A Busy, Blustery Fall

Hey All, lots of things going on around here!

We just recently celebrated our little guys Birthday. We also just went through a few major windstorms and I’m now just getting back into fall decorating! I have a ton of stuff going through my head and fingers crafting away and just need to get through several hundred pictures and get busy sharing!! LOL

I spent one week doing most of the prep work for the little guys 3^rd Birthday. It was so much fun, but it kind of snuck up on me or maybe I underestimated the time it would take me to do everything I wanted to do… nah that would never happen. Anywho, with hubby’s help we got done what needed to be done and had a “Choo-Choo” time of a party. That’s where the several hundreds of photos come in. I have so many pictures of everything that I need to edit, but it will be so worth the wait I promise!

A Winter "One"-Derland Birthday Party!

Baby Girl turned one this month and it is so hard to get my head wrapped around it! Crazy to think of all the things she is doing now, it really does go by way to fast! Ever since I was pregnant with baby girl, I knew that since she was my winter baby that I wanted to do a Winter "One"-derland theme party. So that is what we did!

Snowglobe Shaker invite. 

The Inside. Stamped with all in the party info and ribbon and snowflake sequin added. 

I do love the way the invitations turned out, I just wish they would have went a little smoother in the production and the supplies. (sorry for the picture quality, I took them with my phone)

I love how the Birthday banner and the Highchair banner turned out! Once I we ( hubby helped on this too) found the papers I was happy because the colors were exactly what I wanted.

And I just love balloons at a party, especially for a toddlers birthday party because they love balloons! Besides getting balloons in clusters I like to get several of them loose so the kids can play with them AND they make great favors for the little ones to take home! The best part about these balloons is, they were last minute (because I wasn't able to get out with the kids to order them) so hubby was in charge of ordering them for me. He did GREAT! They all matched perfect and I loved the silver ones with snowflakes! Thanks Babe!

Yes, I know I need some candles. 

I also made a snowglobe photo banner displaying baby girl from newborn through twelve months! My how she has grown, pigtails and all!!! 

We had some other miscellaneous decorations that made great table scatter and window decorations. Most of these decorations were found at Wal-Mart in their after Christmas Clearance racks. I love saving money! 

We took Jumbo Marshmallows added skewers, then dipped in white candy coating then sprinkled them with pink sugar. We displayed them in little galvanized buckets. They acted as table decor and also as favors. We put one Dipped Jumbo Marshmallow in a brown paper sack with a packet of instant hot cocoa. 

It's the best pic of the marshmallows I got

Snowman Gift tag hung from pretty garland. 

Large foam snowflakes found in the craft department at Wal-mart were perfect for table decorations.

The entryway with a silhoutte of baby girl and her crazy hair. Thanks to her Grammy for that! I had made up a subway art to display here as well, but apparently I didn't get it printed like I thought so I didn't have it here at the party, but will hang it in her room. 

This is the adorable onesie her Grammy made for her based off of the invite. Isn't it adorable! 

She wore the onesie and a matching tutu that I made. She LOVED the tutu! 100% girl there! 

So now for the food part of the party. We tried to keep this part simple for us and kid-friendly. We ended up picking up some pizzas from Costco (FYI: most kids prefer cheese pizza over any meat pizza!). We had a fruit and veggie plate, I had made up some Mexican Wedding cake cookies (they were our snowballs), and chips. Super simple but still appropriate. 

Yeah for cake and cupcakes!

I was super excited about how the cake and cupcakes turned out!

The cupcake toppers were made using paper straws that I purchased from Cakes and Kids Too Etsy Shop. I would totally recommend purchasing from her. She was able to combine my shipping and she did a custom order for me. And the best part, the color in the images were exactly what I was looking for so everything matched exactly how I wanted it to!

We made a total of 48 cupcakes, 24 cupcakes with toppers and then the remaining cupcakes went on this cute adorable cupcake stand that I found at Target! I love it and it went perfect for with our party!

