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Owl baby shower for a girl

2012-01-23T10:23:00.000-08:00

I suppose some of you remember when I did an owl baby shower last year for my friend's baby boy? Well, recently I hosted another owl shower for a little girl and it looked completely different!! It was such a fun shower to do because my friend just adopted a baby girl, so the little one was able to come to her own baby shower and it was just such a sweet time celebrating this wonderful act of love and redemption.

The inspiration for the shower was the crib bedding they chose for the nursery from Pottery Barn Kids here. I have to thank Renee, Katy, Meghan, and Lisa for helping me with the food, supplies and decorations. I didn't even have to do any of the food prep, so I am very thankful for that!

banner thanks to the handy Cricut! :)

I love this shot of the guests of honor chatting on the chair! It is precious.

Renee painted this lovely design on the wood letters and also the bird houses. The branches, birds and 2 owls are printed on cardstock, cut and taped to pictureshelves (or wall).

So cute, right?

Found this adorable owl at a local gift shop!

The food table

The topiaries were made by painting ceramic pots, inserting a piece of styrofoam in the bottom (covered up with some dried filling stuff), painted wooden dowel, the top is a styrofoam ball (I did paint this a quick covering of pink before I started)covered with paper flowers and leaves (cricut flower shop cartridge) and attached with a pearl stick pin.

The little ceramic birds are from Finland

Love these plates/napkins from Party Pail

Great idea Meghan to put fruit into krumkake shells

These petit fours were amazing!

Thanks Trader Joes

Lisa's bacon wrapped dates

Chicken yummy on pitas

Lisa made these super cute chocolates for party favors

And the sweet Maya herself! Such a precious gift from God!! Welcome sweet little one!

low key pizza and movie party

2012-01-22T22:31:00.000-08:00

Well, time to write about another party! We just had one turn 8 years old at our house! This year my daughter wanted to do a sleepover party, so with that decision, the deal was that she could only invite 3 kids over (plus her sisters for the movie part) and I wouldn't be doing a super involved party this time. But of course I just can't help myself and did do a little something to make it cute! :)

We had pizza and cake, then the girls watched "The Tooth Fairy" and before the movie, they got to pick a mini pillow pet (to keep as the party favor), a boxed candy, and fill their cup with an assortment of popcorn choices. It was cute and I think the girls enjoyed themselves.
The "sleep"over was a bit harder... there is always the one girl that wants to sleep, the one that wants to bother/bug and the ones that just want to chat and giggle... can be a hard combo sometimes. It may be a few years before we do more than 1 friend again!

Anyway, let's get to the fun part... Here are some pictures from the party:

Got the cute unicorn party supplies from birthdayexpress

Extra large mylar

For the individual popcorn cups: I printed the names on white cardstock and stapled them on the backside to form a cylinder, cut a circle for the bottom about a half inch larger diameter than the cylinder, then pushed and bent it up into the bottom and stapled it around the base.

For the larger popcorn bowls, I have a set of green mixing bowls that are different sizes and all fit into each other. I thought, what if I just make "covers" for them and set the bowl inside. So, I measured each bowl from table to just under the rim and the diameter, printed the striped design and label I made on the computer (had to glue a few sheets together to make the diameter large enough), and just set the bowl into them (unlike the individual cups, there is no paper bottom, they just go around the bowl). I loved how it turned out and will definitely use that idea for future parties!

cupcakes from whole foods and we just added some sprinkles

Mini pillow pets as party favors (only worked because we had a small enough party for it to be do-able)

We happened to have a stuffed unicorn which came in handy for the centerpiece

pizza time

Happy birthday to you....

the theater is all ready ... where did that teapot come from?

Movie time

Happy birthday Elise! Love you!!!

Candyland Birthday Party

2011-10-28T11:25:00.000-07:00

Welcome to Candyland! This was a super fun party to create (but I think I do say that about most of the kid's parties). I decided to set up the house to look like a life-size candyland game board.
I did have a hard time getting started, so first I studied the candyland board games: we have an older one and the new style one. I actually used more from the older one, because I liked the variety of candy characters/places better. The new board is a little too.. um.. busy... and the candies are a little more similar to each other. Anyhoo... so I made of list of the "areas": Plum trees, rainbow trail, peppermint forest, gumdrop mountains, Licorice Castle (changed to Licorice Lagoon from the newer game), Peanut Brittle House, Lillipop Woods, Ice Cream Sea, Molassis Swamp (changed this to Chocolate Swamp), and last, but not least the Candy Castle. I just started brainstorming ideas for each area and jotting those down.
I even made a playlist of candy related music to play, but then forgot to play it... boo.

