Tuesday, August 12, 2014

Spring Dance Recital!

L's Spring Dance Recital!  Held on a real stage with lights and curtains and wings...oh my!  
She performed in two group dance routine to "Burnin' Love" by Elvis and "Let it Go" from Frozen.  She also performed in a tumbling routine to the instrumental version of "Do You Wanna Build a Snowman?" from Frozen.  

Little lady all decked out and ready to go!




                                  ^ right here, front row with black pants
                             ^ she's right here, back row

Watch
Burning Love" here:
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bh7B3yVxFJc&feature=youtu.be




Sunday, August 10, 2014

Thomas the Train birthday

Silas loves trains, cars, planes, anything that goes, so we went with a Thomas theme to celebrate him turning the big 2!!!

For Silas' birthday I made him chocolate pudding/marshmallow creme/graham cracker and oreo parfaits.  I got the plastic champagne cups from Dollar Tree, then filled the bottom with graham cracker crumbs, then a layer of red sprinkles, then alternated a few more layers of graham cracker crumbs/spinkles until we reached the wide portion.  Then I put in a layer of marshmallow creme then chocolate pudding then sprinkled crumbled up Oreos on the top.  He loved them.  To the bottom I taped a different Thomas card we had from a deck of cards.  

He had a party with our play date group friends at a splash park, he loved it!













Monday, August 4, 2014

Princess Beach Party!

My daughter was, (gulp where does the time go?), turning 5 and for her birthday she wanted a beach party and the theme...Princess!  Mommy was SO excited, she loves having a theme for gatherings, and with this one the opportunities are endless!  

Now we are landlocked so the closest we can get to a beach is a reservoir.  Thankfully we have a state parks pass and a favorite local state park beach we like to attend so we decided to throw the party there.  SO glad she ultimately chose a beach party, this was really nice:  no rental fee for the venue, no limits on guests, no height restrictions, etc.  We just had to buy a canopy and some fold up tables, which we were wanting to get anyway so it was a good excuse to finally bite the bullet.  

Food:  I like to pair foods with the theme, so here's what we served:


Tiana's Savoury Cheese Puffs!  Lady L loves these so they have be served at her party!

Merida's Bow and Arrows: This was a selection of pretzels, the typical loopy kind and sticks
and the containers were from Dollar Tree.  We used stickers to decorate the notecards, for the characters (like Merida) where I didn't have her on a store bought sheet, we utilized the free stickers Disney sends to get you to join their movie club.  

Snow White's Fruit Snacks:  My girl loves fruit snacks and they had these princess ones at Target so I decided to display them
in this Princess dresser which we swiped from her dollhouse.  

Belle's Bon Bon Cookies!  Found the recipe for these from a book called Fairies Cookbook by Barbara Beery, the author called them Magic Bonbon Cookies.  I altered the name to be Belle's because the word "bonbon" is french and so is Belle!  They were delicious and a big hit at the party.

Princess Popcorn: I got this idea from Katie Covar's Pinterest page.  The Wilton spray was easy and the color was so vibrant and I loved that it didn't change the taste or texture of the popcorn.  

Got the idea for Little Mermaid's Singing Shells also from the Fairies Cookbook but
I was able to find the Madeleine shells at Costco and then just dipped them in melting chocolates and sprinkles.
These were also a hit, the ones with the pearl sprinkles were the best (imho)  

Bibbity "Kabob"itty Boo:  I felt pretty clever coming up with that name, I must say!
These were so fun to make, my husband and I had fun doing different patterns with the fruit and it
gave us an excuse to get that melon baller we always dreamed about.  ha ha!


We also brought take out pizza from Little Caesars and had mini water bottles with a collection of those mini lemonade and fruit punch packets to turn water into juice.  

Now onto decorations!

For our long car trip last year I had purchased my lady L a magnetic princess dress up set and when she decided to have this princess themed party I swept through our place looking for anything princess related to use at the party and came across these.  So we just set them up, little lady picked the outfits each princess would wear and they were an easy (and thankfully small) table decoration.  You can see Belle next to the dresser and Rapunzel on the right behind the Bibbity "Kabob"itty Boos. 
 
Last year I found these "decorate your own" plastic cups (pictured above) at Shmalshmart and we used them for her Strawberry Shortcake party.  This year I just cut new paper and let the birthday girl go to town with princess stickers and princess stamps.  

We rounded up all her Princess dolls and wrapped Dad's fishing wire each one's waist and hung them under the canopy.  Easy decoration and the kids all had fun going around and seeing the dolls.  We tied Elsa and Anna back to back since they're sisters and tied Belle and the Beast face to face so they were hugging.  All the dolls except one were Disney characters, she put a crown on one of her Barbies and called her "Princess Berry."   She made a point to introduce "Princess Berry" to some of her guests, that was pretty cute and she was pretty proud she had invented a princess.

Activities:

The beautiful thing about having a party at the beach is that the activities are already built in!  Guests brought their floats and we brought extra shovels and buckets for the kids to play with (we labeled all our items with permanent marker in case there were any disputes or munchkin thieves not part of the party)

Cinderella's Shoe Find:  We did, though, do one organized activity I found on the blog www.amomwithalessonplan.com about a Princess party and it was a Cinderella Shoe Find.  Ahead of time my husband buried one of L's dress up Cinderella shoes in the sand and about an hour into the party we announced that Cinderella had gone for a morning walk at the beach and lost her shoe and needed us to find it!  Birthday girl found it right away and then the kids wanted to play again so we had them shut their eyes and Daddy ran to different sections to bury it.  


Music:  I made a music playlist containing songs from the "Now That's What I Call Disney" CD, Disney Princess Party, Frozen soundtrack, Princess and the Frog's Bayou Boogie, some favorite songs from Demi Lovato CDs, and then some KidzBop Party Hit selections that she wanted too.  She approved every song on the CD and felt very proud of her party mix.  Here are the kids dancing to "Let it Go" from Frozen:




Toads:  What?  No we didn't bring toads, they were uninvited, but welcome guests.  They just naturally live at this beach and happened to want to join the beach party, so the kids had giggly fun scampering about to pick them up and play with them, much to some of the mom's shagrin, lol.  

The birthday girl enjoying her new-found toad!









Swimming!  The kids all seemed to love the water and were having fun, so it was a great party!  Here are some of the little swimmers and sand crabs at play:

Party guest needing help to blow up his Prince Crown
Lil bro getting his pizza chow on








 Birthday girl with her dance buddy!  



Yay!  Play group buddy P and his mama arrived!



Party guest diggin' in the sand

Lil bro practicing his aim at a party guest

Grandma keeping lil bro busy

 Mommy with L's lil bro S

 Party guests from L's dance class

Party guest's from L's dance class


Mommy's friend Kendra, had to get a bestie shot!