Party with Papa John

My step-father turn 80 years old on Feb 24th.  Yesteday his daughter, my mother and I had a little celebration for him at my house.  Of course I say "little" with sarcasm.  We ended up having an open house instead of a party and the little turned out to be about 100 people. Yes, there were  100 people in by house between the hours of 3pm - 8pm.  Believe it or not there is still a ton of food left.  My job beside providing the location was to make cupcakes and sides.  For the side I made potato salad, pasta salad, fresh fruit salad with honey, lime and balamic vinegart dressing.  Relish tray and vegetable trays.   I was most proud of the cupcakes.  I made just about 200 cupcakes with buttercream icing.  The cupcakes themselves were "semi-homemade".  I used box mixes with a little added touches of my own.  But the icing was completely from scratch.  We had chocolate espresso with chocolate espresso kaluha frosting, vanilla with dreamsicle frosting and classic red velvet.  Thanks to my daughters Amanda  for helping with the frosting and decorating and Olivia her roommate Kayla for helping with the setup. 

Here are a few pics.

BTW, the cupcake stand is made from cake cardboard, scrap paper, and ribbon. 

Soooo much to do.

This month is my step father 80th birthday.  He's such a great guy.  My mom, his daughter and I are going to have an open house (at my house) to celebrate his birthday.  So far we've sent out over 50 invitations and expect to have about 100 people through the day.  We're going to have a small buffet and a dessert table.  Tonight I started baking the cupcakes we're going to serve.  There's going to be a mix of vanilla, chocolate and red velvet. I decided to make them ahead of time a freeze them.  I hope it's going to work.  Since the party is on a Saturday, I plan on taking them out of the freezer Thursady night.   We'll frost and decorate them Friday.  I working on a cupcakes stand in the a blue and brown color them.  I'll take pics of the stand when I start putting it together.  Plus the cupcakes when we start decorating them.  Wish me luck.