Meredith's pink rockstar cake

As of 4:36 pm EST, our sweet Meredith Caroline is SIX years old! How did that happen??? It seems like just yesterday we were holding her in our arms and marveling over the tiny little person we created... and hoping we could figure out this whole parenting thing before we screwed her up.

We'll be celebrating in style tomorrow with a very girly rock star birthday party. We can't wait! In planning the party, Meredith asked for a three-tiered hot pink cake with zebra stripes. I did a bit of Googling and realized that it was actually pretty simple to make a chocolate and vanilla zebra-striped cake, so that's what we decided to make. I can't wait to cut into it tomorrow!

This is the finished result:

The zebra stripes and purple stars are edible sugar sheets, and Meredith insisted on purple sprinkles on top. She chose a pink "M" cake topper, which we decorated with silver and purple rhinestones. We went ahead and added six curly candles.

My fingers are stained pink and purple from making this sucker, but the look on Meredith's face today when she saw the finished cake made the whole thing more than worth it!