Ballerina Birthday Party

My little girl turned seven in December and, to celebrate, we had a ballerina birthday party at our house. She has been in ballet lessons since she was three (literally--she won't even take the summers off, that is how much she LOVES ballet and dancing!) and currently her career aspirations are wavering between fairy princess and ballerina. Oh, to have such sweet dreams!
I made her invitations using supplies I purchased at Michaels craft store. I was heavily influenced by the sweet tutu invitation I came across on A Little Loveliness, but I adapted it to fit my own needs. I printed my invitation details onto pink cardstock. Then I sketched a basic leotard shape and made a pattern that I then traced onto my pink cardstock and cut-out all of the invitations. I used a small hole punch (that happened to be a small heart hole punch) and threaded a length of pink tulle back-and-forth through the bottom of the invitation to be the skirt of the tutu. At the neckline of the leotard I used a string of stick on faux pearls from the scrapbooking section of the craft store.
I absolutely LOVE the ribbon canopy over the party table. The credit for this design goes to Glory of Glorious Treats. I came across a picture of a party she did for her daughter and knew I had to do the ribbon canopy for my daughter. It was AMAZING and my daughter and I both loved the effect!
Look how pretty all those ribbons are! My husband built the framework for me out of some inexpensive wood and he and my preschool son painted it white. He screwed little eyehooks into it so that we could hang it from the ceiling per Glory's instructions. Then, one night after the children went to bed, we hung it from the ceiling using 3M Command Hooks--the ones with the little silver hooks. I tied all the ribbons on after it was already up on the ceiling. It took a LOT of ribbons!
I put the girls' tutus on their chairs. I bought these from Halo Heaven for less than $2.00 each! (I had a coupon code, so it was even less than the price on the website.)
The runner on the table is wrapping paper from Target. On the center of the table I put out some sweet treats for the girls. In the milk glass container I piled up pink strawberry Whoppers and I used the curvy edges of the container to hold the candy dipped marshmallow pops. (They're just like the ones in this post from 2009.) There also are small containers of strawberry dipped Pocky sticks. The cupcakes are on inverted wine glasses from the Dollar Store. I bought those glasses last year for my daughter's Fancy Nancy birthday party. The ballerinas on the plates were cut with my Cricut.
In the family room I had craft stations set up--ballerina coloring pages on the coffee table and a second table with supplies for making ballerina clothes pin dolls. We also dressed up the American Girl dolls in ballet outfits for the occasion! And, as you can see, I made a lot of tissue paper pom poms to hang from the ceiling. I love the visual impact this gave the space! Much more impressive than the streamers I've done in the past. Plus the heavy dose of pink helped to take away from the Christmas decorations that I also had going on (this was December, after all!)
When the girls first arrived at the party, they socialized and colored ballet pages that I printed off the internet. Then they made these clothespin ballerinas. I had the supplies all organized for them in tin soup cans that I tied tulle around. The ballerina pictured here is a sample one that I made. It was really helpful to make a sample as it forced me to streamline the process and simplify things a bit.
Next we had a ballet lesson from one of the senior company ballet girls from our dance studio. So exciting! She really worked those girls--it was fun to watch them! At the end of the mini lesson she got out her pointe shoes and those little girls were in awe!
Next we did "pin the bow on the ballerina". Not exactly a traditional ballerina game, but it works for us as my little girl ALWAYS wears hairbows! I found this cute clipart image of a ballerina online and it was simple enough that I was able to freehand it onto some posterboard. I gave each girl a bow with her name on it and stuck a piece of tape on the back of it. After that we played "pass the parcel" before letting the girls make their own ice cream sundaes.
Then it was cupcake time! (And in the background of this picture you can almost see a party decoration that I forgot to get a good picture of...big ballerina cut-outs done on the Cricut that I hung in the windows on clear thread...they moved/danced every time the heat came on and whenever anyone walked by. It was very neat!)

Happy Birthday, Pumpkin Pie! I love you now and forever!

I'm linking to Whatever Goes Wednesday at Someday Crafts, Friday Favorites at Inspiring Creations, and Hookin' Up with House of Hepworths!

4th Birthday!