Then I drew this rough map of my living rooms/kitchen... and how I wanted to set up the "game" (where all the sections would go).

I ordered supplies from my 3 favorite party websites: Oriental Trading, Shindigz, and Birthday Express. Also picked up some things from Ben Franklin, Bartells, The Dollar Tree, and Fred Meyer.
So, I always find it easiest to just talk about the party as we go along. So, here's what the guests arrived to:

The giant lollipops are made from ballons taped to a baton I found at the dollar store and then wrapped in cellophane. I stuck them in buckets filled with sand to keep them upright.

Aren't these 2 great! they're from oriental trading!

As we were waiting for everyone to arrive, we had the kids decorating their goodie bags. Note: don't use elmers glue when doing this... took too long to dry... next time I will only use the stickers/sticky backed jewels. lesson learned.

When everyone got there, we played the game. I had taken out the colored cards from the board game and each kid drew a card and moved to that color square on the floor. There are a ton of pictures, so I will just post a bunch!

Some stations had a little goodie bag gift to put in their bags. We actually went back around a second time to grab those. :)

The rainbow trail led to the punchout game and the peppermint forest.

At the other end of the rainbow, I placed a "punch-out" game that I made. See my previous blog post to see how we did that. This we also came back to play on our second time around the game, so each kid just took a turn punching and getting a prize.

Candy canes and candycane pencils for the goodie bags.

I added glue and glitter to these popcorn and trash buckets from the dollar store to make them look like gumdrops.

I pinned bright colored blankets over beanbag chairs and pillows to make them look like the gumdrop mountains and the kids had to climb over them! :)

Here, I hung streamers to hopefully look like black licorice and the coat rack worked perfectly to make the licorice tree!

hung 2 brown curtaina that I had in my dining room, with pressure rods over the doorway for Grandma Nut's peanut brittle house.

Inside the peanut brittle house I printed and cut out peanuts to hang from the ceiling and also taped some to the wall.

more cellophane covered ballon lollipops. didn't know how to get them to stand up, so I propped up a baby gate and covered it with a blanket.. then stuffed in the dowels. (note that the bigger 3 lolli's are attached to white wrapping paper rolls and the 6 smaller lolli's are on wooden dowels)

You may remember the ball shaped decorations from here: so I covered those with cellophane and whallah! Dave helped me with the string between the walls to hang them from.

Whew... hang in there only a couple more places to visit!

DO NOT EAT... these are play putty. I was excited to find something for the theme that wasn't candy!!

bubble wrap on the floor, so they can pop through the ice cream sea (the board game had lot of bubbles around Queen Frostine, so since a bubble machine probably would have been a little too messy for inside, I thought of this.

not much decoration here.. just some more brown curtains on the floor for the chocolate swamp and a bench for a bridge to crawl over it!

Here is home of King Kandy! Lots of yummies that the kids got to go around and load up their goodie bags! (sorry parents)

this would have worked a lot better with dummies instead of these suckers... but oh well.

bought a plain white half sheet cake from Fred Meyer and then decorated it with colored fondant and lots of goodies!

The gingerbread pieces are from the board game

this is the older board game... like the one I grew up with.

Happy birthday to my amazing 6 year old!

Punch out game

2011-10-27T11:35:00.000-07:00

Hey all! Birthday season for us is starting again, so time to get blogging! In this post, I wanted to show how I made a game for Nora's candyland party. You can play it that if you answer a trivia question right you get one punch or you can do what we did where everyone just gets one punch. :) I made this game for a Candyland party and the circles are intended to look like button candy. They kids had a lot of fun punching and discovering what prize they were going to get!

