Wintery Woodland Fox Party: Ella's 8th Birthday

Vendors/Credits

Invitation and Fox Picture- hand painted by me 

Mint striped cupcake cups & Mint dot straws from Pink Lemonade Party

The tissue paper to make the tassel garland came from Hobby Lobby

I used this tutorial to make them.

White "snowball strings" made with 3 different size pom-poms from Hobby Lobby.

White paper fans also from Hobby Lobby- I added mint green flowers to the centers found in the scrapbooking section also at Hobby Lobby

Gold Sparkle Frame on clearance from Michaels

Gold chevron goody sacks on clearance at Michaels

Twig colored pencils were 12 in a pack for $5 at TJ Maxx

Mint fabric as table runners was a sheer mint fabric I found at Hobby Lobby

The little fox figurines are from Hobby Lobby. I painted them with Elmer's glue and then sprinkled them with micro glitter from Hobby Lobby

The "8" candle was from the grocery store and I painted it with Elmer's glue and used the micro glitter on it also.

Coconut Cake from our grocery store bakery

Cupcakes came from our grocery store bakery-I made little flowers with white chocolate tinted with food coloring- melted and then swirled into a flower to harden.

Cookies were white chocolate covered Oreos with White Chocolate tinted mint green with food coloring and swirled on top.

I also served mint colored butter mints from Cracker Barrel

Cupcake stand was thrifted and spray painted white

Cake stand is Pottery Barn

Glass holding straws  was thrifted

Stand for goody sacks was thrifted, spray painted mint green and a thick gold ribbon attached with sticky tack.

I made the Fox Bean Bag game from a Box and the foxes I made with felt and filled with rice

The Pin the Tail on the Fox game I used a template from Here

I made the felt fox masks using this template found on Illi Style. I tweaked it just a tad and used a different shape for the nose and added a bow.

 

Anything else you're wondering about you can probably find what I did... or wish I would have had time to do on my  Fox Party Pinterest Board for her party. 

 

OK, and now that that's done... Here are a few more pictures.

 

The Food Table

 

Coconut Cake with glittery Fox, tree, and glittery candle

 

 

Goody Bags contained little mints and had twig colored pencils attached with Bakers Twine

(They also got to take home their fox masks as part of their goody bag.)

 

 

Fox Bean Bag Game

 

   



Pin the tail on the Fox Game

 

Friends in Fox masks I had them all ready to go except for the bows.

Each girl picked the color of bow she wanted for her mask, and I real quick hot glued them on.

Snowflakes hung from our dining room light and from the curtain rod in front of the windows.

Wish you could smell these. They were gorgeous and smelled awesome!!

 

A little random décor- I added gold glitter ribbon to my shelf for extra sparkle.

( I just added it with sticky tack.)

 

Had some extra gold glitter paper that I cut into a cute little fox silhouette

I also added gold glitter ribbon to my frame. Just cut to fit and attached with sticky tack.

We ended the party with hot chocolate with whip cream and sprinkles.

 

 

Here is a shot of the party room the night before. I missed getting a full room pic the day of. 

Last, but not least...a picture of my birthday girl. Happy Birthday Ella!!

 

Mermaid Party- Penelope's 3rd Birthday

  
My youngest turned 3 this past week. She has been watching a lot of Diego and loves the Mermaid episode. She tells me all the time that, "Mermaids are the heroes of the ocean." That girl cracks me up. But when she chose a Purple Mermaid theme for her birthday this year, I was so excited. I have been making mermaid shirts for my shop for years, but this is the first real mermaid party that I've done. Still we just did a small family party at the beach on vacation, and another even smaller just sibling party at home on her real birthday. So I kept everything super simple, but I think it still turned out super sweet. 
Kristen, at Mary Had a Little Party has been creating awesome party decorations to go with my mermaid for awhile now and I was so excited to get to see it all in person. LOVE the hat. It was so cute. Penelope was especially excited that everything sparkled. :)

Vendors/Credits

Enchanted Mermaid Cupcake toppers and Party Hat from Mary Had a Little Party

Aqua and Green striped Straws from Dime Store Buddy

The Paper Garland, Purple Balloons and Tissue Paper Fan Circles came from Target

(The center one- I added a little sparkly tulle and felt hearts to with hot glue)

Penelope's shirt is the Enchanted Mermaid shirt from my shop, Perry Jayne 

Cupcakes came from our grocery store bakery- (for the ones with sprinkles - I just poured sprinkles on a plate and smooshed the cupcakes down on them!!)

