One of our best ideas for these fancy parties was setting up an area where the guests could have their pictures made. I wanted to be sure we got pictures of everyone in their "fancy attire" and this guaranteed that nobody got left out. I wish I had taken a behind-the-scenes pictures so you could see how it all worked, but we were a little overwhelmed in the midst of the parties. We hung black fabric from the playroom wall and put it on the floor, too. K brought home lights from her studio and set them up. It was like being in a professional photo studio and the pictures prove it! These were our practice shots from Friday afternoon. K took some impromptu photos of Ella in her panties to test the lights. When we told Ella to make funny faces these are what we got. We were both laughing so ...
ella
Let’s Get Fancy… Again!
Sunday evening was our family party and WOW is all I can say. Have you ever had a party where every person you invited actually showed up? Well, on Sunday we pretty much did. There were very few people in our group of close family and friends who didn't come. Our house was filled to capacity and it became very hard to visit with everyone. Fortunately, everyone mingled all over the place and really enjoyed themselves despite the limited seating. THIS is our birthday cake. Can you say wow? A friend from high school made it and delivered it for us and did a fabulous job. We knew we wanted something fancy and sent her a picture of what we wanted. She pretty much made exactly what we asked for and everyone was amazed to look and taste it. Ella LOVED it, which made her mommy very happy. Not ...
Tea Party Time
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 ...
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. ...
Birthday Girl x3!
I cannot believe that today my princess turns three years old! Last night when I put her to bed I told her, "When you wake up in the morning, you'll be three years old!" She squealed and had the biggest grin on her face. I can't wait to share pictures of her reaction this morning. Today, she's spending the day with Gran and Aunt Lane. They're having homemade waffles for breakfast and then heading out to Cracker Barrell to lunch with Poppy and his brother, Richard. She is in for a long day because tonight we're having pizza {just like Fancy Nancy} and making cupcakes for her parties this weekend. We're gonna celebrate all day long! Since I don't have pictures yet to show you, I'll share the ones Heidi took yesterday instead. She carried pink and white iced cupcakes to share with her ...
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 ...