To make:
Supplies needed:
4 sheets of poster board
2 sheets of foam core posterboard
colored tissue paper
scissors
packing tape
18 small paper lunch bags
duct tape
18 paper bowls
18 prizes that easily fit in the paper bags and aren't too heavy

First I taped 2 foam core pieces together to make it longer
Also, tape 2 of the regular posterboard pieces together (the foam core may be longer than the posterboard, but that's ok)

Next pencil out 9 even circles on each piece of posterboard 3 X 3 X 3 (18 total) Mine are about 5 3/8" in diameter, but if you can make them closer to 5" then it will be a better fit when we tape on the bowls.
Cut out the circles.

Once you have the circles all cut out... lay the circles overtop of the foam core boards, with the bottom even and as close to centered side to side as you can. Then mark the center of each circle (on the heavier foam core board) with a small X.

Now working with the heavier board, start duct taping the paperbags to the board centering the bag over the X's you marked.

Once you have all the bags taped on, set aside. Back to the posterboard with the cut circles; cut out squares of colored tissue paper to cover the holes and tape them (with the clear packing tape) over the circles on the back side of the board. I used pink on top, next orange, then 2 rows of yellow, then green, and lastly blue.

Next, you need to cut of the bottoms of the bowls.

And tape them onto the top (opening) of the paper bags... I added these bowls when I realized I was having a hard time keeping the paper bags open... worked brilliantly.

Fill all the paper bags with the prizes.
Now comes the tricky part. Gently place the tissue paper-covered circles posterboard (taped side down) ontop of the prepared paperbags. Make sure the bottom is close to aligned, so it can stand upright when we're done.

Now, get down low on the ground and duct tape the tops of the bowls to the underside of the tissued circles aligning them together and careful not to let the duct tape show through. Best to start in the middle and work your way out to the edges.

I found that I should have put more tape to help them to stay in place better. The heavier prizes in mine did tend to slip down a bit.

Carefully tip it upright. And lastly, measure and cut strips from the last two pieces of posterboard to tape onto the sides to cover the messy inside taping stuff.

Whaalaaah! Enjoy punching!

We had a hoot! (Owl Themed baby shower)

2011-06-22T13:14:00.000-07:00

So, last weekend I hosted a baby shower for my bestie. She is going to have a boy in August! It was probably the most fun baby showers I have planned so far. There are a lot of cute ideas for owl themed stuff out there, but actually most were geared toward girls (AKA pink) and others were more "barn owl" style, which is a little too flea market like for what I was looking for. But I still did get a lot of great ideas from my online research.
So after the date was decided, I got the guest list from the momma-to-be and saw that it was 59 people... so, first thing on my to do list was to recruit help! So, thanks to 5 other wonderful ladies, I had enough help to make this an awesome shower for her. I did most of the decor and party favors while the other ladies took care of all the food, games, prizes and other random details. So, thanks again to Michelle, Rachel, Sarah, Ursula, and Christy for helping me!

Anyway... I suppose you'd like to see the pictures now, huh? Here goes:

Banner made from paper and buttons and some garden twine. (idea from here)

I found these awesome hanging decorations here. They were pretty easy to make. The large ones take 12 sheets of 12X12 paper... the small ones that I made are 5 1/2" diameter.

close up detail

Printed out these branches (actually 4 sheets, glued together) and covered my picture frame shelves with them. I am really happy with how they turned out and it was such an easy way to add to the decor. The green owl is also a printout. Thanks to a friend, I was able to borrow some owl things (top shelf) and found a couple crochet patterns online and made a couple more.)

Crocheted owl ... pattern found HERE

Another crocheted owl... HERE is the pattern

The tables

Owl printout (2 sheets glued together to be double sided) and I didn't glue the bottom, so that it could just sit in the branches.

Gorgeous owl vase borrowed from a friend

Borrowed Owl Pitcher

Borrowed stuffed owl

One of the games

Napkins

Michelle made the super cute food labels and the food was amazing! sooo yummy

Adorable owl cupcakes

These are the party favors. I sewed these little owls sorta using THIS idea (original pattern here), but redesigned the pattern a little to make them able to open ... and used a small piece of velcro to hold the beaks shut. Then I made some homemade caramel corn to fill them with (in little baggies) ... I just used up buttons from my collection, so each owl was one of a kind.