Cupcake stand was thrifted and spray painted white.

Anything else you're wondering about you can probably find what I did... or wish I would have had time to do on my Pinterest board for her party. 

 Funny story... the first set of cupcakes bought while at the beach met their demise on the floor of my husbands truck. LOL. Now they didn't leave the box, but they were not fit for pictures....and we ate them anyway. :) I kind of wanted to take pics on the beach, but she was tired and it was hot. We made do with pictures on the balcony and that was just fine. However, she smiled for a few pictures and then was grouchy so there aren't a lot of pictures.

My sweet beachy birthday girl!

We celebrated at the beach right after her nap and she was a little sleepy still.

Now all these pics below were taken on her actual birthday here at home! 

This is what I got when I asked her to smile for a birthday picture. She said, "How 'bout I make silly faces like 'dis?"

 A fun birthday treat with her brother and sister! She picked out those lemon cookies at the grocery store. HAD to have them. Licked the icing off and tossed out the cookie. That girl! :)

 Blowing out the birthday candles. Yea!

She is a sweet terrible mess and I just love her! 

Change of Plans

So I was going to do the 30 Day Cleaning Challenge and Run a 5K this month. But, there has been a change of plans. 

First we are moving. Not far just down the street to a new rent house that has 4 bedrooms, Whoo Hoo!! All our kids will now have their own rooms. I am so excited about that. However, this means I need to start packing, like yesterday. It is only down the street, but it's not like I'm going to be walking down there  with 2 plates in my hands at a time. LOL. It's actually about a half mile away, so I won't be walking anything down there. I've got to get started boxing up all our junk... and maybe tossing some junk too. So, I will be doing a thorough cleaning of this house, but it will be after we move everything out.

OK and the 5K is also a "No Go" because I've hurt my ankle. I sprained that ankle in Junior High about 20 years ago. It's really silly to me that I could still be hurting  from that fall on the ice walking into piano lessons that long ago. I knew Piano Lessons were dumb. I may still do the "Fun Run". I think I can push through the pain for a mile, especially if I run it slow with my daughter. I'm pretty bummed because I was really making progress in my running.

OK, that's all for now. I hate not following through on what a set out to do, but you gotta know when to scrap Plan A and go to Plan B. 

Moving is so stressful for me, so I am quoting this scripture to my busy mind....

30 Day House Cleaning Challenge: Projects #5-#10

For the month of April I am participating in the 30 Day Cleaning Challenge over at Money Saving Mom.

Project #5 Surface clean living room and kitchen
I just have afters of this, forgot to take before shots...

Don't mind Penelope chillin' on the couch watching "Dorda" (as she likes to call her.)

Project #6 Clean bathrooms
Last time, I cleaned the Master Bath, so this time I focused my attention on the kids' bathroom. Why is there a Darth Vadar Mask in the bathroom??... I have no idea!

Project #7 Clean all interior windows - Nope, didn't do this one. I just figured I would do the windows as I made it to the "deep clean" on each room.
Project #8 Sweep and vacuum all floors in the house

Little Sissy helped me vacuum the Living Room. :)

Project #9 Surface clean bedrooms

Honestly, I just did the girls room for Project 9. Hudson's and ours weren't  too bad, but I ran out of steam.

