shower for sister

my sister jen is expecting a baby girl in about a month. my other sisters, my mom, and i decided to throw her a baby shower. we kept it simple but wanted everything to be very pink and girly. i am so excited that she is having a girl. i just love girly things.

we had the shower at my sister christina's house. this has been the place where we all seem to gather lately. we were on a tight budget so i was happy that we got to reuse a bunch of things that i already had. for decorations we tied the curtains with tissue paper flowers, hung my homemade party garland, and got lots of pink balloons. the centerpieces doubled as party favors. they were rubber duckies and little ribbon tied boxes filled with spring colored m&m's. so cute. we served tea sandwiches and various salads for lunch along with strawberry lemonade and white wine sangria. i had big plans of making the same chocolate spice cake that i made for new years eve but opted to take a trip to porto's bakery instead. i bought their parisian chocolate cake and a fruit tart. yum. my sisters were worried that we would have too many sweets but really is there such a thing? we ended up having almost no leftovers.

jen was very cute and loved all her gifts. so many pink things. how could she not love them? when the party was over and everyone had gone home. miles stopped by to drop off the kids with me. we ordered chinese take out and had another sleep over. christina and i were exhausted but stayed up late anyway. the perfect ending to a party.

easter cupcakes

i have been reading a lot of baking blogs lately so i was super excited when mason wanted to make chocolate cupcakes today. i thought that sounded like a great idea. we used the devils food recipe from martha stewart's cupcake book. it is so good. i decided to make the cream cheese frosting from the book instead of the chocolate one. miles is not a huge chocolate fan and i thought the clean up from white frosting would be much easier. it always seems that most of the frosting ends up on dahlia's clothes.

we decided to be fancy and decorate them for easter. i even got out the frosting tips! the kids colored pictures of an easter bunny and then i scanned them and printed scaled down versions of them onto sticker paper. we used my new circle cutter and toothpicks to make cupcake toppers. i think they turned out so cute. this is definitely a technique i will be using all the time now. mason and dahlia got such a kick out of seeing their designs on the cupcakes. oh, and they were delicious.

the train party

bodhi had his big birthday party yesterday. we had so much fun. what a great celebration. jen and ray had the party at our house. everything was so nice. my sister has been planning this party for over a month. she had so many cool decorations and party details. it was so nice to see all our friends and family.

the party had a train theme of course. we finished building the large cardboard train on friday. i think it looked great. the kids had a blast playing in it. they also loved the coloring station where you could color pictures of trains and make cards.

jen and i made train stickers to match the invitations that were used for the cups and napkin rings. i sewed a birthday banner for bodhi which i forgot to photograph. it is very similar to the one i sewed for mason's party. jen also made train stamped popcorn bags and favor bags. all the kids got engineer hats that had their name ironed on the back. dahlia loves her hat. oh yes, i almost forgot the cake. she made this adorable cake that looks like a train is coming out of a tunnel. so cute. there were also custom sugar cookies that were just too precious to eat. christina and i made a fruit arrangement that i thought was a good copy of the edible arrangements. we were up super late the night before the party cutting fruit and drinking wine. it was so fun. i love parties. now that jen did such a great job planning this one the pressure is on for connor's first birthday party. i better get started planning it now.

after the party jen, ray, bodhi, christina, and zena all stayed the night. we had a fun evening complete with a viewing of the movie new moon. oh yes. it was a great weekend.

baby shower

i hosted a baby shower for my good friend kimberly this weekend. it was so fun. i am very excited for her baby to come. we have been talking about having babies and how we would bring our babies out to lunch and have playdates. i can't wait.

the shower was very sweet. there were about 20 girls there. we didn't play any silly shower games per kimberly's request. i don't know why she didn't want to play the "guess how big your pregnant waist is" game, or the "what smashed chocolate bar in the diaper is this" game. those are both such good ones. instead we had lunch and chatted. that was fun too.

it was so great to see all of our girl friends. she got lots of beautiful gifts. so many were homemade. such a creative group of friends. my gift was store bought, but i hope to get something made before the little one arrives. what a great reason to celebrate. i love babies.

