Birthday Parties!

This week is Children's Parties over at Kelly's Korner! I love throwing parties for my little ones - although I think their birthdays fall during the craziest times of the year. We do family parties until they are 3 and for their 4th birthday we start doing friend parties.

I think I went the craziest over Graham's 6th birthday! We had just gotten back from Disneyland and the boys were entralled with the whole "pirate" theme...

Sign on our gate. I try to have the parties in our garage or backyard. Too many kids inside my house drives me insane.

The invitations. I printed them out on parchment paper from HL and burned the edges with a lighter. I rolled them up and Graham got to hand them out.

The Motley Crew. As soon as they arrived I gave them all pirate names. Gunwalls o Greg, Blackheart Kate, etc. Then we dressed them in pirate gear, patches, earrings, hats, etc. The flag is a $2.00 sheet from Wal-Mart that I painted about 10 minutes before the party.


We sent the kids on a treasure hunt in our neighborhood. Dan dressed up as Captain Jack Sparrow and led them on the adventure.
I wrote a set of clues like:
Scurvy Josh lives reall close by
But not so close enough to live
Ring the bell and ye be told
You're on yer way to Pirate's Gold!

and

You've done well Pirate lads and lasses
Now's the time to take yer chances
The treasure is oh so close
But your not ready yet to boast
Gunwalls o Greg has a turtle fair
And a treasure chest is waiting there!

The treaure be found! I doctored up the pinata with gems and sparklie pipe cleaner. I mean, who wants to find a boring plain paper chest? The pirates making "booty" while I cut the cake and ice cream. You can't see that well but the table had burlap, with a skull and "treasure" strewn over it. We had two huge nets hanging from the ceiling with starfish and shells in them.
Me and Captain Graham I made the cake - it's 4 sheet cakes put together. The sand is crushed cinnamon graham cracker

Lauren got a total girl party with her grandmas and grandpas and lots of cousins. I did everything in pink and purple with roses and butterflies. She loved her tutu and headband that my mom bought her. I bought her a white onesie and put the words "Miss February" on it in crystals. (Again, HL has the iron on kind, so easy!) and I quick sewed a few hot pink flowers on it.

Digging into her cake. Most grocery stores around here give you a free one!

LuLu with her Nanny. You can see the roses I hung from the chandelier in the back and we had cake, little sandwiches, and a few other hors de oeuvres.

CostCo cake. With her birthday on the 12th, Valentine's Day on the 14th, my dad's birthday on the 21st and Greg's on the 24th - I've decided to start buying cakes!
I did make Graham's and Greg's first birthday cakes...they both looked like this. Kind of sad, huh!?Greg did get the Spiderman party he hoped for this year - lots of spiders, fun games and (smart mom now) a smaller group of kids!Homemade pin the spider on the web. And we played "hot potato" with pretend Cryptonite. Cupcake cake and too cute boys. I love throwing them parties and I hope they let me do it for them for a long time!

Thanks for stopping by!

Cookbook

A few friends and I have put together a church cookbook.

Anyone interested in ordering one let me know...they'll be about $5. They have about 290 recipes from some great neighborhood chefs!

Summer Adventures!

It's been a crazy last two weeks - but so much fun! My book club had a movie night at Amanda's house and our friend Cori (Amanda's sister and my old neighbor) came all the way from Mississippi to join us! A little salad potluck and "Music and Lyrics" made for a fun night! We missed a few girls though! Hope you can make it next time!
Kjersten and I took our boys to the copper mine or as my boys like to call it "The Old Mine." We come here once every summer and they still think it's the coolest place ever. (It IS pretty impressive, I mean, you can see it from space!)

Getting ready to watch the movie and see how copper is made.

They always have to see if they can move the carts. Maybe next year if their muscles grow a little!

The classic, "Here we are in front of a large tire" pose. Lauren was SO not loving this.

Yup! They're digging deeper! The boys have been playing "miners" today pretending they are digging for gold. Too cute!

K & D Wedding Flowers!

