Sporty-Chic Baby Shower

I was so excited to help plan this sports themed baby shower.  My mother- and sister-in-law were in charge of the food, and they wanted to do different kinds of sports balls (wait until you see them down below!!)  I knew the food would be delicious and adorable, and I turned my attention to the invitations and decor.

Browsing Pinterest for inspiration, I came to a realization: it is too easy to slip into "Juvenile" territory with this theme.  Which, if you are giving a party for a six-year-old sports nut, is perfect! But let's be honest. This baby shower isn't for the baby.  We are celebrating him, of course, but the party is all for Mommy.  

I wanted this new Mommy-to-be to feel special and pampered, so I really tried to focus on elegantizing (totally a word!) things a bit.  I can't see baby boy looking at photos someday and being disappointed that I girlied things up a bit, can you?

*The Invitations*

I used a scripty font (Isabella Script for fellow font-a-holics), a hand drawn banner, and a bow in the back to try and up the charm factor.  Also, please note the orange baseball and the teal football.  Going for grown up color scheme here!

How'd I do?  Is it pretty enough?  I was gonna add glitter... but I ran out of time (story of my life). How cool would Caitlin's name look cut out with double sided adhesive on the Silhouette and coated with GLITTER?!?

*The Food*

I told you that the food was fabulous!  And it all tastes even better than it looks.  They made chocolate covered strawberry footballs, baseball cupcakes and basketball sugar cookies.  The biggest hit, however, is that giant beach ball dessert pizza!  Yep, you are seeing strawberries, oranges, blackberries, raspberries, pineapple, blueberries, and mango!  All fresh, all delicious.  Is your mouth watering yet?

*Decorations*

We hung this sucker right by the food.  You know, in case anyone was confused about whether or not they could eat those delicious things.

Close up because this thing looks amazing in person!  Again, the baseball's stitching is orange instead of red to go with our color scheme and the edges are DOUBLE inked.  The orange I had was too bright, so I followed it up with a light tan ink and it helped a lot.  Plus there's bows, just like on the invitation! They literally tie everything together and gussy things up.

*The Fun*

We finished things off with a photo booth which was a blast!!  I made some glittery bibs and pacifiers.  I cut them out on my Silhouette, but they'd be easy with scissors!  My backdrop was so ghetto--and I wish I'd thought to take a picture!  I picked a spot across from a window to have lots of natural light.  We tied this fabric up to a balcony and lowered it down to the ground. I love that you can't tell though!

Now I have tons of pictures of everyone who came with the new Mommy to be, and I can give them to her as an added gift!  In addition, the photo booth gives guests a way to get to know each other, be silly, and have fun.  I am in love with this party trend!

Here are some of the props I made for the photo booth.  Sparklies, my friends.  Just making sure we all know who the shower is for!  Once again, I used some ghetto tech--Elmer's glue for the heart, star, stripes, and polkas.  Easy peasy, lemon squeezy.

This party was so much fun for me to help plan, and I think it was fun for the party guests too!

As usual, I would love to share some of the files I created so you can use them too!
Sporty Chic Photo Booth Props
I have included .SVGs, Silhouette Files, and PDFs so anyone can use them!! The banner shapes were from Miss Kate Cuttables (baseball) and Silhouette (banner).

I love to see what happens when you use my creations!  One easy way is to put pictures on our Facebook Page--it's such a nice way to say "thank you" and it makes my day happy.

Jake and the Neverland Pirates Party

We threw this birthday party for my son who is a big fan of Jake, Izzy, Cubby, Scully, and Bucky. It was very simple, but after all, a five year old doesn't care as long as he gets to eat cake and open presents!

What pirate party would be complete without a treasure hunt?  The kids swung through jungle vines, conquered the Never-Peak, slid down the Never-Falls, and collected coconuts, following instructions "from Jake himself!"  I printed up some treasure maps from the Handmade Home and placed them before each activity. Notice the low-key "coconuts" and the buckets we threw them in.  If you wanted to dress things up, you could cover the buckets with wrapping or butcher paper.  Make sure you say "Oh coconuts!" Cubby-style if you miss the buckets!!

I thought the final treasure was rather clever: the kids got to decorate their own treasure chests and fill them with gold (chocolate) coins and ring pops!!  They had a blast gluing jewels on and covering everything with markers.

