Clara's 4th Birthday

In April, Clara turned 4!  She wanted a Peppa Pig Tea Party, with princess dresses :)  So, that's what we did!  All of her neighborhood friends came over and we ate lunch, played musical "muddy puddles" (brown felt cut out like puddles), freeze dance, pin Peppa's face on her body, and then each of the kids got an umbrella so we had a big parade!  Overall, I think it was a successful party for our 4 year old princess!

Will Turned 6!

How is my baby 6?!?!?!  We had a super fun Star Wars party with a bounce house shaped like a birthday cake, homemade root beer, lots of junk food, friends, and a soccer game to celebrate!  Happy birthday to my sweet, tender-hearted, helpful, sensitive, and loving boy!

Clara's 3rd Birthday

Last week our spunky little princess turned 3!  Right now, Clara is really into Honey Lemon (from Big Hero 6) and, since Bennett got a Rody for his birthday a month ago, she has been obsessed with that too!  Since then, she has been talking nonstop about her Honey Lemon birthday party and the pink Rody that she hoped to get.  So, for her birthday, we celebrated by making sure she'd get and do all of her favorite things!

We started out the day by letting her open presents.  Needless to say, she was ecstatic about her new pink Rody!  I also made her a Honey Lemon purse (complete with chem balls inside of it), and she got a new dollhouse, some Big Hero 6 figurines, a Frozen keyboard, nightgown, and books.

Then, later that day, the festivities really began!  Clara LOVES the mall.  If you ever ask her what she wants to do, or where she wants to go eat, she will always say the mall!  So, that's where we went for her special day!  First, we got lunch at the food court, and Clara ordered her favorite: ramen.  Then, we went and let the kids play at the super fun play place, and then I took Clara down to a salon and she had her very first mani/pedi!  It was so cute watching her get her nails done!  She absolutely loved it!!!

After the mall, we came home and ate cake (which is supposed to look like Honey Lemon's purse) and ice cream.  It was such a fun day!  Happy Birthday to my girl who is full of personality!

Bennett's 1st Birthday!

Almost a month ago, my baby turned 1!  And, while I feel like it has gone quickly, I also feel like he's always been around, so it seems weird to me that he's only 1.  Does that make sense???  Probably not.  But, anyway, to celebrate, we had a Doraemon birthday party!  Doraemon is a cute, little, popular, Japanese character whom we have collectively decided that Bennett should like :)  So, we (and by that I mean Peter) made a Doraemon cake and we decorated with Doraemon toys and balloons.  Then we ate some cake, and tada!  Easiest party ever!  Happy birthday to my lovable little Benny-boy!

William's Ninjago Birthday Party

The other day Will turned 5 years old!  Crazy how time flies!  Lately, Will has been really into the cartoon, Ninjago, which combines two of his favorite things: ninjas and legos.  So, of course, we had to plan a Ninjago birthday party.

And we had a lot of fun.  It was really easy and low-key, but the kids loved it.  Win-win.

We started the party by ninjafying (like that word?  totally works) all of the kids with handmade ninja hoods as they came in (I'll share a tutorial soon!).  

The first party game we played was a little chopstick race.  We got these awesome ninja chopsticks and gave each kids 5 pieces of cereal in a cup.  They had to pick a piece of cereal in their chopsticks and run it across the grass and drop it into an empty cup, and then go back and repeat until they'd done all 5 pieces.  This game was actually a little tricky for the younger kids (the kids at the party ranged in age from 4-8), but they all had a fun time trying!

Our next game was using ninja throwing stars.  We used this tutorial to make each kid two throwing stars.  Then, for the game, we just lined them up and let them try and throw their stars into a bucket.  Easiest game ever and the kids totally loved it.  They kept trying over and over.

And that's pretty much it!  After the games we ate cupcakes with frosting the colors of the 5 Ninjagos, and topped with paper eyes that I found here.  (That's also where I got the eyes for the balloons and the banner that I taped to the wall.)  Then we opened presents and gave all of the kids some cool, inflatable ninja swords and let them go crazy.  

Happy birthday to my ninja warrior!!!

Clara's Minnie Mouse Birthday Party

Last week our little Clarabelle turned two years old!  I can't really believe she's two though; she just still seems like my baby!  And now that we have Bennett, I just feel like I have a big baby and a little baby!  But, as challenging as some days can be with this little spitfire of a girl, I sure do love her!  She can be so so sweet, she loves to help, and she is very affectionate--always wanting to cuddle or give hugs or be held and I really love that about her.

Right now, she's also very into Minnie Mouse and all things pink, so it only seemed fitting that we would have a Minnie birthday party for her.  But since I'm somewhat still in survival/adjustment mode with the addition of Bennett to our family and since Clara is only 2, and she hasn't really hit the stage of having friends that she actually plays/interacts with (other than knowing and recognizing them), I knew that I wanted to keep her party pretty simple and low-key.  So, in order to save ourselves from the stress of  hosting the party at our house, we decided to have it at one of our favorite places, Kiddie Park (you can read more about what we love about Kiddie Park in my Kickin'it in SA post here).

Having her party at Kiddie Park meant we really didn't have to do much at all by way of decorations, which is just the way this mama wanted it :)  And, we also decided to go really simple with the food since the kids really only care about riding the rides anyway!  We made a double layered strawberry cake (because it's pink!) with regular vanilla buttercream frosting that we made pink with food coloring and just placed the circles together to look like Minnie's head.  This is also where we simplified things--instead of having to rely on our artistic abilities to draw Minnie's face (and make black frosting, which I hate doing)--we just made a pink Minnie-shaped head.  And I personally think it's just as cute!  Then I googled "Minnie Mouse bow" and found an image I liked, printed it on card stock and just set it on the cake.  And voila!  A super easy Minnie Mouse cake!  We also made some extra marshmallowy, extra gooey rice krispie treats with pink sprinkles on top, but I forgot to get a picture.

For the plates, I just bought small and large black paper plates and stapled two small ones to each big one so they looked like ears.  Then I printed off more Minnie bows and taped them to the plates.  Add some mini (pun intended :)) water bottles with Minnie Mouse straws that we scored at the dollar store, and that was it for both the food and decorations!  The kids loved it and it wasn't much work at all for us.  Win-win.

While gathering our supplies at the dollar store, we found Mickey and Minnie Pez dispensers.  And with that, we had party favors!  We were originally going to make Minnie/Mickey ears for all the kids (most of Clara's guests were actually Will's friends, thus we needed Mickey for all the boys) out of card stock, but while wandering through the party aisles at Target, we came across these cute Minnie headbands!  Score.  Saved us some major time, but at $3 a pop, we decided not to get them for all 12 kids that were at the party and instead just got them for the girls and Will of course.  Bennett borrowed Will's for the picture.  Isn't he the cutest little sleeping Mickey???

I think my spunky little girl had a fun day!  And we had tons of fun celebrating with her.  Even Benny woke up and gave us a rare smile for our family picture (of course Clara isn't looking . . . but at least she doesn't look grumpy!)!  Happy birthday Clara-bee!