My friend Kristen was so kind and referred me to a friend of hers to do their daughters wedding flowers. I was surprised since Kristen had never seen any of my work (I don't think?) so the pressure was on to make sure I didn't make her (and I!) look bad.

I love it when I meet a bride and hit it off right away with her family. They were the sweetest people and had great taste. They really were a dream to work with which makes my job FUN!!

The bride's colors were cream, black and eggplant. So we went with cream Vendela roses, enchantment lillies, Schwartz mini calla lillies, green hypericum berries and cream bouvardia.

These were K's (the bride) centerpieces. She just wanted similar bouquets to hers to lay in a vase on each table. Sadly my pictures are always taken in a hurry at the reception centers so I don't think the picture does this justice at all!

The middle of the buffet table.

The bridal bouquet! Along with the other flowers, I put monkey tails, looped bear grass and rhinestone buttons in the bouquet for some extra sparkle. I love a little bling!

The matching toss bouquet. She used this at her ceremony site for outdoor pictures. Since it can get so hot here in the summer, it's nice to do this and switch to a new fresh bouquet for the reception. That way the tired looking one from the heat can be used elsewhere (in this case as the toss bouquet) and your flowers look perfect for the whole day!

I loved how the grooms boutonniere turned out - super cool again with the monkey tail!

I really love doing flowers but it's tricky sometimes to do them (especially with all three little ones at home and out of school) and I told my mom, I think that this is the last one I'm going to do for awhile.

10 minutes later I was giving out my phone number to a girl and her mom who were looking at the reception site! I'm crazy I know. I can't help it - I LOVE weddings and I LOVE flowers, so I am lucky I get to do this!

Put Your Hands Up!

Off to the police station today - I guess my fender bender friend tried to get me a ticket so she turned in a police report. I have to go and make a statement. Grrr.

Too bad it was on private property so no citations can be issued. So she failed in that attempt. She has managed to take up an hour of my time this morning to deal with this.

I knew I should've stopped for a Starbucks before leaving Target that day.

Chore Charts!

I decided to get with the program and get some free labor out of my children. My mom did something similar for my brother and I one summer so I made a modified version to help get my boys to not only do some chores around the house, but earn a few fun rewards by doing so.
This is the chart. I kept it short and sweet. They earn points. Workbook pages - 1 point per page. Make your bed, you earn a point. Reading - 1 point for every 15 minutes. Do a service (like pick up Lauren's toys for her, make mom and dad's bed, etc. - earn a point!) At the end of every day I take the boys aside individually (since I don't want this to be competitive between them) and we talk about what they did that day to earn points.

Bad behavior = lose points. Mom and dad can offer extra points. Like when Graham wasn't too thrilled to follow the swim instructors directions, I told him on the next lesson, if he did everything she asked and happily, he would get 5 points. Worked like a charm.

This is what they can earn. They can work towards something and save their points or they can used them up on things along the way. Right now Graham is DYING to have the new Optimus Prime Transformer. (Are you so impressed that I even know what that is?)

He's 1/2 way to earning it and I haven't had to pay up on anything yet!

Did I mention I have the boys racing to make my bed every morning? Oh yeah....

Well SHOOT!

I got into a fender bender. And the chick is now saying it's my fault so I'll have to replace her bumper on her already beat up car. Seriously, her car looked like it had been in 50 accidents.

I have been in 2 accidents in over 20 years driving, neither being my fault.

Thankfully no one was hurt but I have already been stressed out and this had pushed me over the limit.


Until I got home to find that Graham intentionally made a L shaped rip in the seat of my fabric couch. I may or may not have said a swear word, loudly.

That pushed me to clear out his room of everything except a bed and clothing. If he can't take care of MY things, then he gets NOTHING.




ps...posting anon is cowardly.
If you think I am ungrateful for my husbands job you can kiss it. My husband is one of the most honorable and hard working men I know and I tell him that often. I'm sorry if you think I should be flipping out over a parking lot carnival. SO not happening.