They did turn out rather marvelously, don't you think?

If you'd like to play along at home, I've uploaded the Silhouette files:
Box Bottom
Box Top
Simply cut them out attach the top pieces with gold or silver brads--very piratey indeed!

We ate "X Marks the Spot Rice Crispy Treats, Pirates Treasure (popcorn, chocolate and M&Ms), "Scully Want Some Cheese and Crackers" and Jello and orange slice sailboats.

And of course, the exquisite Jake cake!  Perfect it is not, all I cared about as a kid were the plastic characters on top.  Check and check, my friends!  Add to that the delicious chocolate frosting covered rice crispy ship and island?  This was quite tasty!  I have to shout out to my friend who shared her Jake cake on Facebook--she was actually the inspiration for this whole party!

I've made you a Bucky sail, if you would like to build your own Jake cake. It is slightly different than what I have--it has a Happy Birthday medallion on it!
Bucky Sail Download

What other games or food would you have at a Pirate Party?  Do tell!

~FROZEN BIRTHDAY PARTY~

My daughter has had her heart set on a Frozen party ever since we saw the movie back in November, so even though the whole world would probably like to "Let it Go" at this point, we brought in our own personal flurry and created something truly magical for her birthday!

Now before we jump into a major photo overload- I have to say that this party would not have been possible without the massive amounts of help I received from my mother in law, Vicki, and my sister in law Kyrell. Kyrell threw a beautiful Frozen party for her daughter Sahara a few weeks ago and was gracious enough to let me re-use a lot of her decorations. Vicki pulled things out of her "Mary Poppins bag" (aka- her fabulous stash of beautiful things that she uses for her wedding business), helped me set things up the night before, and even let me use her house for the party. Family! What would I do without them?!

Let the fun begin! 

 I love how excited she is! When she walked in the room she gasped and whispered "Mom! Oh my goodness... it's so beautiful I think I'm going to cry!" her reaction alone was totally worth the effort. She's been counting down the days for a month now, and when the big day finally arrived she was positively giddy with excitement! 

The food for this party was so fun to put together!

The party took place after school on Friday so I wanted to have a few healthy options like string cheese-snowmen, yogurt parfaits, pretzel sticks (snowmen arms) and strawberries (dipped in white chocolate- aka- Frozen Hearts) ...  but of course we had to have a few kid favorites too!

We had glittery marshmallow pops, Kristoff's jello ice blocks, blue hershey's kisses, edible icicles (chocolate dipped pretzel rods)...

Snowballs (Coconut cake balls), an ice cream bar with pretty blue and white toppings to choose from, and beautiful blue gum-balls that were leftover from Kyrell's party. (Thanks girl!) 

Oh yes! More healthy food! Haha, THIS is why we take pictures- I had already forgotten all about the "bonus food table" we had to put up because I couldn't get all the food to fit on one table. 

Too much food?

 Psshh! No such thing! 

On our little extra food table we had Olaf noses (baby carrots), and frozen grapes- which are one of my daughter's favorite snacks. And of course we needed some water to wash it all down. 

I love the labels on the water bottles. :)

Check out that glitzy number 5! 

Goodness... FIVE?! Is my baby really FIVE YEARS OLD? When did that happen? 

Let's not talk about it.

In the living room we had set up a little activity station where we played games and built donut snowmen... you know... because we hadn't had enough sugar. 

This cake was so much fun to make. I just made a lollipop recipe I found online, and poured the whole batch into a greased cookie sheet. After it cooled down I cracked it into pieces and we placed it around the cake. Super cool!

For Christmas my girls received some Frozen toys from their grandparents, which was like 3 months ago. Since then they have been WELL loved. The night before her party Livy snuck the little Elsa doll into bed with her and rolled over her at some point during the night... breaking her left arm off. She also broke Anna's feet off at one point, and one of our little Olaf dolls is missing his hair and both of his arms. It's like a Frozen massacre! 

Just don't look too closely. :)

 When the guests first arrived we passed out princess crowns for the girls, and Sven antlers for the boys. Then we sat down to eat.

 Let the games begin! We played pin the nose on Olaf- which was a hoot!

 Had a "snowball" fight with cotton balls and built our donut snowmen...

