FOUR + a month :)

Last month my sweet girl turned four.
FOUR.
It just sounds so grown up. Every day she is doing more and more on her own. Before I know it she'll be off to school and I won't have her around here asking me a million questions a day :)
I am thankful that she still loves to cuddle with me.
Still wants me to tuck her in.
Still spontaneously tells me how much she loves me.

Oh, how I adore this girl.

To celebrate her special day I took her out on a lovely date. We went out for lunch and enjoyed a "fancy" drink and a "fancy" volcano dessert. SO fun. We had uninterrupted girl time where I was able to focus completely on her.
Love!
After our lunch we headed to the mall for her birthday surprise. Earlier that morning when she woke up and ran into our room excited for her birthday to begin we revealed that part of her gift was to go to the mall and get her ears PIERCED! Eeek! She was beyond excited (almost as much as her mama. I have looked forward to this day for so long. I remember going to get my ears pierced with my mom when I was little and I couldn't wait to share that moment with my daughter too!)

My little miss was SO brave. After picking out her favorite pair (pink- of course!) she sat proudly waiting to get them done. I was expecting a few tears, but she didn't shed any! She did so well and couldn't wait to show off her new earrings to all our friends and family.

For the next couple of weeks whenever someone would say hi to her instead of saying hi back she would say "I'm four and look!" smiling proudly as she'd pull her hair away to reveal her pretty studs ;)

This year for the girls birthday we decided not have a "friends" party. With a new baby in the house we went for super easy and low key. Abby invited her very best buddy (my cousin's little girl) over and we had a fun afternoon just hanging out. We painted jewelry boxes. Ate pizza. Made orange and grape floats. Enjoyed ice cream sundaes and snuggled up in our homemade theater with popcorn and the movie Tangled.

The cake by request was a barbie cake. Sadly, I can't claim that no barbies were harmed in the making of this cake. When I went to put one of her barbies in i discovered that the cake skirt wasn't tall enough (boo!) Poor Barbie's legs needed to be amputated. Ahh well, she took one for the team and is now officially the "cake barbie". I'm sure we'll use her again in future cakes :)
Here's the super easy tutorial I followed.

I love how the entire day was focused on her.
I love how special she felt.
I love my sweet little Abbybear.
Happy birthday big girl!
:)

Lego Party

Last weekend we celebrated the big SeVeN with a Lego party. The boys had a great time and I have to admit it was really easy to plan and very laid back.
Here's what we did, in case a Lego party may be in your future too :)

The Birthday Boy:
Cutest 7 year old I know!

The Decorations:
We went super low key with our decorations...

• Lego- what's a Lego party without a TON of Lego? We dumped a bunch in the middle of our dinning room table for decoration, but also for the games we had planned...
  

• Lego soap- we decided to add a few pieces of Lego to the liquid soap in our bathroom. A fun little surprise for our guests!

• simple paper plates and cups ;)

The Cake:

The birthday boy requested cupcakes, which made me very happy because they are so easy! We made them together, pipped on some homemade blue icing (which was a hit at the party because it dyed all the kids teeth blue) and added some StarWars cupcake toppers. Found free here!

The games:

• Lego Guess- we filled a small container with Lego and had the boys try to guess how many piece of Lego there were. The little guy who won was only 8 pieces off. Crazy!
  

• Lego Towers- we put the boys in teams of two and gave them 5 minutes to build the tallest tower they could. The were so excited to line them all up beside each other and see who won.
  
• Surprise Lego Build- before the party I made up a card for each of the boys. On each card was an idea like Car, Airplane, Castle, Tower, Spaceship, Rocket, House. We sat down at the table and each of the boys were given a card. Without telling anyone what it was, they had to make what was on their card. At the end, the other boys had to guess what they had made. This was a huge hit!
  

• Lego relay- We divided the boys into two teams. We set a huge box of Lego between them and gave them a minute to take turns throwing one piece of Lego at a time into their team's bucket placed a few feet ahead of them. It was so cute seeing them all celebrate if they made a goal :]
  

The Loot Bags:

We scored some fun Starwars action figures on clearance at Walmart and then added hockey cards, a glow stick and some candy. But the best part were these cute little personalized Lego Starwars Tags found free here!

I simply printed them off and then had them laminated. Perfect!

A fun afternoon that was pretty much stress free.

Now that's my kind of party :)
Happy Lego Party Planning!

