William's Two and a Saint Patrick's Day To Do!

With almost a week until William's birthday, I still hadn't made any plans for his party. Very unlike me.  My wheels are normally spinning months in advance, but this whole house up for sale thing had consumed me.  A quick decision and an email invite later, and I was in business planning his little party.

In an effort to keep things simple I reused last year's Saint Patrick's Day theme and why not!?!

I think William had a great time and loved having a few buddies over to celebrate with him.

I love having parties for the kids at home, but there is a lot work that goes into it.  I'm usually stressing and regretting the day of but not yesterday.  Besides reusing the decorations, I kept the menu simple and didn't have the stress of cleaning the house because it already was!  This may have been our last party at this house so maybe that even added to excitement of wanting to host.  Thanks to all who came and celebrated!

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Even before I picked up the clearance train track, William has been loving all things trains...or "choo choo" as he says.  So, I decided to add one little touch in honor of his choo choo obsession.  I combined the two themes and I'll share that tomorrow!

XOXO

Aubrey

Happy Fourth Birthday

Four years.  Four years of the best gift I have ever received.  Becoming a mama.

You challenge me, test and teach me patience, make me laugh, sing sweet songs and love me like crazy.  I love you so much and while watching you grow can be hard I know the best is yet to come.

Happy Birthday Princess!

XOXO

Aubrey

Happy Birthday Party!

I can't believe Lauren is going to be turning four on Tuesday.  We had a little party at Grandma and Grandpa's tonight and was a bit emotional most of the day as I thought about how quickly these last four years have gone by.

After Lauren's first birthday and each birthday that has followed I always declare that I won't do a party the next year and without a doubt I do.  Just two weeks ago we weren't going to do anything besides a little cake and ice cream, but this year she seemed so much more into it.  We decided on a little girl's club with her bff for mini manicures and a little celebration after.

Way back she asked for an Ariel cake and I followed through with a little help from Jocelyn's neighbor.  I borrowed her mold and pretty much copied what she did for her daughter.

(Don't mind Ariel's chewed hand...she went through a lot.  We almost lost her on the car ride over too)

There was a lot of effort that went into the cake but she was very appreciative this morning when she saw the finished product.  It made it worth it!

Grandma and Grandpa were so kind to let us have the party at their house.  I gave Robin a lot of the supplies but they added a few finishing touches as well.  Thank you again for hosting!!

To go along with the cake, we were lucky enough to have our very own Ariel surprise us too!  The princess loving girls were a little shy, but not this ladies man.

A big thanks to cousin Drew aka Prince Eric and Kenzie aka Ariel for being the hit of the party!

We had a great time celebrating and thanks to everyone who came!  After getting home Lauren tried on every piece of clothes, carefully studied her new princess shoes, and read her self to sleep with her new TAG system:)

We love you so much sweetheart!  Happy Birthday!

XOXO

Aubrey

Little Ballerina says Hello Kitty

Little Ballerina, I love you:)

There wasn't anything graceful about the class.  More like chaos.  Kids were crying for their mama's, staring off into space, and doing the opposite of what the teacher asked.

Lauren wasn't shy, but was most certainly distracted.  I watched her sizing up her classmates, specifically checking out their ballet shoes (which we didn't buy) and tutu's. 

There are 19 girls in this class, which in my opinion is way too many for this age group. 

You get what you pay for, but $30 for six weeks is a great price to determine whether or not she even likes dance.  

And then we celebrated Miss Emma's 4th birthday!

It was all Lauren talked about after gymnastics, we couldn't have gotten there fast enough.  "When are we going?"  "We need to leave now"

 Wills was quite the stud!  One dude to all those chicks...he'll be in heaven someday:)

I wish I had more pictures of the cute decorative touches for the Hello Kitty Theme.  Lauren absolutely loved her favor...a Hello Kitty shirt she proudly wore all day yesterday!

And my favorite part...these cupcakes:)  We were sent home with a few and I enjoyed the last one after lunch today!  Yum!

(Billy, you say I never compliment your photography skills...thanks for taking this cute pic...you can't even tell my nails are crazy chipped)

XOXO

Aubrey

Kiss Me I'm One!

