Amal's 14th Bday Party!

Here is Ali and Shannon, Amal's friend whom came home with us. We ran some last minute errands to pick up food and then got to blowing up balloons!

An ingenious way to get as many balloons to decorate the outside of the house.

Hanging decorations on the outside of the property so the kids could find us!

Here is the cake. It was by far the hardest cake I have ever attempted. It was a chocolate cake from scratch. Very dense and not too sweet. I was a nervous wreck as it was the first time and one should NEVER experiment for a gathering!

My decorating was not all that. I can do better. I made the icing from scratch but a new recipe and it was a disaster. I used it to crumb coat the cake and the next morning when I took the cake out of the fridge, I started to put my trusted recipe on and it just started sliding off! It took me two days to make this. My skills were a bit rusty but it was much loved by my daughter and that is all that matters, right?!

Here it is cake time and the candles went into place. It was freaking heavy!

Here is my birthday girl with the candles lit and the kids are singing.

Here are just a few of the kids. They loved the look of the cake! I feed off these compliments.

Ok. Three layers of dense chocolate cake. Two layers of Cookies and Cream filling. One layer of really yummy icing that went wrong and then the colored icing. D E C A D E N T!!

Now it is presents time. Waqar made an appearance when I was cutting the cake and actually liked my cake. He normally does not. But I learned now that he prefers dense cakes. Hey, no one noticed that we did not have ice cream and it was not missed!

Another shot of the kids watching Amal open gifts. Nice bunch of kids.

This was pilfered from Amal's camera. I stayed away in my studio with a keen ear but left them to it. Ali's friend stood him up so he was a bit challenging to occupy as he wanted so badly to be a part of the party. We have a FatBoy bean bag and the kids had a lot of fun with it. Hey, hey, in the background, you can see my banner I made. I will post separately on that!

Then the most fun started and that was when Waqar took the kids, one by one, for a ride in his Porsche Carerra 911! Even Shannon's dad got a ride!!

B I G hit!!

I think I need to invite those that did not get a turn over soon.

Shannon's parents, whom are LOVELY, came over and came inside for a spell. Hareth and Shannon got busy on our Sing Star. It was so cute! I have a movie that Amal took too. He then left and the girls started singing for a while. I sent Ali to bed as he had a performance on Thursday. Pics on a separate post. Now, our gift to her is a trip to Dubai this coming weekend!

And that is it! I have talked this kid's bday to death! I'm done! She has started the countdown for next year now!!

Hope you had a GREAT party Amu and that your friends enjoyed it all. Thanks to everyone whom helped make it a success!

Alia out!