Lastly, here are some other links for ideas:

SUPER cute Owl purse

So there you go! Congrats Angie and can't wait to meet the new little guy!

Mr. Men Little Miss 2 year old party with Kindermusik

2011-05-09T13:16:00.000-07:00

My baby is 2! Cannot believe it! For her 2 year party, I did another Kindermusik party (I have done that with all my kids' 1st and 2nd birthdays). I found some Mr Men Little Miss on major clearance at birthdayexpress.com and I thought they were cute when I was a kid, so I went with that! We decided to have a joint birthday party with a friend (who happened to have the nickname Mr Man), so it worked out great. Not a whole lot to talk about, so let's just go to the pictures!

music time

check out the cool rainbow cake Tracy made

loves her new sleeping bag from nana and papa L

And the baby from a bigger sis

favors for the siblings

favors for the 2 year olds

HAPPY BIRTHDAY SWEET TRINA!!

4 year old Princess party

2011-05-09T12:24:00.000-07:00

A few weeks ago, my daughter turned 4 and after changing her mind quite a few times, she decided on a princess party. So the first thing I did was hire a "real" princess to come out to our house. I had been to another birthday party and saw her there and she was amazing with the kids and told them a story with puppets for probably 20-30 minutes long and the kids were so engaged ... boys and girls! She was great and had to much energy. So, I requested her to come. Then, the night before the party, the company called and said our princess threw her back out and wouldn't be able to come the following morning and they don't have any backups! Thankfully this all happened while I was out and my awesome husband, called another company and was lucky to find another princess with time to come out to our party! Whew! I was thankful I didn't need to come up with other activities to do for the party or dress as a princess myself! Eeek. (Turned out she was great also, so another bonus.) The party was so cute and my daughter had a lot of fun.
Here are some pictures from the party:

I made the princesses and other decorations on my cricut.. very time consuming, but love how they turned out!

last minute decision to add some princesses to the table!

was happy to find a non-disney princess at birthdayexpress.com

wands and swords to decorate while the princess did face-painting

Storytime!

cake from Fred Meyer

homemade jewel candy for favors

favors

HAPPY BIRTHDAY CAYLEY!!!

Around the World birthday party

2011-01-09T19:08:00.000-08:00

A couple nights ago, we celebrated Elise's 7th birthday with an Around-the-World birthday party. We had 12 girls here and we boarded Birthday Airlines and visited 7 different locations on 7 different continents. It was a fun party to plan and she and the other girls had a great time. Here are the details!

When each girl arrived, we welcomed them and I took their picture (to put it their passports later), then they went over to see Agent Elise at the US Customs and Immigration table where they were given a passport with their name inside. I got these cute little passports from Oriental Trading.

Then the girls were given these itineraries to color while we waited for the other guests to arrive:

So, we then all loaded the "airplane" (and all the kids grabbed onto a rope). We (my husband and I) introduced ourselves as the pilot and flight attendant and we described briefly that we will be visiting different countries and getting souvenirs from each place we visit.

our name tags

1st stop: North America - USA - Minnesota - Mall of America
We made a stop at the Mall of America in Minnesota (upstairs in our room) as our USA stop. There, the girls took turns "shopping" for their luggage to take on the trip. They also received a USA glitter tattoo and a red, white and blue sucker. Then we "stamped" their passports for the next stop.

forgot to take a picture before the party, but all the purses were lined up top.

the "luggage" they each picked one

2nd stop: South America - Peru
We flew back downstairs to Peru (the dining room) where all the kids were able to decorate maracas with wood markers. The maracas were the souvenir.

For each country, I printed out their flag, map and a few pictures from the country.

the inside of the passports... there was a country stamp and I printed an animal or icon on sticker paper to stick in there.

3rd stop: Africa - Kenya
Next up was Kenya (the living room). Here we played Safari bingo. I made bingo cards with a lot of different safari animals. There was no prize for the winner, but the girls had a fun time. I didn't have bingo markers, so I used cut up post it notes... worked ok, but they really stuck together, so it was a little difficult for the girls to use, but the good thing was that they stayed in place if they moved or bumped their cards.
The souvenir for Kenya were safari animal charms (2 per child) in a little package I made out of ziplock snack bags (because I forgot to buy tinsy jewelry type ziplock bags... these would have been much better.) They also got to keep their bingo cards (which they were surprisingly excited about). :)
Oh.. and we played African music in the background during the game.

