avery's 5th birthday

On September 14, Avery turned 5.
In the Magic Kingdom.
To celebrate, we treated her to breakfast with Cinderella and the Princesses in the Magic Kingdom.

Avery was so excited to be dining with the Princesses in the castle.

Charlie was excited about breakfast.

But was not so excited about waiting for it.

The Princesses came out one by one, and each one greeted us at our table - taking time to give Avery a hug, and pose for a picture or two.
Sometime during breakfast, the waiter brought Avery a special treat - her own lighted cupcake.

When Ariel saw her cupcake, she said, "Cupcakes for breakfast? Oh man... all I had this morning was seaweed!"

Charlie greeted every princess with the same look... which made me giggle. The Ladies make my brave little man a shy quiet guy.
Who knew?

Belle was one of our favorites. When Charlie asked her where the Beast was, she answered by saying, "The Beast went on a beastly run this morning... and he is taking a bath."

At the end of Breakfast, Avery made a special wish with her wishing star and magic wand.
Ariel helped her close her eyes to make her birthday wish...

And... Charlie got... a sword. A sword.
Giving Charlie a large object that is designed to be used as a weapon can only lead to certain disaster.
And multiple injuries requiring swift medical assistance.
They may need to reconsider that idea.
And my Charlie may be the reason for that.

It was such a fun experience for the family.
But my favorite Princess was definitely our sweet little 5 year old princess.

happy birthday to yooooou

March is Birthday Month for David and me. We have birthdays exactly 10 days and 3 years apart.

March is also the time of year that I like to rag on David for being SOOOO much older than me. 'Cause I'm a super sweet wifey.

This year, we celebrated Birthday Month surrounded by boxes in our new house. By the way - have I mentioned that we have a NEW house????? Have I???? Because we do. Oh we do.

Anyway - Partly to escape Box Land for a bit, and partly to do something different and fun, I took Avery and Charlie to a pottery painting studio to make David's birthday gift.

I totally loved watching my little guys at work...

My precocious and not-so-shockingly perfectionistic Avery took her time, chose her colors thoughtfully, and carefully painted each ring on her plate slowly and methodically.

That's my girl.

Charlie painted for approximately 2.5 seconds with several random colors using several random brushes at once, before deciding that pulling pottery pieces from the wall and playing in the dirty paint water was way more fun.

That's my boy.

I have to say, I think they turned out just perfect.

Another Birthday Month came and went and I spent every second with the people I love most in the world.

Life is pretty awesome.

Charlie's Second BIrthday Party

We celebrated Charlie's 2nd birthday in November.
I still can't believe that he's two.
My sweet, cuddly, silly, wild, totally crazy, busy little boy is...two.

Charlie's favorite place on Earth is the zoo.

His favorite toys are trains.

It seemed fitting to celebrate his second birthday doing things he loves, in the place he loves, with the people he loves.

So - we rented out a large room at the zoo. There wasn't a whole lot of decor to work with, and I was on strict orders by David NOT to go too crazy...for my sanity's sake. I complied with David's wishes and, I have to admit - the evening was really enjoyable.
Maybe David had the right idea afterall.

The table decor:

Guest Table decorations

A garland I made from scrapbook papers:

Here's a picture of the totally adorable cupcakes that I almost ruined by dropping them 10 seconds after picking them up from the baker. I almost had a heart attack. I did my best to mend them, but you can see that a couple of them were still kinda smooshed-ish.

Drink container decorated with zoo animal train cut-outs made with my cricut.

Another banner I made out of the pages of a vintage animal train book I bought on etsy.

Animal crackers for our friends:

Another picture of the cute, smooshed-ish, cupcakes:

Charlie checking out the chickens on our tour of the zoo:

Blowing out the candle:

Really enjoying the cute, smooshed-ish cupcakes:

Charlie wore pants I made out of zoo animal fabric I bought from a shop on esty.

Opening presents:

Such a fun time. Such a sweet boy.
I'm one lucky mommy.

And, one lucky friend. All the fantastic photos posted in this post were taken by my friend Sonya.
Thanks, Lady!

avery's pinkalicious party

Avery loves the book Pinkalicious.

We've read it approximately 853 times now - so seemed fitting to celebrate her 4th birthday with a Pinkalicious theme.

For me, maintaining the authenticity of the story was way more important than covering everything in pink.  

Keeping that in mind, the most important element of the party - aside from the pink cupcakes - was Avery's outfit.

To make the shirt, I took one of her old button-down blouses and removed the collar. Then I dyed it pink, sewed lace on the top and sleeves, and added a tiny pink bow. I found her skirt at Target and her wings at Walmart. Her crown and wand were from Oriental Trading Co. I bought some sweet little sparkle shoes to finish the look. 

(photo from http://www.amazon.com/)

I am beyond blessed to know a super-talented cupcake maker/wedding cake baker in town.

I sent her the picture of the cupcakes in the story, and this is what she came up with...

They tasted as good as they looked!
If you live in my town and want to use her, let me know - I'll be glad to pass on her name!

Since we're currently living with my Mother-in-Law while we serach for our new home, we decided to have Avery's party outdoors in her backyard. The weather was warm, but nice and sunny.

The beautiful thing about outdoor parties is that you can get away with doing way less decorating. A fact that is super important when you've managed to get in waaaay over your head and make dolls for your party guests.

I made a garland out of paper doileys for the cake table (super, super easy), and a fabric bunting from some awesome Tanya Whelan fabric I bought on etsy.

For the table decorations, I put cabbage roses in vases and placed little bottles filled with green jellybeans (the cure for Pinkatitis!)

Every guest at the party received a wand (from Oriental Trading - I embellished them with ribbon) and their own crown (also from Oriental Trading).

The kiddos had pink lemonade, strawberries, and watermelon for their snack.

And then sat on a blanket while I read Pinkalicious.

After the story, we played Pin the Cherry on the Cupcake.

I looked everywhere for a cute pre-made Pin the Cherry on the Cupcake game, but had no luck.

SO - I decided to make the cupcake myself out of fabric...

I'm just going to go ahead and say that making that game may have been the thing that seriously pushed me over the edge.

Between that and the 13 dolls that I made, I'm pretty sure that I knocked off at least 3 years of my life expectancy.

Ahhh... lesson learned...

Next up: catching butterflies with butterfly nets...

until they got too frustrated and just used their hands!

Then cupcake time.

After cupcakes, Avery opened her presents.

Before leaving for home, the little girls selected their own Pinkalicious doll to take home with them.

I've gotta say - I was happy to see them leave...
Wow.

But this picture makes it totally worth it all...

All photos (with the exception of the cover of the Pinkalicious book) by my beautiful, talented friend Sonya Balentine. She just started her own photography business. Check her out. She's awesome. And wonderful. And awesome.