favorite color) and didn’t want to use artificial food coloring, so I used beet juice and it really turned out pink. I was quite pleased with the end result. Cake had the perfect moisture, not too sweet and tint of lemon flavor. I use 1/2 of powder sugar for the frosting so it didn’t turn out too sweet. Almost all the guests finished their piece. That’s a good indication of how it turned out, right? 😉

Kids had a lot of fun and I truly enjoyed every minute of it from watching kids jumping around excited with their painted-face, chatting with my friends, and simply soaking up another milestone of my baby girl. Although it takes a lot of thoughts, preparation for this moment, it so worth it because Sofia loves parties and more if she’s the center of attention. As long as it makes her a bit happier than she started her day, I’ll keep making it happen!

At 6pm, guests started to leave, and it was gift un-wrapping. Look how excited Sofia was.