Today is my friend Yukino's birthday. She planned to come over for brunch after I asked her to earlier in the week. So I made her a purple party complete with hanging purple flowers, and a surprise purple ombre cake.

We love philly cheesesteaks around here, and I hadn't made them for Yukino before after talking about them several times. I caramelized those onions for over an hour, good bread, good steak, good cheese, mayo. Awesome. She seemed to really, really enjoy her sandwich too!

I made these hanging flowers out of coffee filters following this tutorial. I dyed them in water with acrylics and dried them. My husband helped me out a lot in putting them together and hanging them up for me. The flowers in the vase are made of coffee filters too, just cut and taped up on some sticks.

I think next to Yukino walking in to see the decorations in the house, that her reaction while cutting into the cake was my favorite part! The cake I made was a simple vanilla cake with vanilla frosting. I was trying to go for an ombre effect, but accidentally made the top layer a bit too purple! It was still pretty I thought though! I made the flowers out of fondant, nothing too complex. It was Jonathan's suggestion to make it a hexagon shape since I wanted to trim off the edge to try and remove the brown edges to enhance the purple.  :* We ate some yummy Häagen-Dazs ice cream alongside with it too.

I wish she could've stayed longer (darn work!) but it was really fun and sweet! Happy birthday girl!