And then we did a fun relay game that- in retrospect- most of the kids were too young to understand. The older kids thought it was great though! They were divided into teams and had to wrap their teammate up like a snowman using a roll of toilet paper, then wrap a scarf around their neck, and walk across the room without ripping the toilet paper... yeaaahhhh it was kind of advanced for our littlest party guests, who ended up creating a toilet paper snowstorm, which was fine by me!

 I just love parties! I love them just as much now as I did when I was little- maybe even more! Maybe I have a little bit of Peter Pan running through my veins because I never ever ever want to grow up. At least not completely. :) 

Thanks for inspiring me to keep the magic alive!

 Love you Birthday Girl!

Rock-A-Bye Baby Show

I've been dreaming up this shower in my head for years (Is that normal? To dream about parties? No?)  I have always wanted to throw a rock 'n' roll themed shower and had been searching for just the right mama to-be that would truly appreciate it's awesomeness. So when I found out my BFF is expecting a baby boy I just about hit the roof! She's never been a fan of "cutesy" stuff, and her husband is a guitarist- Tada! It was a match made in heaven! 

Now please pretend like these pictures were taken in beautiful warm sunlight. :) Apparently the weather has no respect for my party expectations. Rain rain go away... but until then, LET'S ROCK! 

There are so many details I love about this shower. 

Like the "clever" signs I made for the food table. I crack myself up sometimes.

I also love these fabulous records we snagged at the local thrift store for $.50 a piece. 

I'm so happy with the way these cookies turned out, especially since everything that could have possibly gone wrong in baking them went wrong... but let's not think about that. Let's just take a minute to adore the fabulous houndstooth sugar sheets I found at Walmart. They added the perfect little bit of pizazz! (And incase you're curious, one sheet made about 7 cookies.) 

 The rest of the decor included some tissue pom poms, cute framed maternity pictures, a slide show set to fabulous music, and some fabulous rock 'n' roll onesies.  

 All in all, it was such a fun evening and I am so excited to meet this little Rock Star! 

Look Whooooo Just Turned Two!

My baby's 2nd birthday was two days before my husband's 30th--so we HAD to have a shindig! I hadn't ever worked with fondant, but I wanted to give it a try. Turns out it's not as tricky as I was afraid of--it's just super yummy play doh!!

I snagged some of these from Amazon: Cutie Cupcake Summer Cookie Cutter Variety Set, which I kind of jumped up and down about, becomes it comes with FOUR sets!! I whipped up a batch of marshmallow fondant all by myself, and this is how it turned out: 

Hah! Can you believe it?  I made those!  And if I can do it, I'm telling you, anyone can!!

And when you add the hubster's favorite super chocolate cake from Costco, plus a pile of pizza, everybody was happy!





*The link to the fondant cutters is an affiliate link.

Pink or Blue? Gluten Free Gender Reveal Party

We had some exciting news this Autumn:

When you have three kids and all of them are boys, the stakes become pretty high for the gender of number 4.

Will. THIS ONE. Be a GIRL?!?

So I really wanted to throw a party to reveal whether baby number 4 is a boy or girl!

Party food is not my forte (that would be Jamie), but I decided to try reeeeally hard this time. And everything but the pretzels were gluten free so that everyone could partake!

We had chocolate dipped rice krispy treats, pink lemonade bars (via, adapted with a gluten free flour mix via), swirled sugar cookies (adapted via), and a really yummy mix with chocolate covered pretzels, popcorn, and M&Ms. 

Let's have another look at that deliciousness, because it turned out to be my favorite thing on the table.
Second were probably those lemonade bars, which are truly addicting.  I used a gluten free recipe from this book, and it turns out the thick swirl cookies needed waaay less cooking time but it was hard to tell with the color swirls.  They were a bit overcooked--beware!

And Cupcakes (cake via. BEST. GF. CAKE. EVER. and frosting via), and skinny deviled eggs (via).

We all cast our votes--baby boy or girl?!?  And then it was the moment of truth: 

I know it's hard to see, but that is most definitely BLUE silly string coming out of those canisters!

So everybody put your wallets away--I know you were all planning on sending me adorable baby girl clothes--but I've got everything under control.

I thought I'd be a little bit disappointed, but aren't babies incredible?  I am entirely full of excitement to welcome baby boy #4!  Life is about to get crazy around here!--Well, you know.  Like it isn't already!