More Party Planning

The RSVP's are coming in! So far, we have 6 + Ruby. Invited a dozen. I used Evite and did not do a personal, hand written invitation. It really went across the grain for me to do this. I SO wanted a beautiful fairy card with sprinkles of pink glitter inside. But the thing is this: I need to get a head count b4 the end of the month in order to get a tremendous deal on the tutus and wings from Princess Party To Go. Plus, I only have email addresses for all Ruby's school mates' parents. It was just easier. And time saving. Figure I have a lot of years yet to do fancy invites.

Booked the make-up artist who will do fairy princess face painting, body glitter, and fairy "tattoos". She is really great. I met her at our cousin Hannah's party (the kitty cat theme) and she did SUCH a great job. She sings and plays games with the girls and makes balloon animals. I got the craft part covered, too. I found wooden star wands at Michael's and Ruby & I painted them pale pink, purple, and green. Ok, I did most of them but she helped a little until bored. :-)  Anyway, I have markers for the girls to write their name, 3 colors of glitter glue, and lot of sticker gems to decorate their wand. I also have fairy foam stickers for another craft project. So. So. Excited. Already it is everything my lil fairy princess would dream of!

I found super cheap, 6" pink satin ribbon to tie back the chairs and make pretty drapey things here and there. Still need to get pink tulle and flowers, but there is time. This party is coming together nicely. Because this will be a girls only, small tea party, we are doing a big cook-out the next day for the family. Gonna be a great weekend!

Ruby saw me looking at the blog yesterday and wanted to see. I showed her the previous post and told her these are some of the ideas I had for her fairy party. She was so excited. "I LIKE pink!!!" Yes, I know, honey. We are gonna have lots of it! She saw the toad stool cake and said "OOOOOO! Look, Mommy! Toad stool!" I said do you like that? It's a cake! Well, she liked it even more after that so it looks like I may be attempting that after all. But, in pink, of course.

Passion for Pink!

...AND party planning! This is just one of the many inspiration pages I've been eyeballing. Getting ready for Ruby's birthday party has been such a joy! I really think I missed my calling. Just LOVE all the planning, love the details, love finding cute little things or interesting ideas. Been crafting, painting, shopping and making things like crazy. Completed her fairy box/playset and all 7 fairies. Even with my limited skills as a painter, I think it turned out super cute. I did a glittery little flower box, too, to present her my tiny little tea set I had as a child. Can't wait to see her face when she opens it! Oh, and I found an ADORABLE country cottage at Walmart for $24.50!!! Was looking for a fairy house of some sort but all the really cute wooden ones were super expensive. I have to repaint some of the furniture to match the rest of the fairy village, but it's really sweet and the price was unbeatable. Need to spray them all with a gloss coat yet then I'll post pics. For now, here is more drool-worthy party inspiration:

Now if I hadn't already chosen pink and white for the theme (and made stuff to go with said theme) I would have chosen this color palette above. Is this GORGEOUS or what? Love, love, love the mix of colors and all the creativity that went into it. But, alas, not this time. I will, however, steal some of their great ideas. Like the pink marshmallows and candy in glass jars and the paper flowers glued on the twigs idea. And MAYBE the toad stool cake...if someone else makes it. I'm ambitious, but not sure I want to be THAT ambitious!

This is more the color scheme I want...with loads of glitter and flowers.

Love all the white and pale pink.

The girls will all get a tutu the color of these pom pom balls. Everything here is from a gorgeous shop called Heart to Heart.

Pink marshmallows with hibiscus. Recipe here. Looks amazing, but I have 2 different pink marshmallow recipes to try. The other is more simple so I think I'll give that a go first.

Pink popcorn made with white chocolate.  See it  here.  Cute. Cute. Cute!

Beautiful fairy wreaths. I SO want to make these, but I'm on the fence. May be cheaper (and less labor intensive) to just get the fuzzy pink tiaras that come with the tutu set. 

Pink (white chocolate) covered strawberries...mmmm.

Fairy floss. Oh so pretty! A Persian treat called pashmak that is very much like cotton candy. Gotta have it!

