Sunny Easter Weekend

Nice visit with my Mom and David on Friday.

Finally meeting up with my friend Kerri and her adorable little girl, Kiera

Painting eggs. Some of these photos look almost the same, but if you look closely at the egg crate you will see they are different eggs. Ruby picked up and held each little egg and begged me to take a picture with every single one. "Oh, PLEASE, Mommy..take picture!" Too too sweet.

Beautiful sunshine called for an impromptu egg hunt in the yard Saturday. And yes, that is a marshmallow peep hanging out of her mouth in that one pic. 

Easter brought even more sunshine...and lots of photo ops! Love how she grabbed the dog for the shots in the lawn. I didn't even pose them!

All dressed up...just came back from a lovely service at Jeff's parents church.

We had Easter dinner at my cousin Angie's. So much fun. The kids played, hunted for eggs, and disappeared into the playroom for and hour or so at a time. The parents caught up and enjoyed talking and watching old family movies. One special moment was some footage of my Gram that they took 10 years ago. What a special moment to see my Gram alive and happy again. Brought tears to my eyes...but good ones. The cupcakes were my creation. So love creating pretty little yummy things! But after next weekend (one more bday party yet for my brother and nephew) the baking will come to a halt and we are back to healthy eating!

Such a lovely weekend. We are so grateful for the big, beautiful family we have and for the friends that have touched our lives. Hope you all had an incredible weekend!

Happy Easter!

First visit this year to the Easter Bunny. Taken at a local farm.

Easter egg hunt was fun for her this year.

Hay ride on the way too and from the egg hunt area.

It was such a clear beautiful day.

Not a great shot of me, but I love her sweet face here. That's the "I love my Mommy" face!

And a self-taken pic of mother and daughter on our special afternoon. Such a nice day with my sweet love.

Party Details

Table was pretty in pink! Decided on plastic table cloth and paper plates at the last minute since there would be a couple 2-1/2 year olds coming. Miniature pink roses were the centerpiece with mini tulle balls tossed here and there. Also scattered little fabric, tulle, and glittered butterflies all over the table and at the last minute sprinkled glitter all over the table (except on the plates and cups, of course). Rented 10 white chairs and dressed all with a 6 inch satin bow. Found a real porcelain tea cup set for kids for only $20 and used some from my own collection for Ruby and the bigger kids. Not a single cup was broken. The girls were all so dainty and careful. They all tried the pink tea, too!

The toad stool cake. Certainly wouldn't be in a bakery window, but my best one to date! I was real pleased and so was my little miss. "And NOW we eat cake?" was asked about 100 times b4 we actually got to it. When it was finally time, she inhaled both a cupcake and a piece of the cake and had a bit of a tummy ache. (Yea, I know, where is that sugar-nazi Mommy I used to be?)

My pink cupcakes were a hit. Pic is blurry but I found little candy butterflies to sprinkle here and there. They also loved the fairies. Many took the picks home with them! Too cute. On the 3 tiered server I had tea sandwiches for the kids. Butterfly shaped peanut butter and jelly, flower shaped turkey & cheese, and tulip shaped cucumber and cream cheese.

Made tulle curtains, bows, and balls to hang everywhere.

In the kitchen I had snacks of veggies, fruit, and pink popcorn. Lunch for the adults was also served in the kitchen. I had spinach quiche, salad, and sandwiches. Oh, and pink popcorn was worth all the hassle.   Everyone loved it! Bad thing: hard to stop eating it!

For the craft, we did the star wands. Plain wooden wands I got at Michael's (for like .25 cents each) that Ruby & painted. Then the kids put their name on it and added glitter glue and loads of sticker gems. Finished with curly ribbon.

Here are pics from party no. 2. Don't have many cause we were just so laid back that day I forgot.

Nephew Ryan and Rubes

Table set with Saturdays pink leftovers.

Ruby gets a super cute Jeep from my mom and Uncle Jay.

Got Fairy Secret Barbie and a really "dude" looking Ken doll with (Beiber hair) from my Dad. When did Ken get a make-over? He looks like he should be named Carson or Landon or something. It's just really hard to think of him as Ken with that hair, lol! But anyway, Ruby was engrossed with her new couple.

Special little fondant covered cupcake I made for Ruby so she had something to blow out again. The place card was a DIY from Chickabug on Etsy. I just printed them out, folded, and wrote each fairy princesses name on it.

Pretty happy to be sung to again. It was like the longest bday celebration ever!

Love this excitement. Would do it all again just to see her light up. In fact, I am already cooking up some good ideas for next year. :-)

And now I leave you will my collection of tulle balls. Are they just the girliest? 

Hoping to have the professional pics to show you soon so check back!

