Walking thru a Winter Wonderland!

In January my daughter Sugar turned nine years old. I am the mother of a 9-year old. Holy Poop! That is just crazy to me....*sigh*
Anyways, for her birthday party this year, she requested a "Winter Wonderland" theme. Since I was still very much postpartum, I kind of skimped on the planning and decorations this year. Under normal circumstances I go all out for these things. I mean, I'm celebrating the life of my children! Why not go above and beyond?!
However, my baby girl Ballerina was born on December 27th and Sugar's birthday was January 16th so as you can tell, that left me very little time to put into the party so to save on money and to make things a little less stressful, we used a lot of our Christmas decorations for her birthday party. Basically anything that had snowmen, snowflakes, or penguins was saved and left up.

I created large 3D paper snowflakes using a ream of paper. Half of them I sprayed with blue and silver paint and we hung them from the ceiling in random places. I made smaller 3D snowflakes to line our hallway.
In addition to the paper snowflakes, I went to the local dollar store and bought a few sets of silver snowflake garland. I asked my husband to cut the garland in 1 ft sections and hang them sporadically. The decor turned out pretty good.

For birthday cakes, I usually get super psyched and create cakes, cupcakes, and icing from scratch. This time, I was literally too exhausted to make the full effort so instead I picked up some cupcakes from a local bakery and iced them with white buttercream icing. For decorations, I took a 4 lb. bag of Jolly Ranchers and separated the flavors into gallon size Ziploc baggies. I proceeded to smash the Ziploc bags until the Jolly Ranchers were broken into small pieces. Then I spread the pieces over a cookie sheet with parchment paper on it and put it in the oven at 350 degrees for 8-10 minutes. This melted the candy down good. That was when I placed metal cookie cutters in the candy and allowed it to cool on a cooling rack for about 15 minutes. (Don't forget to spray the cookie cutters with non-stick cooking spray!)
When it was completely cooled, I broke the cookie cutters free and released the candy shape. I continued this process with all the Jolly Rancher flavors and placed them on top of the cupcakes as decorations.

They turned out beautiful and the kids were so excited to learn that the stars and snowflakes were candy.
Sugar loved the candy!

Happy Birthday Sugar!!!