4th stop: Europe - France
After "stamping their passports", we headed over to France in the family room. Here, thanks to Instant Netflix, we watched an episode of Madeline (was supposed to be the one about the Eiffel Tower, but there was a technical issue and they watched the one about the Louvre). Madeline is a cartoon about a girl from France. While they were watching the 20 minute show, it gave me time to set out the food and cook the pizza. After the show, they collected their Eiffel Tower charms (ordered from Etsy and shipped from China... he he) and their Euro chocolates (from World Market) and they took a quick train ride to Italy for some pizza, breadsticks, salad, fruit and juice boxes.

After lunch we headed to our 5th stop: Asia - China
China needed to be in the entryway (I was running out of rooms). In China, we played pin the tail on the dragon with a dragon I printed out and taped together to make a large dragon and I printed out extra tails. (it was hard to find a dragon that wasn't too scary looking!) I had also purchased supplies for making a ribbon dragon craft, but the kids were getting a little restless at this point, so I just sent that home to make with their mommies. It would have been a lot of glueing anyway. They also got these gorgeous wood fans and a fortune cookie for their souvenirs.

Next, off to the 6th place: Australia
Australia was in Elise's bedroom and here we played a fun game with the girls. We formed 2 teams and had a kangaroo hop race (with a globe between their knees). :) Good to get a little of that energy out. The souvenir was a pink or purple boomerang and an inflatable globe)

Last stop (bet you can guess): Antarctica
Antarctica was in the kitchen, but we needed tables, so it was more of a fly by Antarctica (too cold to stop there anyway, right?) The activity for here was melting their ice to find the prize inside. We gave each girl a cup of hot water to melt their ice cube and inside was a chain (so they could put their charms on it)

I also printed out pictures of the kids I took in the beginning onto sticker paper and they put them in their passports above their name.
The plan was to fly back to the US for cake, but we technically never did fly back. We just stayed where we were, sang Happy Birthday for ice cream cake. Then, opened presents and the girls had time to free play a little before their parents came to pick them up. It was a really fun party, I think! Happy birthday Elise!!

Train craft for preschool

2011-01-09T15:06:00.000-08:00

I haven't been posting as many of the home preschool crafts as I thought I would, but this one was so cute and the kids (boy/girl age 3) had so much fun with it, I just had to make time to post this one. Enjoy!

Here is a picture of the train completed:

Getting started
Here's what you need to make 2 trains:

*toilet paper rolls
*black marker
*yarn or fishing line
*paper punch
*cardboard
*colored construction paper
*plastic drinking straws (not in picture)
*glue (hot glue works best
*a few coins to weigh down the engine and caboose (optional)

I will post a picture of the original instructions on the left and tips/things I did on the right. below:

We made the train with an engine, caboose and 3 cars in the middle which worked great... so 5 rolls.


I cut the construction paper in strips 4-1/2" wide. One blue, one red and 3 yellow per train. I let the kids glue the papers onto the toilet paper rolls.


I would say it would be easier to cut the yarn at LEAST 4 inches long or longer, and cut off the excess. We cut ours about 4 inches and it would have been a little easier to tie had we cut them a little longer.


see my comment on number 3. :)

the length of the straw doesn't need to be so exact... just make sure it it shorter than the length of the toilet paper roll, so it doesn't show after it is glued inside. the side where you punched the holes and tied the string is the bottom side of the train and so you glue (I recommend hot glue) the straw to the inside TOP of the toilet paper roll so that it sits fairly straight through the roll.

When cutting the string that the train will run on... cut is REALLY long. We had our trains running on a line about 17 feet which seemed to work great.

For this part, I actually premade most of the "decorations" for the train. It would have been a little too hard for 3 year olds to do. (see "detail" picture below) I used construction paper for the wheels (conveniently cut out with my Cricut, but you can do it the old fashion way too!), I used some thin cardboard to make the tops for the engine and caboose (into a square with a top and cut 2 half circles to fit onto the tube) and covered them with construction paper and drew with markers the windows. and I just coiled up a strip of black construction paper for the smoke stack.

