Gracie's Golden Birthday

There's nothing that I love more than a good celebration. Living life on a budget means that we don't do tons of extras throughout the year for our kids. Aside from special occasions, birthdays and Christmas, my kids don't get a lot of extra toys during the year. (However if you saw my house, you'd think that we give our children toys for every day of the week that ends in the letter "y") I try and make birthdays special because they are just that: special. They're the one day of the year where we focus on that person and how happy we are to have them in our lives. 

First birthdays are no exception. I know that there are a lot of naysayers who pooh-pooh large first birthday celebrations because the celebrant won't even remember the party. In my mind, a first birthday party is as much of a celebration of the parents as the child. You are celebrating all of the milestones that all of you have achieved together that first year. 

As the momma who gave birth and breastfed the birthday girl for 365 days, it's a celebration of me too! Because if you've breastfed for any duration of time, you know it takes commitment, perseverance and the will not to quit just because it's inconvenient. Maybe it's a bit selfish, but when that birthday candle is blown out, I'm raising a glass to myself too.

I don't think I throw "huge" parties. Yes, all of my kids' birthday parties are themed (Lucan's: crabby first birthday, The Hungry Caterpillar, Milk and Cookies) but they aren't extravagant and they are all DIY. Gracelyn turned one on December 1, so it was easy enough to decide on a "golden birthday" theme with pink accents. 

I designed the invitations in canva, which I've become pretty familiar with after using it for work. $2 investment and I was done. Like I've done in the past, I had everything printed at PC Print Center in Urbandale because it's super easy, convenient and they've NEVER screwed up anything of mine before. 

One easy way to add color to any party is to purchase colored disposable tablecloths. It's cheap, adds a lot of color and you can throw it away when it's all said and done. Another easy way to add impact is to make your own confetti out of scrapbook paper and a large circle punch. The confetti circles served double duty as I also stuck two together and sandwiched a toothpick in between to serve as my cupcake toppers. I had originally bought cupcake toppers from Hobby Lobby but returned them as I wanted to save a couple of bucks and knew that it would be a cinch to make them myself (or con my mom into helping me make them hours before the party. Because if it's a party I'm throwing, there's going to be last minute stuff to do!) 

Glitter is like a bug infestation. It gets everywhere and anytime you think you've cleaned it all up, you find more. I glitterized a paper machie "G" which was kind of a process. First I had to spray paint the entire letter gold with two thin, even coats (and by me, I mean Lance. He thought I would end up accidentally spray painting the car. I started waving the can around wildly, which in turn made him very nervous so he took the can from me. It was my plan all along.) Then after the spray paint dried, I layered a coat of decoupage glue and then dropped glitter in small batches all over. THEN after all the glitterizing (yes, there's more) I shellacked the thing with extra shiny top coat. 

When I glitterized (yes, I know it's not a real word) the small jars it was about the same process except I started off by taping off the areas that I didn't want glittered with masking tape. I did a layer of decoupage and then glitter and then shiny top coat.  

The "one" banner was leftover from Lucan's birthday party. #recycleforthewin

I had a friend make the gold glitter "Happy Birthday" and "Gracelyn" banners using her cricut machine. I'll use them again for future parties. I also think that the use of balloons is another "big impact" item for any party.  

Gifts!

Slightly smashed party hats from Target. Kids love them.

Drink bottles borrowed from Molly.

Gold paper straws from Amazon.

The cost of pink carnations was more than I expected or felt was fair. Carnations are supposed to be "cheap" flowers! 

Cupcakes from Target (Lucan just leaned over and said "those cupcakes were DELICIOUS." And he was right. The key is buttercream. Who am I kidding? Buttercream is always the answer.) I borrowed cake plates from my friend Nicole (who has a surprising number of cake plates) to add height to the food table overall. Varying the height of foods on any table adds interest. 

My MIL helped out and brought tortilla rollups! My mom and I made the chocolate covered strawberries. Those were the most expensive strawberries in the world. We won't talk about it. My tips chocolate covered strawberries: 1) make sure the strawberries are super dry. Like I dried them with my blow dryer. 2) don't get water in your chocolate when you are melting it. There's no recovering from chocolate water.

Years ago, pre-budget, I had randomly bought some peony decorative paper items from Target and I finally got to use them for her party!

Lance also spray painted some larger jars to be used for cutlery. 

I've been really good about taking Gracie's monthly birthday picture (not so great at making sure I get her monthly post done at the same time, but that's neither here nor there). I purchased gold polka dot card stock and mounted each picture and then strung them all together with gold ribbon for a banner. I always have bright visions of actually having the baby books complete and photo books printed off. Bright visions. Not reality. 

