Whitney's Ladybug Birthday Party

My little ladybug turned 1!!!

When Tommy had his 1st birthday party I had a big party just because I finally had an excuse to throw a little kid party, but this time it meant so much more!  A first birthday party should be a big bash not only because your little one made so many changes, but because it is a victory for me for finishing that first year!  I love cute little babies, but that first year is so much work & lack of sleep that it is fun to have an official party to move onto the wild toddler stage! ...which she is not wasting any time getting to.  She tries to imitate any single words we say & does pretty good! Also, now that she has learned to run a little she loves chasing & being chased by Tommy.  Here is my beauty in her ladybug gear! 

 Hehe, she was so cute in this outfit & little wand! :)

Here is the invite I sent out:

Inside:

 Here is the treat table.  I guess I should have pulled out my shelving to de-clutter it a bit.

 I thought the banner turned out really cute, but it was way too much work since I don't have a cricut I cut out each shape & letter by hand!

 Here is her pictures from birth to 1 year.  Those circle streamers are so easy & festive.  You just punch a bunch of circles & sew them together with your sewing machine. It goes really fast.

 I can't ever get enough of tutus everywhere!

 Whitney is CRAZY about cake.  She grabbed up her cake & had it eaten in about 2 handfuls!!

 Happy birthday girl afterwards!

 I am not usually a cake fan, but this cake was HEAVEN!  I saw it on the front of a magazine 2 years ago & have saved it ever since! Yum, yum :)

 Here's a close up of treats on the treat table.  I had such a hard time trying to decide which pictures to post on here. Left: Twizzler bouquet, Center:honeydew w/ ladybug strawberries, Right: oreo & cream cheese cupcakes w/ cute little birthday labels. Unfortunately I didn't get a picture of my "antennas" (pretzel rods dipped in caramel & then chocolate w/ polka dots on it)

 Marsmallow pops & Oreo Pops.  The oreo truffle pops were to die for!

 We had hamburgers & hotdogs to go with the picnic theme then I had these sides ladybug crackers (tomato, olive, & chive cream cheese), ants on a log, bumblebee juice (lemonade), & ladybug juice (strawberry kiwi crystal light), ladybug fruit cabobs, and then PB&J sandwiches although all the kids were too excited to eat dinner so I'm glad I didn't make very many!

 Kiersten was a very good helper & helped make the ants on a log from start to finish. (Her older sister got bored after making one for herself!)

I only got a picture at the end of my family that was able to be there, but I wish I had taken one with everyone!  Everyone was fun & festive in their black & red. Below is my mom from Idaho, brother's family from St. Louis, & my cousin's family from here in Indiana (they are going so school here).

Here is a picture of most of the party kids in their ladybug antennas

Most projects I do I get bored & want it done with, but I had so much fun makin the kids treat bags!  They ended up so much cuter than planned!  The picture below the bags is all the goodies: pills that turn into bugs in water, antenna headbands I made, ladybug cookie, ladybug suction jumping toys, ladybug bubbles, ladybug lipgloss rings, & red candy.

Also we played a little "pin the dot on the ladybug".  My neices & Tommy was so excited to play this before the party, but it got cut short by some major throw up!!

Here is Whitney's birthday present from us.  She really loved it.  It didn't seem like she was as good on her feet as Tommy was at 1 until I saw her jumping around in this thing.

Here's Whitney playing in the bounce house we gave Tommy last year for his first birthday present.  She loved having all the 2 year old boys to run around after.

I love watching kids play with their party balloons!  She dragged these around the house for a week before I got rid of them!

One last picture of my SUPER HAPPY PARTY GIRL!!!