Project #10 Deep Clean the Living Room (mirrors, baseboards, dust, etc.)
Didn't realize how badly, I needed to dust. This was my job at home as a kid, I hated it then. But now, look how nice and shiny it makes things. :)



I cleaned the windows, vacuumed out the window sills, wiped down the TV, and mopped the wood floors.

I haven't been keeping up with blogging about everything or even doing all of every project, but I've definitely gotten a lot more done around the house so far this month.

30 Day Cleaning Challenge: Project #4

For the month of April I am participating in the 30 Day Cleaning Challenge over at Money Saving Mom.

Yesterday was Project #4 Clean an Extra Room (Office, Laundry Room, etc). I picked our Play Room. With the kids being home for Spring Break, it needed some extra cleaning in there.

 Basically we just picked up the toys and vacuumed the floor.

30 Day House Cleaning Challenge: Projects #1-3

During the month of April, I will be participating in a 30-Day House Cleaning Challenge over at Money Saving Mom -Read more about it here). 
Find the printable list here

OK, ya'll.... this is hard for me, but I'm gonna do it. I am going to show you pictures of what my house looks like when it's messy. That is so embarrassing, but for this is for you fellow disorganized moms... you are not alone. I am not a "born organizer".  Now, don't get me wrong, I want my house to be spotless. I want it to be clean and organized. But it's hard for me.  I have to work really hard to keep the chaos under control. Now if I invite you over to my house, it's gonna be clean-ish. I mean it won't be spotless, but it won't look like a big mess... but what you don't realize is that I will clean non-stop for 2 days before you show up at my door... and I will be sort of grumpy at my kids when they mess up the freshly mopped floor... or whatever I just cleaned for an hour that they undid in a millisecond. So I am challenging myself to keep up with my house better this month and hopefully create some better habits in the process.

I'm getting off to a little bit of a late start, but here are my pictures of each challenge so far...

Project #1 Surface clean Living Room and Kitchen

In the Living Room, I picked up junk that didn't belong, dusted, and swept. (What you don't see is off to right there... just out of the shot is a chair full of clean laundry. My goal is to fold that tonight.)

Kitchen was basically a big wreck. I did the dishes, cleared off the counter, and wiped everything down.  And do you see my cabinets in the before shot? I always forget to close my cabinets... it drives my husband crazy. 
Project #2 Clean the Bathrooms

Ugh, one of least favorite chores. I put away some junk, wiped down the counters, cleaned the toilets, swept the floors, and then tossed the rugs in the washing machine.

Project #3 Surface clean the Bedrooms

Our Bedroom needs a make-over. I don't like much about it, but the worst is the paint color and we are renting, so... Anyway, I made the bed, swept the floor, and put away some things on my dresser. There is a lot more to do as far as organizing, but that will be for another day. (And yes, I have a bed rail on our bed. It's not for me, I haven't fallen out of bed in a long while. LOL. Penelope still comes to sleep with us every night about 2 or 3am and it's nice not to have to worry about her falling out of bed onto a hard wooden floor)

The girls bedroom was a big fat mess. There were toys, clothes, junk everywhere. Ella made her bed and then she helped me pick up all the toys and clothes. I dusted and swept and we were done.

Hudson's room was crazy messy. We made his bed, cleaned up a ton of toys. We got rid of a few toys, but I may be sneaking in to get rid of some more.

So there you have it Days 1 through 3... already things are looking much better around here. And I made sure the kids made their beds this morning and picked up their toys. Hopefully we can keep things in a little better order.

Training for a 5K in 4 weeks

Just click on the image and it will take you to the website. 

Yep, I am crazy. But I've decided to do it. There is a 5K on April 27th and I'm going to run in it. I've lost 28 pounds so far this year, but I've gotten bored with my routine and need another boost. So this is it. I've completed Day One! It was great. There is no way I could have just gone out and run a 5K today, but what they had you start with was just perfect. I did about 2 miles in about 30 minutes. Just a nice easy pace of running and walking. Looking forward to improving my endurance and being able to meet this goal. 

Wish me Luck!