Party Details

It has only taken me a month, but here is the breakdown of the little projects we worked on for the girls' party. Most of them are pretty self-explanitory, but feel free to ask specifics if you have any questions! :)

1. Invites - the invitations were designed in Microsoft Word (about the only computer program I know how to use!) and printed on card stock. The Angelina ballerina at the top of the invite was an image found online and I sewed little scraps of tulle to the cardstock to look like a tutu. Matching pink envelopes found at Hobby Lobby.

2. Mouse ears - I covered two packs of headbands from the dollar store with thin, white ribbon and then made the ears from pink and white felt. Used leftover ribbon from ribbon wands (see #4) to make bows to hotglue between the ears.

Four yards of tulle was enough to make three tutus. Tulle goes on sale for 77 cents a yard at Hobby Lobby about every month or so.

4. Ribbon wands - All you need are some wooden sticks from the craft store and several rolls of satin ribbon from Wal-mart. Wrap one end of the ribbon around the stick and secure with a dot of hot glue.

5. Penant banner & tea set - For the banner, we cut the flags from scrap fabric and sewed them into the fold of bias tape. super fast and easy! I made two banners; one for the food table and one for the tea party table. To hang them over the tables, we used a 1.5" pvc pipe from Lowes ($1.28) and wrapped it with crepe paper. They are really long (8' I think?) so we only had to buy two and Will cut them down into four poles.

The mix-matched tea cups and plates were found at thrift stores. I had the most luck at LICS and the Restore, both in selection and price. Most cups and plates were around 25 - 50 cents a piece. The white mini tea pots were found on clearance at TJ Maxx.

6. Maypole - We used 4 rolls of crepe paper, 5 balloons, and an 8' steel pipe (my dad had) to make the maypole. Will dug a hole in the ground while I was wrapping the pole with crepe paper. Then we taped 12 long strands of crepe paper to the top of the pole and decorated the top with balloons. After Will buried about 2' of the pole, we taped the loose ends of the streamers to little wooden sticks and stuck them in the ground. It made a really pretty tent-like structure. Total cost was less than $5 because we already had the pole on hand.

7. Cupcake toppers - the little ballerinas toppers on the cupcakes were made with left over supplies from the party. All you need is a piece of scrapbooking paper, some crepe paper, toothpicks, and some ribbon.

And there you have it! A fairly easy and economical birthday party that was a lot of fun to pull together! :)

Summer So Far

It feels like summer just started, but June is almost already over! I have really been looking forward to summer this year. For the past four summers we have either had a newborn (or two!) in the house or have been moving or have been planning a wedding. It seems like the months of June - August would fly by before we even had a chance to enjoy summertime. This year, our only plans are to enjoy spending time with our friends and family just chilling out and having fun!

So far, we've had a...

beach trippin'

ice cream eating

book reading

pool swimming

library visiting

fort making

daddy celebrating

...kind of summer!

And here's hoping that with our relaxed schedule, I can find some extra time to squeeze in a little more blogging. I've missed being on here lately!

In a Year

What a difference a year makes! She has gone from baby to big girl in the blink of an eye.

From June 2010

...

...

...

...

To June 2011

And she is having a ball at the beach as a big girl this year!!

:)

Better Late Than Never

Ooops! I have been gone much longer than I had anticipated. Life has been busy busy busy with summer finally here! We are on vacation this week and for the first time I didn't bring a project to work on while we are here. Updating the blog will be my project in the evenings while the fam sits around watching movies (I don't sit well without something to keep my fingers busy).

So without further delay, the cupcake tutorial from the ones we made for the girls' party.

These are pretty simple and you could probably figure out how to make them yourself without a tutorial, but what fun would that be?

;)

These cuties can be made for pennies. In fact, you probably have all of the supplies you need in your house already. They are super easy to make and would be so fun to use for a bridal luncheon or shower!

Let's get started...

Here's what you'll need:

:: scrapbooking paper

:: toothpicks

:: crepe paper

:: ribbon

:: hot glue gun

Step One: Trace and cut out dress top from scrap booking paper. Start by drawing a heart, but square off the bottom instead of bringing it to a point.

Step 2: Cut a strip of crepe paper about 4 inches long. Gather and pinch together at the top until it looks like a skirt.

Step Three: Glue the skirt to the bottom of the dress top. Careful because the glue is HOT and the paper is thin!

Step Four: Embellish with a bow or flower and glue the toothpick to the back.

Wala!

A perfectly adorable twirly skirt cupcake topper! :)

Party for Two

Our two monkeys have birthdays that are 10 days apart. Though it was definitely not something that we planned, it turns out that it was one of the luckiest surprises we've ever had! ;) I know I'll be singing a different tune when they are 13 and 11 and wanting to have seperate sleepover parties two weekends in a row, but right now it means planning just one party: two birds, one stone my friends.