Here a few party pics from William's birthday bash.  We kept it small and easy for a few reasons and think this will be the way to go until he can remember.  And we may also decide that the way to go will be outside our home.  Parties are work!

Anyone remember parties at Major Magic's?  Easy peasy, right?

Custom onesie c/o of Grandma Mary.  She did it for Lauren and after a last minute reminder, did for Wills!

You are the best, mom!

Just a few decorations...the "i'm irish" sign was from Home Goods, but I made the wreath and the birthday sign.  Lauren made the shamrock paper plate at school.

The birthday sign is actually really easy if you have some scrapbooking tools.  I print the letters here on different colored cardstock, and then glue on top of scrapbook paper in coordinating prints/colors.  Use a hole punch and thread ribbon.  You can see the one I did for Lauren's 3rd birthday too.

Also, if anyone out there local wants to borrow...they are yours!  I have a few others too.

My mom and brothers arrived a little early and we were able to snap a few pictures.  This is such a cute picture of Sean and William.

Godfathers with their godchildren!

Awww...I just want to eat him up!  And I do, everyday!

As I said on Friday, my cake pops were a fail.  Before that even happened I had gotten a last minute idea for party popcorn.  It was so good and I don't even like popcorn.  A crowd pleaser too, I think because I did single servings.  People love anything they can pick up and munch on.  Store bought cookies replaced the cake pops, oh well:(  Better luck next time.

And the entree was Reuben Bar.  

We had all kind of fixins' and the panini press heated up and ready to go!

As you can see he got his cake...and ate it too:)

(Ahh...couldn't resist)

Best part was he was willing to share...thank you Kroger for the $3.99 smash cake!

We couldn't have asked for a better day...gorgeous weather, exactly the same as last year.  Billy made a great video of William's first year and it was the perfect way to end the party.  And can I share?  I would if I could, but I'm not that tech saavy.

Yes, it was a lot of work.  It was worth it, but I'm glad it's over.  

Our little family.  Makes me smile.

XOXO

Aubrey

Tangled Party

I wanted to share all the details from Lauren's Tangled Party...

what we did and where I got my inspiration from.

The birthday sign was all me.  

I made a similar one last year and just used the same idea with purple and yellow.  

This picture was snapped in a matter of seconds right before the guests arrived.  Grandma Robin tried to make them both laugh and even though Lauren isn't looking...they are matching, under the tree and smiling!  I'll take it!

After getting inspired at Christopher's birthday, I began my internet search for the perfect Rapunzel cake.  Perfect and easy!  I modified the cake tutorial found here.

Everything I bought was from Kroger.  The cake was two 9" layers of a Betty Crocker box (raspberry jam held them together and added something fruity) and topped with one container of frosting and just a hint of green food coloring.

The tower is just plain donuts and a sugar ice cream cone that I frosted with the remaining frosting (mixing red and blue food coloring).  The key was Billy's state of the art stand.  The tutorial suggested a dowel but other people said it was falling over.  His stand was made of twine that had a base.  I  can email a picture to anyone interested.

I then had purple, yellow, and green icing with 4 different tips to create this masterpiece.  The assembly/frosting took 30 minutes.

(I'm even wearing "the magic flower")

We played two Tangled inspired games...  

Getting Tangled!

Not a big win with Lauren's guests:)

We then pinned the frying pan on Flynn Rider.  All three girls enjoyed this easy game.  I skipped the blindfold and just spun them around a few times.

I got the idea from this blog.  She had the right idea on taking the image to a copy center to be printed vs. drawing your own.  She also did a variation of the tower cake.  Her daughter's party looked like a great time!

Of course, everyone was a winner!

Each girl got to take home their own set of Rapunzel paints.  

Also borrowed from Pluckymomo...she was full of ideas!

(Yesterday we used our paints to make Flynn Rider more colorful)

Opened presents, ate pizza, 

and sang Happy Birthday!

It was the perfect little party with a few special touches!

As much as she loved the cake I made and getting new presents, it was having her friends over that she liked best!

XOXO

Aubrey