I also designed the cake! Hubby helped by putting it back together again, because when it came out of the oven it it looked more like this...

Instead of this...

I made the cake banner with the same straws as the cupcake toppers, bakers twine, and my Cricut Expression 2. (The pennants were actually hand cut by me). The snowman was made of rice krispie treats rolled into balls then dipped in white chocolate candy coating.

Overall, it was a very fun party and we were so happy to be able to celebrate our baby girl's first year of life with some great friends. Thanks to everyone who helped celebrate!

*For the decorations and invitations I used my Cricut Expression 2 die-cutting machine, the "Alphabet" cartridge that comes with it, and "A Child's Year" (Which is one of my absolute favorite cartridges!), and the new Cricut Craft Room
Disclosure: All decorations are my own original ideas and the products I used are my own . I was not compensated in anyway for this party, believe me! Please, if you wish to share my ideas or duplicate, link back to my post and give me credit. I would love to come visit you. You may NOT share pics of my kiddo's. Thanks!

Tweet Pin It Follow my blog with Bloglovin

Wordless Wednesday: Baby Girl is One!

Happy 1st Birthday Baby Girl! Now Let's Eat Cake!

Baby Girl not quite sure what is going on, but knows it is going to be good!

So cute! 

She really liked that candle! She totally went to touch it and we had to stop her. 

Then we called on the experienced candle blower outer, you know because he has a couple of years under his belt now! :-)

This was pretty much it for her. She didn't really make that big of a mess.

 Except she did grab her brothers sippy cup and pushed it into the cake a few times. 

Other than that she only took a couple of bites and well that was that! 

Happy Wordless Wednesday! Be sure to stop back by tomorrow, I will be sharing the rest of her party decorations! 

**And don't forget to enter the giveaway for a beautiful earring and necklace set! Perfect for Valentine's Day!

Thanks for stopping by. More Wordless Wednesday posts can be found  here as well as those who have linked up below!

January In Review

Well, January has definitely been a non-creative, non-motivating month for me. I feel like I have literally been frozen in neutral! This morning was the first morning I woke up, in I don't know how long to above zero temperatures, It was a balmy four degrees!

I love, love the snow but cannot handle the continuous negative degree temperatures we've had. I know a lot of people think of Alaska and think it's just always cold and dark, but for Anchorage, to have that cold of temps for that long is unusual. And Lord willing, I will never experience living in the horrible negative fifty or negative eighty temps! I love Alaska, but I don't love anything that much! So, I'm excited to say, that if my iPhone weather app is right, I don't see any negative temperatures in the near future and for that I am very thankful!

So besides the cold weather, since the beginning of January I have been working non-stop on my daughters birthday party decorations. I love how they turned out, but felt like everything was working against me. First the invitations, I just couldn't get them to work or turn out the way that I wanted to until a week before the party. I still have to make family members theirs, I just had to get done the invites to the local friends so they would arrive in time! So frustrating. And then for everything, including the invites, I had a supply issue. I had the hardest time between our two Jo-ann stores and two Michaels stores finding the paper that I wanted and enough of it! Then it was impossible to find a Cricut mat for my machine! If I would have had more time I would have just ordered something online, but i didn't. I made what I had work and that was that! I finally got everything finished and decorated while the guests were arriving... thankfully they were my closest friends who know me the best and know I'm always late! :-)

The cake, food, and decorating would not have happened without my WONDERFUL hubby! He was awesome and did everything exactly how I wanted it! Thanks hubby, I Love You!

Besides the party I haven't done a whole let else. On the Facebook Fanpage we had a giveaway for  hitting 200 fans!! JSol Photography was the winner of the Love Banner! Congrats to her! I have another banner that is similar listed in my Etsy shop: 

Sweet Baby Girl Modeling the Banner for me. Isn't she adorable??