This year we went all out celebrating the extreme girliness that is our little family right now. Anna Cate was into helping me pull it all together and having her excited about the party made it my favorite one to plan so far!

To celebrate both girls, we combined Anna Cate and Caroline's current favorite things. Anna Cate is really into ballerinas and Caroline loves to play tea party so we had an Angelina Ballerina tea party.

When the girls arrived, they each got to pick out a tutu and mouse ears to wear. (These also served as part of their party favors).

There were crayons and coloring pages at each place setting for the little mice to color while waiting on all of the party guests to arrive.

These tiny paper purses were in the clearance section at Marshalls and were perfect for holding their crayons.

We had the party outside and the sun was bright! One of the birthday girls (ahem) was a little pouty because she said it was too hot and too bright outside in the sun. I wish I had thought about that ahead of time and picked up a pair of glasses for each little girl from the Target dollar section to wear for the party. (Thank you Baylis for saving the day with an extra pair of glasses!!)

After all of the guests arrived, they enjoyed their tea party. On the menu: fruit cups, cheese cubes, pb&j sandwhiches, goldfish and cupcakes.

We used bakers cups for the cheese cubes and fruit to make them easier to serve and more friendly for little hands to manage.

Instead of baking and decorating two cakes for the party, we served cupcakes. I found a picture of some cute cupcake toppers on etsy and copied the idea to make some to match our ballerina theme. (I took some pictures so I could post a tutorial soon!)

Singing Happy Birthday to Anna Cate.

There were four candles to blow out this year!

And singing Happy Birthday to Caroline.

Two candles for this little miss's cupcake!

The sun was bright and in our eyes. This was the best picture we have of Will and I with her. At least she is smiling, right?

After the tea party, we moved on to the ballerina portion of the party. We had some dancing activities for the girls planned out that Anna Cate was so excited about. However, what some may call a maypole, for us, was better known as the pole of mayhem and disaster.

I didn't do a very good job explaining how they were suppose to dance around the maypole and it turned into one big mess. Either all of the girls were lumped on one side of the pole or...

...they were upset and crying because their streamer had popped off of the stick they were holding. I'm telling you, it was total cHaoS and I think we have some if it on video. Can't wait to check that out. ;)

Moving on, the girls also got to dance with ribbon wands. If you've seen Angelina Ballerina, you know that she twirls around at the beginning of the show with a ribbon wand. Each of the girls got to pick one out and dance around and those were a little more user friendly than the maypole.

They were a big hit with all of the girls, both big and little.

the aftermath

We asked that guests not bring gifts this year. After I sent out the invites, I was nervous about how people would respond, but all went well! As a "gift," the little girls brought homemade cards or balloons for Caroline and Anna Cate. After the party guests left, we sat with the grandparents, aunts, and uncles to open family gifts.

Meltdowns and maypoles included, we had a wonderful day celebrating our little ballerinas!

:)

I hope to share some tutorials and diy projects soon. We were able to pull the entire party

off on a really tight budget, but there were a lot of diy lessons learned in the process!

stay tuned...

Happy to you Cate

Caroline's rendition of the birthday song goes a little something like this

Happy to you

Happy to you

Happy to you Cate

Happy to you

And she got to sing it all day Wednesday because Anna Cate had a birthday and turned 4!

What? How did four years go by so fast?!?

Following tradition, the birthday banner was hung and ready to greet her when she woke up on her special day.

We sang Happy Birthday and she got to blow out a candle on her special sprinkle pancakes for breakfast.

In true diva style, she stayed on the phone for almost an hour after breakfast taking calls from family and friends wishing her a special day.

Then she got to pick one special thing that she wanted to do for the day. Without hesitating she said, "go play in the little pink house."

Oh the thrills of a four-year old! What a simple birthday wish to grant. ;)

She and Caroline love this little pink playhouse that is in the botanical gardens at the zoo. Forget seeing the animals...we could just stay here the entire visit and be good to go.

We did manage to tear ourselves away from the little house to walk through the rest of the gardens and this is how we walked danced through the gardens the entire time we were there.

Monkey see, monkey do.

And just to keep it real, this was Caroline's reaction when I asked her to sit by Anna Cate to take a picture. I'm not sure if it was because it was Anna Cate's special day and she was getting all of the attention or if Caroline just really did not want her picture taken. Either way, this was all I got.

and again...

That evening we had a few visitors stop by and she got to open some presents.

Andie and Baylis came by and gave Anna Cate a ballerina doll that straps to your feet and dances with you. Caroline's tune changed a little once Anna Cate let her take a spin the new doll.

All in all, we had a wonderful day celebrating our now four-year old!

****

She keeps telling me that she doesn't want to be four,

that she liked being three and wants to always stay little,

but I think four may be our most fun year yet!

;)