Birthday Recap - #3

I took a break from Miss A's birthday recaps to share some BIG news.



And now we are back to regularly scheduled programming. Here is the last recap from all of Miss A's birthday festivities.

I designed the invitations and the mailing labels. The invitation ended up being 2 pages, so I attached both pieces with some red and white ribbon.

The favor bags each had a fun sticker on the outside and inside were farm animal stickers, bubbles, chalk and candy.

Here is the birthday girl sporting her birthday outfit. My mom made the pants... if you look carefully, you will notice that the 2 fabrics in her pants are also in the table runners that I made. Crafty. Her white T had rosettes along the neckline. It was perfect for running around the farm.

I found these frames in the Target Dollar Spot. The colors were perfect for her party, but they had some corny and cheesy sayings along the top. So, I covered them up with some fun ribbon. Problem solved.

Here are all of the fabrics that I used in the table runners. I made 2, 11 foot runners. It took forever.

And every good party should end with a thank you note. I found these wobbly eye farm animal note cards at Michael's.... It was the perfect touch to wrap up all of her birthday festivities.

Birthday Recap - Part 2

Here are some of the detail shots from Miss A's birthday party. I was so busy in the weeks leading up to her party. I designed her invitations, made the name banner, sewed the 2 table runners, designed and printed the labels for the sandwiches and water bottles, plus a zillion other things.

We had 2 main tables set up with food and beverages. Pigs in a blanket, PB&J, chips, pretzels, haystacks, cupcakes, water and juice.

I ordered the cupcakes from Target and added the plastic animals as toppers.

The day before her party, my dad and I took her to a local field that was full of bluebonnets. She wore a "Happy Birthday To Me" shirt and held up a bright pink #2. I framed those pictures and used them as decor on the main tables at the party.

The first time Miss A saw these water bottles she said "momma, thirsty tractor." Funny girl.

We had PB&J sandwiches and I printed floral labels to use on the bags.

I love how her name banner turned out.

Inside this crate were all of the party favors.

All of the tables had jars filled with flowers, toy farm animals, a cow puzzle and antibacterial hand gel.

Birthday Recap - Part 1

Whew. The shabby chic farm party has come and gone and I am wiped out. In fact, while the Mr. and Miss A are at church this am, I am home taking some "me" time..... Organizing pictures from the last couple of days and watching chick flicks on tv. Yesterday could not have gone any better. We had wonderful weather, Miss A loved playing with her friends and it was so much fun celebrating our little 2 year old! In the weeks leading up to this party, I was constantly on the lookout for pink, red and turquoise party supplies. These are pretty popular colors this time of year, so I had a pretty easy time finding all of the stuff that I needed. We held the party at a local farm. It was the best venue for a bunch of toddlers. They were able to feed animals, go on a tractor ride, ride a barrel train and basically just run all over the place. I don't know if I will ever host another kids party at our house again. :) Here are some "big picture" pictures..... tomorrow I will post some of the detail pictures.

More to come!

New Reading Material

Are you staying warm on this chilly February evening? Maybe you are one of the lucky ones that is relaxing on the beach in a nice tropical location, but here in Dallas we are in the middle of a huge ice storm. I am one of those crazy people that actually loves cold weather, but when your street is coated in inches of ice, you are basically stuck in the house all day. We get cabin fever pretty easily, so this afternoon we bundled up and went outside to play and run in the snow/ice for a little while.

(Brrr.... Momma, it is cold!)

Earlier in the day while Miss A was napping, I worked on some stuff for her upcoming birthday party and then lurked around the Internet for a while. And, just when I thought I already read all of the good design blogs and know about all of the newest magazines, I find some new stuff. And, now I am going to share that stuff with you.

High Gloss Magazine

There are about a million design magazines out there, but who says there can't be one more? High Gloss looks pretty awesome. I especially love that you can follow links directly from the digital magazine.

How About Orange

I think Sweet T Family tweeted about this today..... I love the color orange, so I had to check out the link and boy was I excited with what I found. Part decorating, part projects and ORANGE! Love it all.

