oh là là Sweet Sixteen

My sister turned sixteen in August and and was leaving in September to France for the entire school year; so I decided to throw her a sister Sweet Sixteen/Going Away party.
All design and execution by moi (can't let the French thing go...)!
Cupcakes were actually made by the birthday girl...some chocolate cupcakes had strawberry marshmallow frosting and the others were topped with chocolate ganache!
We had yellow cupcakes too and we replicated the frosting of the chocolate ones (some had strawberry marshmallow and some had the chocolate ganache). Yuuuummy!
The frosting didn't hold up in the warm weather we had...neither did the marshmallow pops and the chocolate covered pretzels, so we really only had them out for photo-taking purposes, and of course, when it was time to enjoy them!
The second to last picture has my "Au Revoir" banner (you can see half of it!). It looks so neglected because we had a change of plans about the favor table...I originally had planned to put out a very French-looking coffee table with the favors on top...and the banner would be placed behind it (higher, of course) as the "good-bye" table. Unfortunately, our favors were edible, and we couldn't keep them out, so I didn't even bother to set it up. But then, I changed my mind and did a quick improv (at that point, I couldn't even get the cute French-looking table anymore) and a white coffee table did the job.
I made the 16 cake topper, and actually decked out a store bought cake a bit more so it would go with the theme (this involved pouring the leftover chocolate ganache on top of the cake for a yummy double chocolate taste, and using the leftover pink sugar pearls). For a 5 minute fix, I thought it turned out great! Funny how the only picture of the cake that I have has my sister's pool-wet self behind it!
For the banner, I wanted to give a little bit more of a girly effect to the "Sara", and so I added brown tulle around the banner ovals. It turned out so cute!
Everyone had a great time...we went through a lot of "Eau"s as it was a hot one...Cake was great, cupcakes were awesome and we forgot the ice cream! Oh well! At that point, everyone was so happy and sugared up that no one minded!
All in all, a great time!
It was really a joy for me to design this and turn it into a reality...I hope she enjoyed it as much as I did!
Sis - I'll miss you. Rennes, here you come!