Ruby's Pinkalicious Party!!

Ruby wanted a Pinkalicious birthday party this year - for her first ever "friend" party!  Oh the fun that can be had with a purely PINK theme, and a darling little book go along!  My quest with this party was to have it be a fun, intimate little group of Ruby's closest friends.  Both of my girls are shy in large crowds, or with people they don't know well, so even though it was hard to do, we kept the guest list tiny!  My secondary goal of this party was to NAIL the cupcakes!  I mean, the Pinkalicious cupcakes are the key to this darling book and theme!  And some of the cupcakes online that I saw just didn't quite get it right.  And not that mine are perfect, but I was so happy with the way they turned out! They are as close to the cartoon cupcakes as I could have imagined.  If you don't know the Pinkalicious books, then you'll probably not notice the details on the cupcakes, or the identical star wands for party favors, or the Pinklicious font on the invitations.  But for those of you that DO know the books...you can tell that I had fun!!  And doesn't Ruby look just like Pinkalicous herself???  So adorable!  OK, so here is what we did for the party.  As the girls arrived, they came in and colored Pinkalicious coloring pages for the first few minutes.  Then they all gathered around as I read Pinkaicious to them.  A couple of the girls hadn't heard the book, so really they needed to know the story line to appreciate the party!  After the story the girls sat back up at the table and used sticker flowers to decorate their pictures, just like when Pinkalicious blended in with the pink peonies at the park.  After they were finished with their masterpieces, we played PINKO - a pink twist on BINGO.  It was super cute!!  We then played Pin-the-Cherry-on-the-Cupcake.   It was pretty cute, and the first time that many of these girls had played this "classic" party game.  Next up we read another story - Pinkalicious and the Pink Drink.  Those girls could have listened to stories the whole party!!  After we read the story, we made our own "pink drink," since Ruby's daddy "accidentally" made yellow lemonade for Ruby's PINK party!!  They thought that was pretty funny.  After sampling our new pink lemonade, we decided to sing to Ruby and eat cupcakes.  Little, sweet, shy Ruby did not like being the center of attention during the singing, however, and burst into tears (after pulling some hilarious faces, trying to show her disapproval of the singing).  So we canceled the song and opened presents instead.  We couldn't have the birthday girl crying while blowing out her candles!  This distraction worked, and we were able to convince Ruby to let us all yell "Happy Birthday Ruby" instead of singing to her.  Funny girl.  :)  After eating cupcakes we gathered the girls around for a group picture with their party favors - a Pinkalicous wand and a cupcake hair bow.  Such a fun party, and Ruby had the time of her life!