One Charming Party

I have already made some Valentine's for Miss A to send her friends this year, but these printables are adorable. I might have to print these off myself and send them to my friends.

Bungalow 5

Their entire catalog makes me have visions of redecorating our entire house..... but, not is not going to happen anytime soon. So, in the meantime, I will just look and swoon.

Do you have any websites that you are loving these days? Give me some more reading material!

Little Black Dress

We have a Christmas party this weekend I am stumped on what to wear.

I have changed my mind about a million times, but now I think I have at least decided on a dress.

But, other than that nothing has been decided.

I have these shoes:

and was planning on wearing black tights with the dress.

Pearls and sparkly earrings would always be an option, but I think that seems pretty boring.

How would you jazz up this dress?

One Little Candle and a Cupcake...

We celebrated Miss A's 1st birthday over the weekend and we all had a wonderful time! I feel like I have been planning this party for months - so to see everything come together was a great feeling.

The day was perfect in every possible way -- great weather, a fun party to celebrate our little one and we were surrounded by our closest friends and family. What more could you ask for?

The inspiration for the party was based on 2 things - bright colors and a tablet of Martha Stewart scrapbook paper I had. The colors were fun and vibrant - perfect for a spring party. The invitations were designed by Rice Designs and I loved them! I emailed her pictures of the paper and she was able to incorporate that into the invitation. She did such a great job - it was playful and fun without being too 'babyish.' As you will see in the rest of the pictures, I was able to use the cupcake with the #1 candle in lots of other ways.

My mom/personal seamstress made this jumper and bib for Miss A. I love it! She wore the dress to church yesterday and I think she needs to wear it to all of her spring birthday parties. The coordinating bib was so Miss A would not be topless in her birthday cake video/pictures. I want her to be able to look at these pictures when she is 16 and not get annoyed with me.

Cupcakes galore! I made batch after batch of vanilla cupcakes with vanilla cream cheese icing. I loved how they turned out. I made little toppers for all of the cupcakes using the polka dot Martha Stewart paper and the cupcake with #1 candle from her invitation. Each cupcake was then topped with little round sprinkles. The small cake on the silver pedestal was her personal smash cake. And boy did she smash it!

For the beverages I made adult pink lemonade and regular lemonade. This picture was taken at the end of the party, but each pitcher had strawberry lemonade ice cubes. I made ice using lemonade with sliced strawberries in each cube. The adult lemonade was spiked with strawberry vodka. We also had bright colored swirly straws for the kids (or adults.)

We also had bottled water, a variety of juice boxes for the kids and birthday beer.

The rest of the food included: animal crackers, gold fish, string cheese, mini muffins, chicken salad, and cucumber yogurt dip. I wanted everything to be kid friendly, plus some good food for the adults -- plus, I did not want to mess with cutlery so everything had to be finger foods. I also did not want anything that required me to cook during the party. What fun is a party when you are constantly in the kitchen making sure the food is not burning?

For the decor, we had lots of birthday banners. The Happy Birthday A banner (against the navy wall) was made using the tablet of Martha Stewart paper and the cupcake from the invitation. I also made a banner with pictures of Miss A from the past year. It was fun to look at the monthly pictures and see how much she has changed. I think these pictures will be fun to keep in her baby book. I also made the bright, hanging pom poms. These were fun and easy to make.... they are actually still hanging up. They are so fun to look at, I hate to throw them away.

I blew up her invitation to 8*10 and had all of the party guests sign it. I think this will also be a fun addition to her baby book.

As much as I love fresh flowers, I also love bringing the outside inside. My parents have a great ornamental pear tree in their backyard, so I used some of those branches for arrangements.

All of the flower pots on the front porch had pink and white flowers in them.... and I threw in some bright orange marigolds in the backyard. I also put some of the cupcake toppers in the flower pots. We had bubbles and sidewalk chalk in the backyard for the kids to play with.

And that was Miss A's first birthday party!

Want to know what she got for her birthday? Or want to see her after eating that smash cake? Head over to Baby M for more pictures... ones that include people!