Comes like this. Found a Persian grocer downtown and am going to see if I can get my hands on some.

Thinking of topping a cupcake like this:

Would love to try this yummy recipe, but not for the party. I asked Ruby what kind she would really like and she wants chocolate.  So chocolate it is! See foodbuzz for the fancy recipe.

So are ya hungry yet? My mouth was watering while looking up this stuff!

Where The Heck Have I been?

...you may wonder??? Well, it's a funny story, ya see. Mother nature decided to show a little muscle and rough us up around here. And the stars? Not in alignment, my friends. Crazy crazy week. Company stress. Lots of it. A 50 foot pine tree fell down on both our cars simultaneously last Saturday. Ruby & I under the weather again. Me more than her, thank God. Poor kid's been tossing and turning again which means little sleep for me. I wake up when she wakes up. She goes back to sleep and is bright eyed and cheerful in the morning. But I usually can't and end up waking at 4 or 5am. I guess it's all that is on my mind. But the worst part... was living without internet, cable, and home phone for 4 days! LOL, I'm not sure how I survived it! :-) Ha ha. But really, what DID we do before email? Blogger? GOOGLE??? Gasp! We actually had to look things up in a DICTIONARY or ENCYCLOPEDIA! Good grief. Our kids will really get a chuckle out of that one day.

Anyway, despite all this madness, we are fine. Cars are getting repaired, rentals are here to the rescue, slowly feeling better, and all the while the party planning has continued. Ruby - and planning sweet things for her bday - make me smile every day. Even on the crazy ones. In fact, one of the first things on my mind when I saw the cars was THANK GOD WE WERE NOT IN IT! Because we were tired and not feeling great we stayed home from dance that morning. I was gonna run errands but instead I dilly dallied a long while on the computer. So really, that lovely internet time could have saved my life! (Just go with me here). But really, the bottom line is: nobody got hurt. My Ruby is ok and her parents are also intact. Cars are replaceable. People are not. Just as simple as that. So we are getting all our estimates and doing what we gotta do but grateful it wasn't worse. Here's a few shots of the cars and house...

Here is the lovely tree that came crashing down on our driveway. At first glance, I thought it had missed my car. (If only I had pulled up a few inches!)

Landed smack dab in the middle of Jeff's car's hood. Poor pretty Mr. Benz. And only a year old.

Ripped down the cable wire, elec, phone, and net. Luckily, we still had power since it took them 3 days to hang the wires back up!

All the wires were attached to this chunk of the house (right hand corner) that is now missing. Still waiting to see how much $$$ damage that is.

Here is how low the tree split. Unbelievable that a little wind can do so much damage! Mother nature showed us whose boss, now didn't she?

Now THIS is what the back of my car looked like when I went around the tree for a closer look.

And this is after the tree was cleared out of the way.

 Not pretty. But who knows? Maybe after a new trunk and paint job my 5 year old car will look brand new again. Oh, and happy to report that Ruby's tricycle was completely intact. Glad to see someone will have transportation around here! :-)

And here is Jeff's car after the "Great Tree Clean-up". Actually, not as bad as we first thought. Doesn't appear to have any structural damage. Just banged up quite a bit on the hood. We'll see what they say when the estimates come in. Still waiting to hear back from them. Fingers crossed!

So that's where the heck I have been. Life gives you obstacles to learn and grow from. So by that measure it's been a serious growth period! And hey, it's all up from here! Next post is not such a downer. It's all about pink, and really, could there be anything down about pink?

Spring Preview

Nothing like a little coral dress with rhinestones (and matching shoes) to get a girl ready for spring! Rubes was absolutely gaga for the shoes. I am pretty crazy about them, too.

A very sweet friend gave me her Gymbor*ee coupon points last month so I got 50% off everything! Woohoo and thank you so much Nicole!!! Here are a few more things we picked up:

Gorgeous tunic top that also matches the above shoes. Picked up cute twirly pony holders to match, too.

LOVE this dress. Even prettier in person. It just says summer to me.

