A Day In My Life

Avery's birthday fell around the same time we were planning on blessing Max, and I decided it would be much easier for our family to come to one combined party. I debated on a theme - both girly and masculine - and finally decided on Princess and the Pea. As in, "our sweet pea." Justin didn't think all of the pink was very masculine, but oh well. I didn't do a whole lot of things that had to do with the theme, but I think it all went well together. Here's the invite: I made these delicious strawberry lime cupcakes (recipe from Your Cup of Cake , which is seriously my favorite cookbook ever!) and added a green lemonhead for the "pea". I made the centerpieces out of pink roses and a huge bag of frozen peas. It was so easy, and I thought it added just enough theme for a big munch/mingle kind of party. We normally bless our babies on Fast Sundays, which would have been perfect, because it fell exactly on Avery's birthday. But Justin ...

My baby boy turned FOUR! He requested a Dinosaur Party, and I was so excited to host a little party for his friends at our house. Here is the invite... When each child arrived, I adorned them with a dinosaur party hat, complete with spikes. (One little girl said she wanted a "girl hat" so I tied a little ribbon into a bow and glued it on the front of hers.) And after everyone arrived, we started lunch. I made up two signs... for two different types of dinosaurs. And my favorite part, was the swamp juice (just koolaid with dry ice). However, the dry ice totally cracked my dish! I'm not sure what I would put in the bottom to protect it next time, but it would be worth researching. If you're interested, here's a copy: Here is an alternate link to download the file: Dino Party Printables Then it was time for cake and ice cream. I this cake on pinterest, and I loved the trees, so I replicated them in green and added a few plastic dinosaurs to...

So.. I totally fell off the blogging bandwagon. I'm noticing a trend here... (haha. Story of my life.) Anyway, here's one of the little activities we did as part of our Halloween Advent... so fun!

This is one of my very favorite pumpkin recipes... so yummy! Ingredients: 1 box yellow cake mix 1 can (15 oz) pumpkin puree 1 can (12 oz) evaporated milk 3 large eggs 1 1/2 cups sugar 1 tsp. cinnamon 1/2 tsp. salt 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans (the original recipe called for 1/2 cup) 1 cup butter, melted Heat oven to 350 degrees F.  Grease bottom of 9 x 13″ pan.  Mix pumpkin, milk, eggs, sugar, cinnamon, and salt.  Pour mixture into greased pan.  Sprinkle dry cake mix over pumpkin mixture and top with pecans.  Drizzle melted butter over pecans.  Bake 50-55 minutes.

We had so much fun at Avery's first birthday bash on Saturday... and I had way  too much fun planning and prepping all of the details. I decided to do a school theme. You know, like A B C and 1 2 3. Invitation: It helped that my mom is a school teacher and happened to have vintage Dick and Jane books, as well as access to a bunch of other school supplies. I knew I wanted to incorporate the milestone pictures I've been taking of Avery all year. I put a few in frames, and the rest I displayed like this: It was really easy to use pliers to twist up a wire and stick it in the apples. Each of the other tables had a simple centerpiece... I already had the Ikea  frames from Harvey's 2nd birthday party , and I spray-painted a piece of cardboard with chalkboard paint for the insert, and wrote "A" or "1" with colored chalk. I tied the balloons to a mason jar filled with magnetic letters. I added a "schedule" to our big chalkboard (...