TIP: glue on the tops of the engine/caboose before the wheels... as you can see I didn't do that and the wheels got covered up.

We attached the line tightly and taut to 2 heavy dining chairs, so the kids could race them next to each other.

Hope this all makes sense! Your kids will love this one!

5-year old Hello Kitty party

2010-10-26T15:25:00.000-07:00

After a half year off, birthday season has come once again. So, to start things off, Nora decided she would like a Hello Kitty party this year. I love Hello Kitty, so it was a fun party to plan and relatively easy.
First off were the invitations:

I bought the Hello Kitty cartridge for my Cricut die cut machine to make these and headed to Ben Franklin to get the cute papers. For the inside, my super easy trick to adding the words is to print them out on Avery clear full sheet labels found at an office supply store... I love this stuff! Then you can just cut it to the shape you want and stick it on exactly were you want it.

For the decorations: I made some more Hello Kitty wall decor from my Cricut and put them all over the walls along with printing off some larger Hello Kitty faces and Daniel (the boy Hello Kitty) because there were boys coming to the party.

The printed Hello Kitties are a little trickier... since you can't find large images online with supercrisp edges, I usually find some that I like and "trace" them in Adobe Illustrator (which is a designer's program that can create images that look crisp and sharp no matter how big or small you stretch stretch them). (Note: I didn't make the poster)
I also had the girls go around the house on a Hello Kitty treasure hunt to find little things for decorations like stuffed dolls, books, etc. And then I bought the licensed plates/cups/table cover, etc.

For the games: I did 3 games, plus a pinata. As we were waiting for more guests to arrive, my wonderful helper and husband, Dave, had the kids in a circle and played "hot potato" using a ball of yarn as the "potato". The kids were having fun just tossing it around really fast that we never did end up using the music (we picked the DisneyMania rock version of "We are Siamese" from Lady and the Tramp). The second game was pin the bow on the Hello Kitty (bought this one). For the third game, while the kids were eating, I hid a bunch of mice around the room and then had them all get on their hands and knees like Kitties and hunt for the mice. :) They were pretty freaky looking mice too... I was thankful to find them in the Halloween section of the party store. The pinata was a pull-string one (and it actually worked this time!!) and we filled with candy (of course), stickers, and silly bands!

Food: This was a pretty easy one this time... only required about a half hour or so of prep time before the party.. it was awesome! Mini pizzas (English muffins with a little pizza sauce and cheese and baked until the cheese melts), Papa Murphy's pizza for the adults, strawberry (PINK!) gogurt, strawberries and apples cut up into a little fruit salad, caesar salad for the adults. Drinks: PINK raspberry lemonaide, Pink strawberry milk or water. This time we had all the kids sit down at the table and dished up in the kitchen and handed all the kids their plate (was a lot easier than having them all go through a line). I forgot to take a picture when the food was out, but here are the before pictures:

The cake was from Fred Meyer: white with white whipped frosting and german chocolate in the middle... it was SUPER yummy!

For the party favors, when the guests first game, they got either a flower clippie for their hair or bow ties for the boys (but the boys didn't really want to wear them, oh well). I made the flowers out of pink and yellow Sculpey (with 2 holes in the middle of the flower) and baked them, then used pipe cleaner to add them to silver barretts. As the guests were leaving, they got a bag with the rest of the favors: I found some 100 piece puzzles for a really good price at Michaels (Hello Kitty or Princesses for the girls and Toy Story, Cars, etc for the boys), glow bracelets, and for the girls, Hello Kitty lip gloss (Target) and for the boys, a couple sports $1 items.

And that's about it! Happy birthday Nora!!

Trina's 1st birthday party!

2010-04-25T12:01:00.000-07:00

So, another week, another birthday celebration! This time we celebrated my youngest's first birthday! She was super happy and I think she had a great time at her party!

This was a much simpler party that last week's because we had the entertainment coming in... my friend, Ms. Rebecca from The Musik Nest came to do a little musical party for the wee ones. We have had her at all my kids' 1st and 2nd birthday parties because she is so good with the kids and it is just great for a baby party.