What I love best about Gymbor*ee is the cute matching accessories. Ruby was more excited about these than anything else.

But she DID, however, put them down long enough to look at THESE. Now I have a question for all you seasoned moms out there. What size to buy for summer if you are buying now? Ruby wears an 8 now. They fit her perfect with just a TINY bit of room to grow. The next size up (9) would have her tripping over herself but would they fit by spring and summer? I just couldn't decide so bought both. I will return one in a few months after I see what her foot is looking like. What would you have done? And how fast does a child's foot grow at almost 4? How much do they grow in a year? I have only one year and a half to compare it too and I don't know if this is the norm for every year.  So, hey, I am up for suggestion if anyone knows! Thanks!!!

A Taste of Spring!

What a GORGEOUS day! The kind that makes you want to abandon all house work and obligations and head to the park. So we did. Picked the little miss up from school, packed us a picnic lunch, threw her tricycle in the trunk, and off we went.

The park was just beautiful today. Snow on the ground in some places, but bare (or green!) in others. Almost a 60 degrees today. VERY unusual for Feb in PA! We LOVE, LOVE, LOVED it!

Ruby enjoying the swings. She can actually reach then now and get on herself.

So weird to have it warm out yet be able to play in snow. Ruby liked touching it, making hand prints, and writing her name in the snow with her finger.

Silly miss showing me her stretches from yoga class today.

Is this a gorgeous view or what? The lake looked so pretty lined with geese and seagulls. 

 And these are my favorite below. She had so much fun. Just being a kid doing silly simple things.

Touching the snow with her bare hands.

Throwing it up in the air.

Again and again.

Even putting it on her head.

Rubes found what was obviously the coolest stick ever. It had to come home with us.  She then came across this big puddle. I could tell she wanted to jump in it but was doing the "right thing". So I just laughed and said "ya know what, Rubes? Go jump in! It's ok if you get a little wet". (Heck, we were already muddy so who cared?) She was a bit hesitant, but in she went...

Such a fun day! 

Valentines

My sweetheart signing cards for her school friends Sunday night. Signed 16 of them altogether! I dotted her name and she traced them.

Thought she would bore quickly of this project, but instead she was oh-so-proud. It was really sweet.

Next we donned our aprons, pulled our hair back, and got baking. We made big heart cookies to share with her class. Turned out real cute but camera died b4 we got the frosting on!

Looks wild here, but was actually just being silly Vday morning. We exchanged cards over bfast and told her treats would be waiting for her till after school. This year she was happy to put on her Valentines tutu and, in fact, wanted to wear it to school. Hey, who am I to come between a girl and her frilly fashion? So funny...all the girls in Ruby's class had pink or red on with hearts or something girly. They all looked so darling. When Ruby walked in it was like a greeting committee. RUBY!!!!! They all rushed her, helped her with her coat, and oooed and ahhed over her outfit. The kids really dote on her cause she's the baby of the class. LOL, enjoy the fuss now, Rubes. You won't the littlest in the class next year!

What? A goodie bag for ME??? This is a face that sees chocolate.

Inside the bag... some Hersey kisses, a couple princess lip balms, one little book, and 2 dolls. She was a happy camper!

Had a great afternoon and then later, the 3 of us went out for sushi at our favorite local hang. A wonderful love day spent with the ones I love!

Fun in the City

Went down town on Sunday to see the Chinese New Year parade and have Dim Sum with some friends. The parade was short and loud, but still fun and worth seeing. The weather was much warmer than it's been, too. So nice to be able to be outside! Ended up being a really fun day.

Getting ready to watch the Parade.

Ruby's favorite: the red dragon

The Lion Dance in front of the fire station.

Ruby fell in love with this green umbrella. Was walking around twirling it all day.

Trying to get all the kids together and look at the camera at the same time was not easy!

This was taken at the Imperial Inn restaurant for Dim Sum.

Mommy and a very serious Ruby. She had fun, I promise! Maybe was sick of getting her picture taken again!

Love my silly bug.

And finally, a shot of all 3 cuties smiling together!