 

This "LOVE" banner is made with specialty paper. The background paper has a pearl finish and the swirl vines are flocked. It really is beautiful paper and I love "collecting" that type of paper! LOL but I think I found a good use for it here!

I'm hoping to have a couple of Valentine's Day tutorials up over the next couple of weeks, but probably won't have a lot of new listings in the shop. Keep checking though because you just never know :-) 

I'm also hosting a giveaway for a Necklace and Earring Set Sponsored by Pizzelwaddel's Etsy Shop. It's perfect for Valentine's Day, whether you keep the set for yourself or give it to that special someone! Giveaway ends Friday, Feb. 4th @Midnight EST. Be sure to enter, there are low-entries!

I'll be posting some pics of my daughters party soon. So be sure and stop back by! 

Have you been busy in the month of January or did you spend the time recovering from the holidays?

Tweet Pin It

S'more Much Fun Continued.

I wanted to share what we did for the invitations, party favors and decorations that we had at my son's Outdoor Alaskan Party. If you missed my previous post with all the S'more yummy goodness you can read that post here.

First I'll share where and why we chose this type of party for a 2-year old.

My son loves Moose! He has two stuffed moose that sleeps with him every night and we have to take at least one with us on long road trips. He gets excited any time he sees moose. Luckily we live in Alaska so he gets the opportunity to see Moose (From a distance of course :-) )

The other thing my son loves is his "house." He has a Little Tykes Log Cabin Playhouse and it is his house! It has several windows, a half door, a table with a couple of chairs, and a fake fireplace. It so far has been one of my best finds on Craigslist. I've only seen him openly invite his daddy, sister, and myself  to have a seat in his cabin. Unfortunately, he freaks out and pushes others out of his house even his poor sweet baby cousin. (We are still working on the share the house thing.)

So this was the invite I designed and made for the party. I loved how it turned out. And it looks just like his cabin!

His Banner was pretty simple this year, Kraft cardstock and green fleece letters. Simple but cute for this party. (Thanks to one of my dearest friends for helping me finish this!)

My husband helped me with the rustic signs in the yard. I LOVED how they all turned out!

The Moose Crossing sign with significant places and their distances from us. 

The other side of the sign with more significant places and their distances. Like I said I love how these turned out, and love how they are customized to my little guy. (btw, I'm a HUGE Boston RedSox fan (no, I don't want to talk about how the season ended.)

Mason Jars for rustic lighting. We used floating candles in water then tied them to the fence using jute. (Thanks to my father-in-law for hanging them.) Unfortunately, it was beyond windy that day and they wouldn't stay lit. I was a little sadden by that, but they were still cute. 

We handed out S'mores Pops as one of the favors. You can find instructions how to make these and others here.  We made ours with the jumbo Marshmallows then put them in a cello bag and tied them with jute. 

And I loved how these favor bags turned out! The idea came from these adorable halloween favors. I decided to make my own marshmallows so I could have the moose shapes. I'm so glad I did. The marshmallows were way easier than I thought they were going to be and I can't wait to make them again!

We put the favors in brown paper bags to hand out to the guests. If you didn't want to do that they would look great in a basket like this and guests could just grab as they left. 

And this is the adorable Birthday Shirt my little guy got to wear on his Birthday. His grammy made the shirt based off of the invite. The best part, she didn't even have the invite yet, she used an iPhone pic! She's just to good!

She was so sweet to make another for the little guy and even made baby sis one too. Aren't they cute???

And last but not least, this is a tote bag that my sister-in-law made for my little guy for his birthday. It has a couple of pockets inside perfect for holding a couple of sippy cups and there is plenty of room for snacks, books, etc. He loves it, of course it's because it has a moose on it. (Here's my shameless plug for my SIL) If you like this bag my SIL has them listed in her Etsy Shop. You can find the moose bag here 

Although I loved all the recipes, favors, and decorations, and gifts, the best part about the party was spending it with the people we love! 

Thanks for looking! Let me know what you think, I would love to hear from you!

Tweet