We went with a ladybug theme. I found a party set that I loved from birthdayexpress.com to order the plates/napkins cups/t-shirt/balloon/etc from and then I traced the 3 different styles of ladybugs in Adobe Illustrator to be able to use to make more of my own decorations. So, I used those on the evite, to print out for table decorations, to tape to the walls and for making a banner. I also ordered a ladybug cake pan and decorated Trina's own personal cake to dig into... her first taste of sugar.

Here are some pictures from the party!

Setting up:

Baby finger foods:

Trina's ladybug cake:

The birthday girl just woke up from her nap and is ready to party!

Notice the super cute party themed shirt!:

Music time:

Trina with her little friends:

Cake time:

She likes the little ladybugs!

Oh yeah!:

So dainty:

My favorite:

Ladybug pillow from nana and papa:

Party favors for the babies:

Party favors for the sibblings:

Happy birthday Sweet Trina!!

Cayley's Max and Ruby party

2010-04-18T13:19:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was Cayley's 3-year old birthday party. Since she loves Max and Ruby, we wanted to make that the party theme. Thankfully I started planning this over a month ago because there are no licenced Max and Ruby party supplies. So, I had to get creative and come up with my own ideas. So ... I started with these websites that I found:
A blog from someone else who did a Max and Ruby party, the author (Rosemary Wells) website, and Nick, Jr.

So, I worked on printing out coloring activities for the tables, printing out most of the "bunny party" ideas from the authors website, bought a homemade Max and Ruby pinata from ebay (super cute), made lilypads and a grass poster for to decorate the bathtub for one of the games, printed out stickers, ordered mostly solid colored plates/cups, books and windup toys for party favors, etc...

So here was my party schedule:

11am – Kids arrive --- color on tables and eat lunch
11:30 – Ring toss game/Pin the tail on Max
11:45 – Watch Max and Ruby – cake episode (momma hides frogs)
12:00 – Game - Find Max's frogs and put them back into the pond
12:15 – Pinata
12:30 – Sing Happy Birthday and Cake

Now I will just let you follow along with the party pictures. Let me know if you want to learn more about something!

Setting up:

The spread:

The cakes:

Max's cake

Ruby's cake

The guests arrive:

Games - part 1 (ring toss and pin the tail on Max):

Watching a Max and Ruby episode:

Game - part 2 (find Max's frogs hidden in the living room and return to the pond):

Pinata:

Cake:

Party favors (minus the candy necklace... didn't get the pic quick enough):

Happy Birthday Cayley!!!

craft project for a birthday party game!

2010-03-31T15:04:00.000-07:00

So, today we started one project to decorate for a game at the upcoming Max and Ruby birthday party for Cayley. We are making lily pads to float in the bathtub (I will show you why after the party). They are so cute and super simple to make!

Here is what you'll need:
*Foam cups
*Foam plates
*Glue
*Scissors
*Green permanent marker
*Stapler
*Yellow pom poms

Cut the bottom off so it is about 1" to 1 1/2" tall

cut out triangles and flare the tips slightly

Cut a heart shape out of the foam plate and color it green with the permanent marker.

Staple the lily in the center to the green shape.

Glue on the yellow pom pom to cover the staple and....

Tada!!!

Things I said at lunch today

2010-03-09T15:05:00.000-08:00

I loved when one of my friends, Angie, blogged about things she said during that day, so I wanted to do something like that.

Here are the things I said during lunch today:

Don't put your fingers in your mouth
Don't close your milk
Fussy girl
You scared me (after Trina almost choked on something in her jar of babyfood)
Can you carry this to the table?
Did you wash your hands?
Mmm... good
Oh... I just crushed a cheerio
There's a what on the ground?
Settle down
What do you say...
Your Welcome
Just pull this tab and it opens it... see?
Don't smush your cheese
Stop taddling on your sister
Cayley, what are you doing on the floor, hun?
Thanks Nora
Can you sit on your bottom please
Cayley, don't eat your raisins off the floor
Bless you
Somebody needs a little nap
You didn't drink very much
I love you
I love your laugh
Want some more?
Come over here right now please
Are you causing strife with your sister?
Don't just say sorry, but say what you are sorry for.
Don't give Trina your garbage
I'm gonna go put her down for a nap.
Be right back
Go back and clean up your plate from the table please.

