Happy Birthday - Hyvää Syntymäpäivää

Our Rose Princess turned 6 years old last week!
We start birthdays by waking up the birthday girl/boy with signing and giving presents in bed. I met her wandering in the corridor just when we were getting ready to enter her room and chased her back to bed. Time to sleep! For the next 3 minutes!
She got a pretty rose from the garden with the presents. See her pretty pillow case? The material is Strawberry Shortcake character which she loves and adores.
I sewed it from the material my mother-in-law had bought for us. I should blog about my adventures in the handicraft world. I was NOT born with a needle in my hand (which makes my mother very thankful). But I love handicrafts and am always in a middle of a project...
Anyway...it was her birthday I was blogging about.

Every year she asks for a strawberry cake. She loves and adores Strawberry Shortcake. It is very easy, strawberries in the middle and cream around and on the sides. Maybe I should be more wild in decoration next year...
I did not use cream this year though. We have this Iranian packaged cream that stays good forever. It always tastes sweet which is very good here. It can be hard to find sweet tasting cream in Central Asia. However, I could not get this cream to stiffen. I know, it is hard to believe! Here is a picture of the Mother's Day cake we had just days before the birthday:

My husband whipped this cream for 15 minutes and it was still very liquid!
So I decided to go for a butter frosting. I have never made butter frosting before, but I found a recipe I used for the cupcakes and for the cake. Very yummy!

Strawberries dipped in chocolate! This was the centerpiece of the tablecloth!
(She loves strawberries and Strawberry Shortcake)

Getting ready to receive the guests.
I found these cute hats in the bazaar for 50c - 1$ each.
The rose tablecloth is a piece of material meant to be a sheet...It has been washed and I will sew it into a fitted sheet (see, another handicraft project!).

When the girls came in, they could each choose a hat. We had couple of girls come I had not expected, so I need to go and buy few more hats for them still.
In Central Asia you never ever turn down a guest.

My first birthday cupcakes!
These raspberry tasting pink m&m's are perfect for a little girls birthday party!
I should have waited with the sprinkles. I finished the cupcakes night before, and they started to loose color and crunchiness! But tasted good, nevertheless.

Here are some of the guests. It was our daughter's best friend (American girl) and all the girls from our street.

Just before I brought the cake in I realized that I had only put 5 candles on it! Wait, she turns 6 today! It is so hard to believe. My first born princess...
Happy Birthday!