Ella was so excited about her fancy tea party that she was ready to get dressed when her feet hit the floor that morning. We had breakfast, finished prepping for the party and took a nice bubble bath. Ella was so anxious that she convinced her daddy to get her dressed while I got ready - even though I told her to wait. I laughed because apparently she told Josh "mommy said to get me ready"! Well, if you're that excited, we'll go with it. K got here a little early so we had a little photoshoot on the front porch. Isn't the picture above adorable? She's making a funny face in almost every picture. Something about telling her to "look fancy" tickled her funny bone. Most of the girls and their mommies dressed really fancy and it was so funny to see how they all looked. The little girls were ...
birthdays
Best Friends
This is Ryan. She was my very best friend growing up. I cannot remember a time in my childhood that she wasn't a part of. I'm pretty sure we were friends in utero. At the least, shortly thereafter. If it was Friday night, we were spending the night together. We might have alternated locations and occasionally invited another girl or two, but there was never a question that we would be together. We survived on the original Nintendo, eighties movies and baby dolls. We swam and jumped on the trampoline to the soundtrack of Dirty Dancing. We wore biker shorts underneath holy blue jeans. We harassed her older brother and rolled his hair with Caruso rollers {remember those?}. We almost always headed to Smith's for snacks which included some combination of chocolate chips, coconut, Clearly ...
Being Fancy is HARD work!
I didn't take a single picture today. Can you believe it? Fortunately, Kamin took lots! There is nothing better than having a photographer in the family. My sweet sister took the burden off of me today and not only manned the photobooth we set up, but took all of the party photos, too. That freed up my hands for fixing fancy hair, adjusting tiaras and passing out fancy cookies. K edited several of my favorites tonight so that I could share a sneak peek. We'll be looking at pictures for many days to come, so get ready to be inundated with FANCY! Aren't these photographs fabulous? I'm always so glad to have my sister help out with birthday parties -- she is THE best. ...
More Fancy Stuff
Since we were only inviting seven little girls to our fancy tea party, we could afford to be a little frivolous with our favors. I know they shouldn't be expected, but Ella always gets so excited when the birthday girl or boy gives her a little prize and I thought nothing could be better at a fancy tea party than these! I got the buckets at Hobby Lobby at the end of spring for about $1.50 each. They were royal blue, purple and orange. I spray painted them with matte ballet slipper pink, filled them with butterfly tissue paper and they sure look fancy! Inside are pink feather boas, a sparkly tiara and wand, a fancy pen with a plume, candy necklaces, a sparkly rhinestone ring, lipstick shaped candy and a little pink bottle of nail polish. Top it off with a custom tag reading "Thanks ...
Quality Posting Resumes
I know those last two posts were super quick, light on pictures and had no flavor whatsoever. They were pictures that needed to be shared and I didn't have anything spectacular to say about them! Thank goodness the pictures of Ella were cute enough to carry the post. Today I thought I'd begin sharing some details of the birthday bash for this coming weekend. I still have lots to do... baking, pb&j making, cleaning, decorating, dressing up; but I have made a little progress on some fronts. Saturday afternoon, Gran come over and helped me work for a few hours on birthday stuff. We fashioned a low-slung table for the girls out of a wooden ottoman and wooden circle and got busy decorating it. You'll see below how pretty the results were. Here are the pieces we started ...
Pumped Up
Yesterday we had a birthday party to attend. My oldest and dearest friend, Ryan, has a little boy just a month older than Ella. We celebrated at "the bouncy place" with cake, ice cream and sand pails full of goodies. We really needed a nap! ...
Nana-palooza!
Guess whose birthday we celebrated today? NANA! We took her out for yummy Mexican food and followed it up with ice cream at the DQ. It made a fun afternoon and we were all so full we needed to be rolled out to the car. Happy Birthday, Nana. We love you! Nana, please forgive me for posting a picture of you eating. I'm sorry. ...
She’s Gonna Be Three
When I received a birthday invitation this week from my Ryan for her son's birthday, I realized I was far behind. Grey is exactly a month older than Ella and I haven't even thought about the invitations. I have the party all worked out in my head, but the day is really starting to sneak up on me. This year we're having two parties - a family party with cake and ice cream and a tea party for a handful of her fanciest friends. These are the invitations I've designed for the tea party. At the very top of the invitation, I'm going to double-hole punch and tie bows with hot pink sheer organza. I'm having them printed on linen-finish paper, but I'm not sure about the envelopes. Suggestions? I'm still working on a second invitation design, thank you notes, return address stickers and party ...