How to throw a 4th birthday party

So little Lilo is 4 now - time does fly. I didn't do a big theme this year, it was just cupcakes. I made a rainbow out of cupcake.

I made 48 cupcakes - 2 batches of cake mix. I used this variation to the back of the box instructions from Saucy Sprinkles - 3 eggs, 1/2 cup melted butter and 1 cup water - beat with mixer and bake for 20 mins at 350. I don't think I'm going to try and make from scratch cake again - last years cake looks awesome but was really dry.

Then I gave each kids a little muffin tin that I filled with different candies to decorate their cupcakes with. Lilo nicely decorated hers, then ate the candy off and re-decorated - innovated young lady :)

Once my mom showed Isla what to do, she got into it too.

Alex just wanted to eat the cupcake, didn't want to fuss with the decorating.

Austin was concentrating hard on what he was doing.

Izzy sampling her creation.

Maddie was working hard with mom to get the right look.
I think Mom helped out a bit here :)

I also made aprons for all the kids - I forgot to get a picture of all them together. Oh well, here's Izzy modeling hers.

Instead of goody bags, their giveaways were the aprons and muffin tins (so they can all do muffin tin Mondays). I totally lucked into the muffin tins, they are look like muffin top tins but they work for this and they were only a dollar each. The fabric for the apron was donated to me from my sister-in-law.

And some of the pictures of the kids decorating their cupcakes weren't intended to look like that. I just forgot the flash and then the battery died so I couldn't just take more pictures. (the problem when you use manual) So I had to lighten them as much as I could in Adobe Lightroom. I kinda like the look, they look like old grainy photos.