scrumptious chocolate mousse

2010-03-03T21:27:00.000-08:00

I made this mousse for community group tonight and it was really good. Very rich and still light and fluffy... yummy!! (I don't have cups this cute though!)

http://www.epicurious.com/recipes/food/views/Rich-Chocolate-Mousse-355472

Planning kids parties - Littlest Pet Shop

2010-02-27T16:46:00.000-08:00

They are still over 1 1/2 months away, but I am already starting to plan birthday parties for my soon to be one year old and soon to be three year old. I LOVE planning parties. I often spend way too much time planning them (that's why I am starting so early). I just love getting into the theme and finding cute games or cute crafts to do at the party. I think my last one... a Littlest pet shop party for Elise's 6 birthday was my favorite (at home) so far! I think it turned out so cute. Here is a little snippet from it:

We started out with a bit of lunch: for the kids I made either PB and J or cheese sandwiches cut out into animal shapes, the adults got subway sandwiches, then there was "my" infamous fruit salad, fishy crackers, animal crackers, carrots ... I think that was it.

Then, we moved on to the craft: Littlest pet shop masks. In the weeks before, I had spent (again way too much) time finding pictures of petshop characters online, printing them out, then cutting shapes of the individual colors, tracing and cutting them out of that foam paper stuff, putting all the pieces into ziplock bags along with a picture of what the petshop character should look like when it is done... then the kids glued the pieces onto the mask and we punched holes on the sides and put an elastic string to make it a mask. They turned out SUPER cute and I think the kids all liked them! They were all different and I think I made at least 15 or 16 of them.

After the craft, we did a pull-the-string pinata (which was a dud... so we ended up just ripping it open and dumping it out.)

And cake!

Lastly, we set up a little pet shop for Elise. She was the pet shop owner and each kid was given some play money and they all waited in line to buy a pet from the pet shop. (their party favor)... it was so cute. I drew a cage onto some clearish-white favor bags, so they could put their pets in their cages to take them home.

It was so cute and fun. I will blog soon about my plans for the next couple of parties! :)

On day 4!

2010-02-17T15:14:00.000-08:00

Love these workouts!! I did these before I was pregnant with Trina and now again. Has anyone ever tried any of her DVDs?

What NOT to say to someone who has 4 girls

2010-02-15T10:50:00.000-08:00

A little over one year ago we found out we were having our 4th girl. Although we had hoped to experience the adventures of raising a boy, we were grateful that God gave us another healthy, sweet little girl to add to our princess posse. Whether you are raising girls or boys, they both have their challenges, and they are all blessings from the Lord!

With that said, I am going to start by writing up my version of a list that Dave wrote about all the dumb comments people say to him or I when they hear we have 4 girls. Seriously, we hear these things pretty much every time one of us is out with all of them (or even just 3 of them). I am sure most people mean well, but it is hard to hear some of these over and over (especially number 10!) as Dave said, "a hearty congratulations is plenty"

Wow! Hope you have a lot of bathrooms in your house!
Does your husband have a shotgun?
Does your husband have a baseball bat ready?
You're gonna have fun when they are all teenagers! or
Are you going to move out when they all become teenagers?
Puberty will be an exciting time at your place! (I hear an even more negative version of this)
Wow.. you will have a lot of weddings to pay for!
You sure have your hands full! (not always in a positive sounding voice)
Better get some male dogs for your husband!
"Poor Dave" or "Your poor husband" (I am bothered by this one the most!)
Good time to purchase that Mary Kay mini-van (Dave heard this one)
Bet you have a lot of pink at your house. (this one isn't so bad... :) )

Here goes....

2010-02-14T15:08:00.000-08:00

Alrighty friends.... I decided to join the blogging world after years of resisting. I have really enjoyed reading all my friends blogs and I feel like I need to be more than a blog stalker and also become a blog contributor. I am surely NOT a writer, so don't judge... LOL. I just want to add snippets of my life and my kids and probably post craft ideas or yummy recipes (when I get a chance)... this is purely for fun! So... here goes ...