Six of Spaids

I have birthday parties on the brain. Two little girls in this house are having a birthday next month. Yikes! I can’t believe I will have a SEVEN year old. I’m so old.

Anyway, I wanted to do some catch up posts….so here’s a lot of pictures from their party last year.

*Disclaimer: I was about 6 weeks pregnant with Haddie for this party and a total space cadet. Way worse than usual. Also this was almost a year ago, so I remember nothing!

My mom finishing decorating the cake. She’s amazing.

The girls’ gift from us was a homemade sandbox! You can’t really read it (I’m a horrible photographer) but Will wrote “Happy Birthday Girls” in the sand.

Rainbow jello! Really easy, but took forever. And so yummy!

The food! We grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, and had chips, fruit, and veggies. I don’t know if you can tell (and I didn’t take a picture) but the fruit was a rainbow: strawberries, cantaloupe, pineapple, honeydew, blue-dyed pineapple, and grapes!

Turned 2!

Rainbow balloon banner! Seriously so quick and easy, I was shocked.

Hubby grilling.

The sandbox was a huge hit, and the kids played in it almost the entire time.

My parents. They were (and are always) such a huge help. Love them.

More sandboxing! And a rainbow umbrella :)

The desserts! We had rainbow twizzlers, rainbow popcorn, cake balls, cake, and rice krispie treat “paintbrushes”. (Sorry there aren’t any better pictures!)

Cake balls!

Since it was an art party too, we had two crafts. First: soap bubble painting! It got a little out of control, the bubbles are just supposed to come to the top of the cup and then you pop them on the paper.

Helping Libs.

Then we made handprint canvases (they were kind of lame, but we had such a wide age range of kids it was hard to decide what to do). I love Ben’s face here.

Time to wash hands!

Birthday girl!

The cake!

Birthday girl again.

Anthony & Haley

Benner

Grandma and Grandpa

Will and the birthday girls

So fun.

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Not pictured: so many things. Ha! I had a sign out front that I forgot to take a picture of…and we took 544 pictures, so by narrowing it down to 24 pictures for this post I left out some. A lot of the pictures are of the same things, too. And we had almost everyone take their picture in the frame. And holy poor paragraph and sentence structure, Batman.

I also had many more ideas, that just didn’t happen. If you want to check out my Pinterest board for the party, you will be ridiculously inspired.

Here are some pictures from his actual birthday:

Waiting in line to pick a doughnut.

“I get to carry the box!”

He looks out of the corner of his eyes all the time, love this one.

(Completely unrelated! He might need a haircut here. Also. Stop judging me. He has a wicked cowlick. He can’t have a straight part. He gets it from Will, blame him.)

Yum!

It was customer appreciation day at Jimmy John’s, so we got four subs for $4…appropriate for a fourth birthday, no?

Then that night we left to drive to Iowa…more to come!

xoxo

I promised more, didn’t I?

Here they are!

I knew we were going to do a painting project, and I didn’t want anyone’s clothes to get ruined (AND I’m so over the traditional favor bags, and I thought this would be a practical and fun replacement. I’m not sure all the kids felt the same way!) so I decided to make aprons for the kids. This is an example of how I really don’t remember much of anything. I first went to my craft room, found a pattern from my grandma and looked it over. I love this pattern, because she made one for Charlie when she was 2. However, it was just too involved for what I needed. So then I started searching on the internet for a quick and easy apron for kids. Found a couple of different patterns for dishtowel aprons and decided on that. And then….looking through my pins found that I had one pinned the whole time.

So here’s my pin:

I didn’t follow the exact directions. I really wish I had used my serger (that I don’t know how to use…or even approach). Nevertheless, I’m very pleased with how they turned out.

I do wish I had made the ties longer. I used my kids for the sizes, but I messed up somehow because they were all too short and had to be knotted not tied. I was so worried I was going to run out of the rope stuff I used…and I ended up with an extra spool. I searched all over for ribbon I wanted for these. No luck. This is after going to 8 or 9 different stores looking for towels I wanted/could afford! I ended up getting them from the very first store I went to. I would have rather had a towel more like the pin.

The part the took the longest! I appliqued each one with an initial. It was worth it, though, it’s my favorite part.

Next up: I really, really wanted to a bunting (banner) for Ben’s party. I just love them and have never made one. I thought I was going to make one out of fabric, but I used scrapbooking paper and I am in LOVE with it. Every time I see it, it makes me happy.

Here’s the template I used:

This is going to sound totally entitled and awful and everything like that…but I really could have used a photographer at the party. SO many things didn’t get photographed, and if they did – not well. Considering we’ve never even had family pictures by a photographer – this was not even a remote possibility. Oh well!

Here is the only picture of the bunting at the party….my poor husband in mid-sentence. I purposefully made it in colors that didn’t exactly match…

So I could put it in Ben’s room after the party. I love going in there and seeing it. I will definitely be making more of these.

I put the leftover on the door, I doubt I’ll leave it there but it’s fun for now.

And finally: the crafts we did at the party!

Elizabeth

Benjamin

Charlotte

I think the butterflies would have been better for an older crowd…but oh well. It was fun!

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That was long! Thanks for reading!

:)

*I know it’s user error, but I am have SERIOUS issues publishing this post…so if it seems choppy/slapped up here….it’s because I’ve done it three times. Ugh!*

So, awhile back Valerie* at One Sassy Housewife issued a Pinterest challenge. I (belatedly) accepted….it was silly not to because I was planning Ben’s party and almost all of my ideas were pinned. Winning!

*Life is weird, right? Valerie was actually on a floormate my freshman year of college here. After my sophomore year I dropped out/got married/pregnant. After a little while…we moved to Colorado. We went to a local Nazarene church. And lo and behold, there was a guy there who looked just like someone I used to kind of know at school. (It wasn’t him, it was her husband – his brother. Are you confused??) So then I don’t know…Levi and Danielle moved back to Colorado, I re-met/met them and starting reading Danielle’s blog. And through Danielle’s blog…I found Valerie’s. Crazy, I know. Let’s all start singing….”It’s a small world after all….” OH! and before I knew all this I attended a Wednesday night Bible study with Valerie’s grandmother, Phyllis and she made a quilt for Benjamin when we was born. Whew.

Anyway, I’ll be sharing my challenge projects over the next few days.

First things first…invitations!

My inspiration:

And my interpretation:

I love, love, love how they turned out. Honestly, I wouldn’t have went this route if I hadn’t scored those jars for $.99, canning jars can be expensive! All told I probably spent less than $2.00 on these invites…so I’m pleased! It was something fun to do, plus the families can keep their jars and use them for something else! So there’s my first project…stay tuned for more! And pray I figure out my formatting issues….

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Thanks for reading!

xoxoxo

Benjamin -

In your words:

You are the best Ben I ever had.

&

You are my favorite Ben in the world.

&

I love you the most.

xoxo, Mom

P.S. These are sayings we say back and forth to each other.

Everyday.

Every age is my favorite. Three is no exception.