A Very Fairy Weekend

WHAT a great weekend! So so much fun. Two Parties. Lots of food. Tons of sweet treats. Adorable little kiddos everywhere. One very happy (but TIRED) birthday girl. It rained like crazy on Saturday so no bounce house, but it sure didn't dampen our fun over here. I posted a lot of these on Face Book already, but will post some here, too. Don't mind my pics. They are blurry and I didn't get the cake shot with her blowing out the candles or any with Rubes and I together. It was just so busy and I knew that my friend, Sarah, was taking some so I didn't worry too much. Sarah is studying photography at Hallmark and just happened to ask me the week b4 the party if she could shoot Ruby. I was like "OH, do I have a photo op for you!" So excited that she agreed. God bless her, she was supposed to just pop over for a bit and ended up staying ALL DAY. I am DYING to see the pics!!! Anyway, here are mine to share...

Pre-party Ruby went up and put this dress up stuff on. It was so cute and she was all excited.

A little later we put on her official fairy costume for the day and she was even MORE excited.

Love this pose. She was so into it.

Loved the sweet halos with the trailing ribbon. Whole outfit from www.haloheaven.com and I can thank my dear pal Jules for the awesome recommendation!

Ruby and her friends. So sweet! This is just half of the group. They were the first ones there and we were lucky to get a group shot in b4 they were off having fun. It was like a photo shoot in there with all the moms clicking away their cameras like paparazzi!

Love this shot of Ruby, Ava, and another Ava doing crafts.

The star wand craft was a big hit. They were all bling-ed out with "jewels".

Party table

Face painting

Butterfly faces were everywhere.

Bff having a little cupcake icing.

Girlies enjoying butterfly cookies, flower sandwiches and pink tea.

Adorable little girls everywhere.

Pinata time! So funny cause these girls were so dainty that it didn't even have a dent in it after they all went twice! We ended up making tears with scissors and dumping it all over for them! Of all the many choices, Ruby fell in love with this horse. She was so cute in the store...walking it by the string (as if on a leash) saying "come on, horsey!" So to make it match more with the theme I made a pink paper saddle and put on some wings. Now it was a flying fairy horse!

One very tired party girl takes a brief nap in Grandma's arms.

With the kids gone, Mommy and Daddy were ready for their turn to party.

Cousin Kelly, myself, and my Mother in law, Larae having a nice glass of wine to celebrate a successful party.

Cousins Hannah and Ruby get a 2nd wind and have a ball together.

A very animated Ruby bouncing around at the end of the night.

Party details will be in the next post and hoping to have those professional looking shots from Sarah this week. For now, the fairy clean-up committee (ie: ME) is on a mission to get this place de-pinked and back in order.

I Exciting!

That's what Ruby told us a bedtime tonight.  Not "I'm excited" but "I exciting". So cute. She went to bed very late tonight. Grammy and Pappy are here and she was having fun with them...plus all the excitement going on....who can blame her? Heck, just looking at all those yummy treats and knowing she can't have them till tomorrow had to be hard!

It was a very busy day of baking, cleaning, baking, decorating, and baking some more. I'm really exhausted but feel good in knowing that most everything is done and tomorrow will be easy. Still praying for a nice day. The weatherman is predicting rain but I don't want to believe it yet. If only we could have a few hours outside later in the afternoon. But really, we will have a blast either way.

Our sweet girl is happy and excited and we can't wait to make it a magical day for her and her friends! It's gonna be great!

I Did It!

I am happy to report that I actually melted white chocolate successfully. It took like 5 tries but I finally made a HUGE bowl of pink popcorn for the party. Whew. I was beginning to wonder what ancient code I had to crack in order to figure that dang chocolate out. I tried many tips I was given and in the end I went back to the microwave, put it in at 1/2 power and only nuked for 15-20 second intervals. It never got liquidy enough to drizzle so I clumped it on and mixed it up, eventually coating it good. Was a busy bee today and the place is looking good! Excited!!! Ruby is too. She's been singing the bday song to herself for 2 days so clearly she is ready for the party!

Princess Jasmine

Ruby's last birthday presents of the day. Two books (which she promptly dropped on the floor), a Jasmine costume, and Jasmine doll. She was pretty happy. Especially with those shoes.

She loved the crown, too. It was so cute - she didn't want to take it off and wore the whole ensemble all night - while we ate, watched a movie (Tangled), and right up until bed. I LOVE this color on her.

Shaking hands with Jasmine. Too cute. 

She did, BTW, end up liking at least one of the books we got her. The one about SHOES. Of course!

So that is the end of Ruby's ACTUAL birthday. Stay tuned for pics of the party! We are so close now and just about ready. Got so much done today. Rubes & I made butterfly cookies, I ordered her balloons, ordered a sandwich tray and did all the grocery shopping. Jeff and I cleaned up her playroom and moved some things around so tomorrow I can set up what will be the "Craft Station". Hmmm...still need to make up signs.  Then there are chairs to rent or borrow, bows to tie, tulle to hang, cakes to make and glitter to scatter! Just a few more days!