Momma and the birthday girl.

Fun fact: Gracie was not a fan of the party hats. Not at all. This was her face when Lance strapped one on her. It's a good thing I talked myself out of buying her a $20 birthday crown. 

Total dismay.

Once again, we have a child who wasn't particularly interested in smashing their smash cake. Lance put a dollop of icing on her nose, but that was about the extent of her interaction.

Let's talk about the birthday girl's outfit. I think every birthday girl needs a tutu. Because if anyone deserves to wear a tutu, it's a birthday girl. I surprisingly found this particular tutu at Hobby Lobby. I bought the  pink onesie there too with the intention that I would customize it. Well, like all good intentions, it didn't happen. 10 days before the party I just decided to buy an iron-on off of etsy. Easy peasy. Except it didn't come. And didn't come. And didn't come. The Saturday of the party I had already emailed the seller multiple times and really wasn't getting very far. She had sent me the tracking info but the post office never updated it so all it showed me that it was in Florida until that Saturday morning. I ended up calling our local post office and with ZERO customer service skills they found the package was out for delivery. At 3 pm, our mail was finally delivered and by 3:45 pm our party girl was dressed and ready for her 4 pm party. I know this is a #firstworldproblem but I wasn't keen on getting stuck with a gold glittery heart one and no birthday party to wear it to. 

Still not a fan of party hats. Especially over a headband. Thanks Lucan for styling Gracie.

I like to think of myself of getting wiser with age and experience. I'm not sure if it's true, but I like to pretend. Knowing that we would be providing supper to all of our guests, we bought pizzas from Papa Murphys ahead of time. Monday - Wednesday you can get their $5 faves (large pepperoni, sausage or cheese) and on Tuesday you can $10 larges on any pizza. My parents spearheaded the pizza baking leaving us to chat and mingle with everyone. We served a simple salad along with carrots. I bought cupcakes from Target. I did make white chocolate pretzel rods and my mom helped me with the chocolate covered strawberries. Originally I wanted to do some sort of signature drink but Lance quickly insisted that you serve pop with pizza. Lance's aunt and cousin also took pictures for me once the party began so I didn't have to worry about being behind the camera. 

I hope you enjoyed your tour of Gracie's Golden Birthday party!

Lucan's 4th Birthday - Construction Party!

Themed parties are fun. To date, we've had: a crabby party, a Hungry Caterpillar party, a milk and cookies party and now a construction equipment party. Yes, they're work but because we don't do much throughout the year I don't feel bad about throwing Lucan a cute birthday party. Besides, you only have one birthday a year and you deserve to be celebrated!

 

Thanks to my friend Molly, this was by far the easiest party I've thrown for Lu so far. She gave me the digital printable files and lent me the construction tape wreath and signs. I utilized Lu's construction toys as decorations and did a party first for me: tackled the cake instead of buying one. I priced themed cakes and just had a hard time justifying spending $50+ on one. My momma threw me a bone and baked the cakes for me and then I (along with Lance who I proceeded to tell he was doing everything WRONG) decorated the cake the night before.

 

I also had party bags for all of the kiddos which contained a swirly straw, silly string and some other little party favors. But it appears I forgot to take a picture of that!

 

 

This will probably be the last time we have the main birthday party at my parents' house. I imagine Lu will want to have a friends' party at some point and we'll have to have that in Des Moines. It's been nice having them at my folks' house because then I don't have to clean!

Molly's caution tape wreath. Lu told me "mommy what a pretty spring wreath!"

Dirt and Worms. Because if you are having a construction party and will be digging, of course you'll encounter dirt and worms!

I placed Lu's construction toys randomly around to be used as décor. No heavy lifting on my part :)

Molly's "Happy Birthday" sign. Again, thank goodness for Molly.

My mom was a bargain shopper and found plates, hats, napkins and party blowers on clearance for me at Wal-Mart. Yay mom!

This cake was a hot chocolately mess. But because it was a "dump" cake that was okay. We layered chocolate cake with LOTS of chocolate frosting and added crushed oreos as dirt pieces and cut up snickers and mini kit kats as bricks. We also used malt balls as rocks. The finishing touch were the mini construction diggers we placed on to complete our construction site.

Lots of chocolate.

Construction bears AKA teddy grams.

I cleaned out Lu's dump truck and poured chex mix into it to act like it was dumping it into the bowl.

