Unconventional Carrot Cake

We celebrated my daughter's 4th birthday this weekend. She had specifically requested a "big cake," instead of the small cupcake variety, cookies, and a pinata. She really only wanted one friend at her party and reasoned out that they would get more whacks at the pinata and more cake if they were the only guests. Impressive reasoning from a 3-year old, I thought, but we went ahead and invited some other good friends.
I decided to go with a subtle storybook theme for her party. Mainly, because I wanted to make this cake. The rabbits in the very cute book Shall I Knit You A Hat eat a layered carrot cake with whole carrots poking out the top and sides and I think it's great. Also, I want to live in their house. I brought the book and propped it up next to the cake to be available for reading and to prove I'm not crazy.
I made M&M/pecan/raisin cookies and displayed Cookies: Bite-Size Life Lessons next to them.
We had a little face-painting station with The Penny Pot (story of kids using money to pay for face-painting at the fair) on hand.
I had a games corner (sewing animals, puzzles, Memory, Cariboo) with Charlie and Lola's I've Won No I've Won.
A book corner made several of our favorites available to read and produced Giraffes Can't Dance to be read aloud.
Finally, The Perfect Pinata made way for our own pinata thrashing.
I intended to have a craft project inspired by a book (much like our Alice the Fairy crowns), but didn't have a chance to make the necessary preparations. Turns out, it wasn't really necessary, after all.
The party was fun. Faces were painted (my kids did a number on mine), the games were played, the food was yummy (thanks to a couple good friends for providing some great fruit and veggie platters!), the pinata did eventually burst spilling out lots of chocolate to be quickly snatched up and several tiny boxes of raisins to be left sitting neglected on the floor for the parents to pick up. Kids.
By the way, the cake you see in the picture was dumped onto the floor by my son, landed upside down in it's carrier and managed to get away with only scrapes and scars where the icing clung to the lid. That's Krazy cream cheese gluing that cake together.

FYI: Most of these books are in our home library and are read frequently, a couple are public library finds that suited our occasion. You knitters out there may enjoy Shall I Knit You A Hat if you'd like to share your knitting love with your kids. Instructions for a simple knitting project are included with the book.