Friday the 13th

Happy Friday the 13th! (2 weeks ago!)  I went to a fancy Friday the 13th dinner party a couple of years ago & since we were going to be with Vic's sister this year I couldn't wait to recreate it!  Of course it wasn't so fancy & didn't have a band, but it was still fun :)

We laughed in superstitious' face by breaking all the rules.  Black is the color of death here and white is the Chinese color of death so I did everything in black & white w/ touches of red for gore!  That little white lantern had a light in it so it glowed without the flash on it.  We entered the room on the "13th" floor. (We were supposed to walk under a ladder too, but my sister-in-law was panicking a little with the open umbrellas so I didn't add that touch!)  Then a broken mirror and "spilled salt" around the centerpiece. 

I had that umbrella hanging from the light & another by the entrance.

Friday the 13th (by Christian belief/tales) is unlucky is because Judas was the 13th guest at the Last Supper  & he betrayed Christ (making #13 unlucky). Friday is unlucky as this was the day Christ was crucified.  Add them together for one unlucky day!!

                                     

That little piece of rolled up paper on every person's plate had a superstition on it.  Here are the tidbits:

*Step on a crack, you’ll break your mother’s back

 (a crack is the entrance to the grave)

*Break a mirror and you’ll have 7 years bad luck!

Why 7 years?.. You just broke the soul of whoever’s reflection was in the mirror and it takes 7 years for the body to fully rejuvenate.  Don’t want to wait 7 years?  Make sure the mirror can’t see any reflection by grinding it up & burying it in the moonlight!

*Walk under a ladder & you’ll have bad luck

(a triangle represents life & when you walk through a triangle you are awakening the spirits that live in it… even the evil ones that won’t be happy with being disturbed)

*Spill some salt, you’ll have bad luck

toss it over your left shoulder into evil’s eye lurking by

(Salt has always been considered a valuable substance capable of purifying and warding off evil spirits and evil spirits wait over the left shoulder)

*Release a sneeze & you’ll release your soul 

call out “bless you” to keep it safe! 

*Feel a shiver? 

Someone is walking over your future grave!

*An open umbrella in a house brings bad luck

The sun god will be very upset with you for offending it as you only need an umbrella to protect you from true sunlight

*If a black cat crosses your path you’ll have bad luck!

Black cats were believed to be witches that had been burned or helpers to witches, either way being a very evil animal

There are still TWO more Friday the 13ths this year so have some fun with them! :)

Baby Girl on the Way!

I had a bow making party with a few of my closest friends to celebrate a baby girl on the way. I called it a "BLING OUT BABY" party & tried to have lots of bling around (besides all of the bows we made!) Here is a picture of our lunch table. It was fun to walk in the room & be blasted by pink. Can't wait to do that to a girl's room one day! Little closer view:

Yummy pink candies.. also did mini tissue poms. I was going to use them as napkin rings, but then I liked the flowers better.

Blinged out everything I could... vases, pots, placetags, & even the silverwear

I added some bling to her pacifiers. Hopefully it helps Tommy know it isn't his!

My gorgeous friends :) Shelly, Brittany, Wendy, Erin, me, Anna

And after lunch we made LOTS of bows! Check out all my new bows. I made them with baby in mind, but I'm sure I'll be wearing my fair share of them too!

My favorite were the most time consuming of course... check out the post below to see a tutorial on how to make those :)

Cookie Monster Birthday Party

Tommy Turned 1!!! ... so of course I had to make a big deal of his FIRST birthday! :)

(See Whitney's 1st birthday party HERE)

The theme was "Cookie Monster" so here is the invite I sent out:

Here is the background/treat table that I made. It was fun to create, but everything I did took a lot longer than I thought it would, haha! Those tissue poms were a beast at first, but fun & easy once I got it down. I thought they made it feel really festive.

The decorations going counterclockwise:

**The balloons chandelier in the middle of streamers was so super simple, but had a big effect... I'll definitely be doing that again!

**The cookie monster hat was very time consuming so I only made one for Tommy & then put the fuzzies on the other hats. I'm so glad I didn't take the time as the little babies didn't want to wear them anyway!

**The silverwear wraps were fun to create. The tiny cookie on them is cookie crisp cereal

**The cups were made by googly eyes+ 1/2 a cookie glued on. They were so stinkin' cute & I thought it was funny cuz everyone at the party threw away their plates, napkins, etc., but no one threw away their cups... maybe they just thought they were too cute to throw away?!