setting up for christmas

christmas is almost here. yikes. oh my gosh. we are so behind this year. i really love christmas eve. there is so much excitement in the air. we had so much fun today. we baked cookies and brought them over to miles' cousins house. they had a little party that we attended. it was so fun to see them on christmas eve. we don't usually get to see his aunt and cousins for christmas. i really like miles family. they are so sweet and fun.

of course now i am way behind for setting up our house for christmas. i did get the tables set up and decorated. everything looks so pretty. now it is time to finish wrapping presents, and start cooking tomorrows dinner. i am so happy. christmas is here.

happy thanksgiving

i love thanksgiving. we host every year for the family. it is usually about 17 people including kids. we had a super fun thanksgiving. i hope you all had a fun one too. i think things went very smoothly this year. i was a bit worried that i was out of practice having missed last year, but it worked out great.

i love how the table looked this year. i get really excited planning the menu and decorations every year. jen suggested using clementines for a centerpiece and they were so cute. now that thanksgiving is over we can eat the arrangement. i love that. i also made some flower arrangements using white and green roses. so pretty. i thought they might clash with the clementines, but they looked great. i am thinking i will do something similar for christmas. maybe using crab apples. miles did a great job refinishing a small table and chairs for the kids table. it was so cute. we served everything buffet style and that worked out so much better than family style like we have in the past. everyone got their food much faster and with less confusion as in "i didn't get the mashed potatoes, did they get passed this way?"

the turkey was done early as usual. every year i put it in 30 minutes later and it is still the first thing done. i will figure it out one of these days. i had so much fun. i am usually a freak with all the stress and commotion of cooking for so many people, but i think the champagne helped ease my tension. thank you to everyone for all their help and for enjoying this beautiful day with us. now, it's time to plan christmas.

pirate party

yesterday was my niece zena's seventh birthday party. my sister threw her a large pool party with all her school friends. there were about 20 kids and 30 adults there. mason and dahlia had a great time. there was a small blow up pool on the grass next to the large pool that mason swam in. after most of the kids had gone home, we let mason and dahlia play in the jacuzzi. mason loves to swim. i really need to sign him up for some swim lessons. the party turned out great. i was really worried about someone drowning, so we had a designated lifeguard at both the kiddy pool and large pool. we rotated the lifeguards every half hour so they could enjoy the party also. we were all completely exhausted when the party ended. we got home at six and just relaxed.

today we are going to my parents house to celebrate the rest of the july birthdays. july is a big birthday month in my family. three of my five siblings are born in july. my brother-in-law ray and my niece zena also have their birthdays in july. whew. it's a busy month.

baby shower

the shower went well. my sister jennifer loved all the decorations. i was so stressed out. there were about 18 girls that came over. some of the guests were early. why were they early? don't they know i am always running late. my other 2 sisters came over the night before with my mom and helped get everything ready. it is a lot of work to throw a shower. i am so happy that jen liked the shower. i thought everything was great. she got lots of cute gifts. i am so relieved that it is over.

now that we are done entertaining i really want to focus on cleaning the house. i want to clean out all the closets and get rid of stuff. spring must be coming. i have the itch to throw out everything. i hate clutter. it makes me crazy.

memory tree

the shower has taken over my house. there is baby stuff everywhere. i spent most of yesterday working on more decorations. i want to finish most of them so i can get working on the rest of the stuff.

i had this great idea to make a tree with little baby stuff hanging on it for the memory game. the tree would be inside by the drinks, and then when we are outside eating we could have people write down all the items they remember from the tree. all i have to do is make the tree. ugh. this turned out to be such a project. at one point i was at pottery barn kids ready to drop $60.00 for their easter tree. i couldn't do it though. i just can't spend $60.00 on something that i won't have any use for later. i hate lots of stuff. so i went home and made it myself for about $10.00 with supplies from the craft store and a dead tree from the yard. i think it looks cute. i just hope it doesn't fall over before the shower.

there is also a picture of my tree helper.