Butterfly Cupcakes for Julia’s Butterfly Birthday Party

We recently celebrated Julia’s 4th birthday.  I feel like I say this every year, but I can’t believe how the time has flown by since she was our tiny baby girl:

Today she is a beautiful, independent four-year-old who loves hugs and kisses, stories and songs at bedtime, doing artwork, pretend play, gardening with Daddy, baking with Mommy, and playing with her baby brother.

When I asked Julia what kind of birthday party she wanted, right away she said a butterfly party.  There are so many cute ideas that go along with a butterfly party theme, and it was lots of fun planning and getting ready for the party.

To make the invitations, I bought some pink and purple cardstock at Michael’s, along with some pretty pink polka dot ribbon.  I used a butterfly punch to cut butterflies in a few shades of pink and purple cardstock.  I printed the invitation wording using my printer, and attached it all together with double-sided tape.

It’s become somewhat of a tradition for me to make a Happy Birthday sign each year for Julia.  This year’s was really easy to make, since I used already die-cut flowers and butterflies and used my printer to print the letters.  I’ve found that tiny clothespins work great to hang the parts of the sign from the ribbon.

I loved how these balloon centerpieces turned out.  I taped the balloon strings to the inside of some cute polka-dot boxes, and weighed the boxes down with a few marbles.  Some colorful tissue paper and cut-out butterflies on the balloon strings completed these fun and festive decorations.

A simple idea that added a fun touch was to use a piece of wrapping paper as a table runner.  I loved how this colorful polka-dot paper brightened up the dessert/favor table.

I found the idea for these butterfly favors in a few different places, and Julia loved them.  To make these, I made a snack mix with Chex, marshmallows, M&M’s, and raisins and then filled snack-size zip-top baggies with 1/2 cup of the mix.  I painted clothespins with purple glitter glue, using a toothpick to spread it and then attached the wiggly eyes while the glue was wet.  A 6-inch pipecleaner is twisted around the center of the baggie and then shaped into antennae before the clothespin is attached.

Julia, we are so lucky to have such a special daughter and can’t wait to see how you grow and change each day in the coming year.  We love you sweet girl!

And now on to the butterfly cupcakes…

Butterfly Cupcakes

Makes 24 cupcakes

You’ll need:

• 24 chocolate cupcakes
• About 3 cups buttercream frosting, 1 cup tinted blue and the rest tinted green with food coloring
• 48 pretzels
• 24 green M & M’s (I used pastel green from a bag of Easter M & M’s)
• thin black licorice, cut into 3/4-inch pieces

Directions:

1. Make sure the cupcakes have cooled completely.  Then, working in groups of about 6 cupcakes, use an offset spatula to frost them with the green buttercream.  Gently place two pretzels on top of each cupcake for the butterfly wings and add an M & M for the head.  Attach two short pieces of licorice under the head for the antennae.
2. Scoop the blue buttercream frosting into a piping bag fitted with a small round tip.  Pipe 4 small dots onto each butterfly for the body.

Sources:

Butterfly Cupcakes inspired by Martha Stewart.

Butterfly Favors inspired by Plum Print.