** You'll really have to zoom to see the lollipops, but I made a really cute label for each of them.

** Then there is the birthday boy's chair

** Bubbles on the treat table were just to give to all the kids as they left since that is one of Tommy's favorite*The Food: We had a bunch of subs from subway, fruit & cheese platter, & chips for dinner to make that part easy, but then I had to make these adorable treats (left to right):

**Cookie Monster Ice cream cake. It had ice cream sandwiches around the outside, oreo crust, & layers of white & blue ice cream that were cookie dough & mint.

**I got my inspiration for the party from the cupcake with the cookie coming out of the mouth. I thought it would be so fun, but I think he looked kind of gross, haha! I much preferred the simpler ones, plus they were way easier to make!

I wanted to give something to all of the adults as a favor so each family got a baby jar full of candy. The twist of course is that it had facts about Tommy on the label :)You'll probably have to click on the picture to read all the fun info :)

CAKE TIME!

Okay, well maybe not. Tommy hated everyone singing to him & started crying! I really thought it would be fun to do a cookie monster party because they whole point of a 1st birthday is to have the ceremonial 1st cake eating & I thought it would be so much fun to have blue & brown all over his cute little face. WELL, he licked the frosting & was done with it! We finally game him some blue jello and that mixed with the frosting made a little bit of a mess. Here he is after about 5-10 minutes.

GAME TIME: I had everyone watch a 5 minute slide show of Tommy's 1st year in order and then had them play this game. They had to put all of Tommy's cute little smiles in order from month 0-12. Most did pretty awful, including Vic, but Jimmy, a friend's husband only mixed 2 up! Then Katie, my sister did 2nd best, followed by his babysitter.

PRESENT TIME! I thought I was so clever making a simple blue bag/wrapping paper into a cookie monster face!

He really just wanted to jump all over the boxes, but I didn't want to bore his crowd so I felt bad forcing him to open them & rush from one present to the next! It will be fun on Christmas to take our time a little more :)

It distressed him that all the little kids wanted to take away all of his new toys so I thought it was time to roll out our main gift to him... a bounce house! He LOVED it! Here Jayda is falling on him, but he just thought everything about this was hilarious & fun :)

Here he is with all of his presents (trying to run out of the picture!) We're missing his big cookie monster & bounce house, plus it's hard to see some books, but for the most part here they all are. He came out pretty good & really balanced between useful & fun stuff.
Here is all of the CUTE PARTY KIDS! It was pretty much impossible to get them all in the picture & looking so this is the closest I got!

A picture of most everyone before it was all a giant mess later!! It was hard to decide who to invite cuz I didn't want it to be so big I didn't have time to play with Tommy at his own party nor did I want big kids running him over, but I thought it turned out perfect :) :) :)

4th of July

Here's a little snap shot of our 4th of July. Of course I had to make fun treats & decorations! I just think it makes the party that much more fun. Last year we did a bouncy house party, but I think this one topped that. We had water relay games, water gladiator games, & pool fun plus lots of good food. Then to end the night we had some HUGE fireworks. The kids went nuts & my biggest compliment was when I overheard: my niece's fiance saying that my spread should be on the front cover of Homemakers magazine & the kids saying in excitement that we have the coolest, funnest house ever :)

I thought it would be fun to make fruit arrangements, but I didn't think they would turn out this cute & fun. They were so easy, but gorgeous & festive.

This picture is up above too,but it's so cute I had to make it bigger. Tommy & his cousin sporting their 4th of July outfits. This is Tommy's second outfit as I forgot I bought a different one! We lit off a couple of sparklers the night before & Tommy loved it, but when we did it on the 4th he was absolutely terrified of them so we had to take him in. Hopefully he learns his mama's love of fireworks.

Here is the last half of the water relay. I knew it'd be fun, but the kids just had a hayday with it :)