On Saturday, January 30th, my sweet baby boy turned four! FOUR! How is that even possible? He is my sweet angel BABY--not a big four year old. I'm still in shock!
For his birthday we went to the local bowling alley with a friend, per his request. The friend he requested happens to be Princess's best friend, so both my children were happy. My little guy just adores his sister's friends, that is for sure!
Handsome loved using the ball ramp and ended up with the top score of the three children--even though the girls are two years older than he is! He just loves bowling even though he's only been to the real bowling alley twice. Santa put a mini bowling set in his stocking and he loves that little gift so much!
We had so much fun celebrating his birthday and it was wonderful to have good friends join us!
Later that day we went out to lunch at Red Robin and my husband took this picture of me with my baby at 12:26pm--the moment of his birth four years ago. It was a very difficult c-section. During the end of my pregnancy I had nerve problems with my leg and my doctor suspects that is why the spinal didn't completely work and I felt every (and I do mean every) thing the doctors did on one side of my body. It was the strangest and most intense pain I've ever felt in my life, but I desperately wanted to see my little boy right after his birth, so I refused additional medication until after he was delivered. After seeing all 10lbs 2oz of him (he was smaller than my daughter!), I was quite relieved to go into la-la land though!
He was thrilled when it was cupcake time after dinner! I've made cupcakes for my babies every year for their birthdays--including their real Birth Days in the hospital!
My silly, silly boy!
Happy birthday to the sweetest, smartest, and most loved little boy in the entire world. I love you like mice love cheese. I love you like vines love trees. I love you like boots love stomping in puddles. I love you like...

A Very Fancy (Nancy!) Birthday Party

I love having a little girl and I love that my little girl loves frills fluff and all things fancy. For the past year or two she has been loving the Fancy Nancy books, so I thought that would be a perfect birthday theme for her sixth birthday. Luckily she agreed because I already was dreaming of boas, flowers, and tiaras!
I had so much fun decorating for this party! The only Fancy Nancy specific items I bought were cardstock placemats, some big stickers (for the goodie bags), and a few Fancy Nancy mylar balloons. For the rest of the decor I just went with over the top fancy with lots of pink and some touches of purple. For the record, Fancy Nancy's favorite color is fuchsia...that's a fancy way of saying purple. (Or at least that's what the book says--to me it isn't the exact same thing as purple...)
Most of these decorations came from Dollar Tree! I bought wine glasses (we don't drink wine, so we didn't own any) to elevate the cupcakes and to use as glasses for the milk and water I offered the children. They felt very fancy using those and did lots of glass clinking! I also bought the little plastic "glass" slippers (they're at the base of the wine glasses) from the wedding section at Dollar Tree and filled them with pink M&Ms. And, of course, the flowers are direct from the dollar store. I put the flowers in a vase I already had and then stuffed some white tulle into the vase to cover up the icky stems.

See those "things" on sticks? Those were a HUGE hit! They're marshmallows that I poked a stick into, dipped in pink candy melts, and then dipped into sprinkles. The ones covered in pink sparkly sugar with the biggest hit. One of the little girls skipped eating her cupcake in favor of eating a LOT of these marshmallows! Oh and the nice little glass cup they're sitting in? That's a candleholder from my big Pottery Barn metal wreath candleholder that I took down before our addition was built and I haven't put back up yet. The candleholders worked great for this--especially after I put some white tulle in the bottom of the container.

The pink boa on the chandelier is one that I snagged out of the dressup box--I also draped some white faux pearl necklaces on the boa.
To dress-up the chairs, I used white plastic tablecloths cut in half and tied some pink tulle around them and added another Dollar Tree flower to the knot of tulle. White sheets would have looked even better, but those weren't in my budget.
The goodie bags contained a small glittery wand, additional jewelry (they also received some when they arrived), as well as a princess lollipop that I made using candy melts. I also made sure the bags were big enough to hold tiaras since that was one of the favors the girls received when they arrived.
The centerpiece on this table is the original Fancy Nancy book--I just used a plate display stand that I bought at the dollar store to hold the book up.
While we waited for everyone to arrive, the children had the opportunity to color Fancy Nancy pictures and then to make beaded bracelets. Then I read them Fancy Nancy--this was a hit! Then it was time for the girls (and my little boy!) to get fancy! This table contained everything they needed to do that--tiars, rings, necklaces, and feather boas! I found amazing deals on these items at a website called Halo Heaven. The prices were fantastic!!

After the children got fancy, it was time for a dance party! We did freeze dance as well as just dancing. It got some wiggles out and the girls had fun!
After a quick picture (the invitation instructed they should dress fancy), it was time for parfaits! (That's fancy for ice cream sundae!) Unfortunately there are no pictures of this. Boo! We cleared off the fancy table and put out bowls of sprinkles, mini chocolate chips, and mini marshmallows. Each girl got a bowl with ice cream and then could put on the extras herself before having chocolate/caramel sauce and squirty cream put on by an adult. Then they headed for the table!
We sang Happy Birthday to Princess and she blew out her candles. Then the children gorged themselves on sugar (usually a semi-restricted commodity in our house) before we did presents.

It was a wonderful time and Princess was so happy with her special day!