Linked to: Show and Share Day, Favorite Things Friday, Weekend Wrap Up

Elmo Cupcakes

Last year, for Christmas, my two year old received a tickle me Elmo from her papa. Since then she has been slightly obsessed with Elmo. So when it came time to decide what to make for her birthday it was a no brainer. Plus, I just love how she says Elmo in her sweet little voice `el-o` :)

These cupcakes are super easy to make (although I do have to warn you they are fairly time consuming)

Want to see how I did it?
Alrighty.

First step: make the cupcakes. Usually I make chocolate but this time I decided to do rainbow. It was fun to see everyone`s reaction when they took a bite and realized that they looked like this inside:

To make the rainbow effect all I did was make 2 boxes of white cake (you can do the same with just 1, but I needed a lot for her party.)

Then I separated the batter into 6 bowls and added food coloring to each bowl making up a different color.
Next I just spooned a little of each color into each muffin cup (sorry I forgot to take a picture at this point) but here's how they look after coming out of the oven:

And that's it. A little extra effort and they turned out super fun!

Next I made the red icing.
Ok, here's where I warn you- it takes A LOT of red food coloring to get the icing this red (especially if you're using a lot of icing- which I was)
Wow. Seriously. A lot. I had to run out to the store and buy more food coloring because I ran out. I like to use the Wilton gel kind because I find the liquid kind will change the consistency of my icing too much.

Now, to get the furry look for Elmo I used a Wilton tip 233. (I bought a set of tips a couple years ago from walmart. They were fairly inexpensive and super helpful when decorating cakes, but you can buy the tips separately from walmart or micheals) It looks like this.Just pack your icing into a piping bag (or a ziplock bag works too) attach your tip and go crazy. Beware. Your hand will hurt after all that piping. Y-ouch! :)

And finally the fun part- decorating!
Here's what you'll need:
Mints and Chocolate chips (eyes)
Orange jellybeans (nose)
Oreo cookies (mouth)

(I did try these with marshmallows and brown smarties for the eyes, but I prefer the smaller look with the mints and chocolate chips)

Lets start with the mouth. Just separate an Oreo in half, wipe off the white filling and then cut each half in half and voila you've made Elmo's mouth. Each Oreo should give you 4 mouths. Although it was more like 1-2 for me because I kept cracking them. Grrrrr!

To make the eyes I just took a chocolate chip and cut off the tip (which is what takes the longest in this whole process)
Now, you'll need to attach the chocolate chips to the mints somehow. I was planning on making another batch of white icing and using that as the glue, but then I came up with a genius idea to use the white filling part of the Oreos. Yippee. It worked like a charm :)

Once you've made all the eyes and mouths you can start assembling.
Just remember if you ice all your cupcakes first and then start making the eyes and mouths your icing will harden too much and it'll make applying the face a pain in the behind. So make all your parts first and then ice those baby's and add their little faces as you go.

And that's it!

Super easy. Super fun.
Happy Elmo making....

.....and eating!
:D

Linked to:

Show and Tell, Look what I made, WFMW, Show and Share Day, Cupcake Tuesdays, Get Your Craft On Tuesday,

Movie Party!

This past weekend our little guy celebrated his 6th birthday party.

We decided on a movie party with a few of his friends.
What could be easier???
:)
For the cake, my birthday boy requested army.
Hmmm.... after much deliberation I decided on cupcakes.

I started by making some camo icing...

...then added a few sprinkles and an army dude.
Voila!
Quick, super easy, army cupcakes!

I love this next picture. After he blew out his candles I asked him to smile for me. But he was laughing so hard about his friends teasing him for having "two girlfriends" because he had left two candles lit he couldn't compose himself enough to look at the camera.

I can still hear his full-belly-gonna-pee-my-pants-if-I-don't-stop-laughing-now! laugh.

After we finished our dinner and cake it was time to get ready for the movie.
Here's our little concession stand...

See those cute old fashioned popcorn containers?
I found those at the dollar store!
So the kids just loaded them up with popcorn and treats for the movie.
AND when the movie was over they doubled as the goodie bags for the kids to take home.

And finally, here are just a couple pictures from their movie time. I made the mistake of giving them glowsticks about a 1/2 hour into the movie.....
ya, they took one look at them and yelled all at once:
SWORD FIGHT!!

Six year old boys.... I should have expected it :)

Happy Birthday my little man!
We had so much fun celebrating with you!