I called the chex mix "nuts and bolts." There were ZERO nuts in it. Details.

Molly's signs.

Singing happy birthday and eyeing the lit candles.

Successful blowing of the candles.

My mom also found a construction table cloth for the present table.

Lu loves Paw Patrol. I think if I would have left it up to him, his party theme would have been Paw Patrol themed.

Happy birthday buddy!

We are lucky to celebrate Lu's birthday every year and make it special for him!

Lucan's 3 Year Milk & Cookies Birthday Party

Birthday Par-tay Recap

This year marks the third birthday party I’ve thrown for Lucan. As a reminder, we’ve had a) a crabby themed party b) a Hungry Caterpillar themed party and c) and now a Milk and Cookies party. I figured this was the last year I really got to “choose” a theme for the party so I milked it (ha! Did you catch that!?) for all it’s worth. That and I got really lucky in the fact that my friend Molly had done a Milk and Cookies party for her son and let me borrow a ton of things from her. Where would I be without my friends? Nowhere NEAR as blessed :)

 

Molly loaned me all of the milk bottles, the cookie containers and shared the printable files that weren’t personalized. The bottles were definitely one of the cutest things about the party; Molly had asked around on facebook if there was anyone who had extra Starbucks Frappucino bottles and hit the jackpot when she found a friend who was addicted to the stuff. 

 

I purchased an art file off of Etsy for the party invitations and then had them printed at a local printer here in town. Easy-peasy. The rest of the printables I printed off a color printer and then cut them out in my "spare time" (spare time meaning the Wed night before the party at 10:30 PM).  The pennant banner was a last minute addition. I printed off the individual triangles on just regular paper because I didn’t want to go through the hassle of going and printing them at a professional printer or purchasing cardstock. I made a slightly larger triangle and traced it onto paper bags I got from the grocery store! Each paper bag pennant triangle served as the backing for the colored pennant. I used glue dots to adhere the two layers together, checked with my mom to make sure she had some twine, punched holes and called it good. And it was the item (besides the milk bottles) that everyone commented on at the party. 

We served four different kinds of cookies, two kinds of milk (white and chocolate) and my mom had one of those giant chocolate chip cookie cakes made for Lucan. Lucan loved his cookie cake, especially licking off all the frosting and not eating a bite of the actual cookie. Silly boy. I made monster cookies, oatmeal raisin cookies and hot chocolate cookies. I purchased the chalkboard clothes pin labels off of etsy with a credit I won in a giveaway. My momma, the saint, made peanut butter cookies and graciously hosted the party. One of the nice things I’ve found that if I’m having “family” only parties is that if I have them at my parents’ house I don’t have to make a full meal for everyone. And I don’t have to clean. 

 

Another kind friend, Kelly, loaned me the glass drink dispenser for the chocolate milk. Chocolate milk was definitely the crowd favorite. The straws were from Molly. Like I said, I have great people in my life. 

 

Last minute party details included assembling the pennant banner, taping on the milk bottle wrappers and adding decorative paper to the cookie containers. If there isn’t a ton of last minute things the night before the actual party, it isn’t a Kara party. Lance says that he’s just come to expect it out of me :) I think he'd appreciate if there wasn't last minute stuff, but we don't always get what we want! 

For Lu's first birthday party, I made a laminated "happy birthday" and "lucan" pennant banner and I reuse them year to year. I forgot to make a welcome sign so we hung the Lucan pennant banner outside. Just in case people were confused.

No birthday party is complete without a few construction themed birthday presents.

It was at this point my really nice DSLR Nikon unexpectedly up and died on me. I was happy that I had captured most of the party up until then, but I still wasn't pleased. I naively thought that if I took out the batteries that it would fix itself. I was wrong. I ended up working with a local photography retail store to have them mail it into Nikon in which I received a bid of almost $300 to fix my camera. I wasn't pleased as the repairs basically equaled the value of the actual camera. Annoying.

Anyway, I missed getting to shoot everyone's expressions as Lucan opened up his final present: ours. This present included his "big brother" t-shirt and our announcement that Lucan was about to be upgraded to big brother this December.

On Lu's actual birthday, he was pretty sick with strep and an ear infection so he got to hang out with Mom and Dad. We had thought it would have been fun to take him to Chik-Fil-A or out for ice cream as his special birthday treat, but it just didn't happen. Instead we stuck around the house and had his special ice cream sundae at home. Not nearly as fun in my eyes, but fun in Lu's eyes, which is the most important thing. This boy loves his ice cream!