Hugs & Kisses

Valentine's Day is upon us and of course, if you are a mom, well, a mom like me, you will search for the perfect Valentine for your school age kids.  I always like my kids to have different and unique Valentine's.  The past five years, I started just creating my own and now, I sell so many in my Etsy store, Pink Sassafras.

Take a look at all of these different ones I have available at Pink Sassafras.  I can even create a custom one if you choose to go that route!

Do you have a little "Love Bandit" on your hands?!  What a cute way to say be my Valentine!  Available in boys and girls.

A little country Valentine fun!  Available in boys and girls.

For the cheerleader in your house...

Add a little colorful crayon fun to your Valentine's Day!

Bubblegum fun in more ways than one!

Butterfly Love...

Robot Time for boys and girls!

Owl Always Love You!

Perfect ones for your little boys!

Toad-ally Love You!

Just Valentine's!

Check out Pink Sassafras and find all your Valentine needs!

We're Having a 3rd Birthday Circus!

Okay, I should be heading to bed now but I decided I would share another fun birthday party with you!  This is all about Sullivan's 3rd birthday which was January 28, 2012.  Like I said before, I have entertaining themes.  I try to go for something a little different.  Circus sounded fun to me because her birthday is the same weekend as the real Ringling Brothers Circus every single year.  Enjoy a look in to Sullivan's 3rd Birthday!

This party was at the Chelsea Senior Center like other parties after.  It worked great for the space of our circus!

Here are her super cute invitations!  I found these on Etsy before I started designing my own.  I also purchased matching favor tags and candy bar wrappers which I will show you a little later!  To find these invitations, go visit the Print Fairy on Etsy.

Our little Circus Clown in her special Birthday Girl outfit.  I also bought this on Etsy but have no clue on the seller's name!  Sorry!  If you can see her cute shoes, I made those!  I bought a plain pair of white hi-tops from either Wal-Mart or Target and added polka dots in all the matching colors and then glitter on top of them.  Then, I used organize ribbon for her laces.

My niece is eight years older than Sullivan so she and a group of her friends thought it would be too fun to buy fun pettiskirts and have me make them shirts with their clown names they all chose.  They were our Clown Helpers for the party!

The boys (including my son, my nephew and their friends) wanted cool shirts too.  I tie-dyed them each a shirt and just ironed on a different circus act character to the front of their shirt.  Here is my son, Camden.  He was the Ringmaster!  His big ol' clown bow tie is hiding his shirt!

And here are my nephew (center) and his friends... David the Lion Tamer, Walker the Strong Man and Davis the Human Cannonball.

We most definitely had some fun circus games.  Of course, I did not do as well taking pictures during this party as I normally do!  Sorry for the lack of good pictures!  

Included in our Circus fun was a duck pond, can toss, color your own circus paddle balls, spin the wheel, basketball toss, face painting, ring toss and coin drop.  We also had a Kissing Booth!  No, not that kind.  The kind where you guess the number of Hershey Kisses and you win them all if you are the closest!!

Who doesn't love party favors?!?  We had cute circus containers for you to fill with your choice of favors which including bags of Animal Crackers, Circus Peanuts and Cotton Candy.  

A few more fun shots of the party room - the present table, the super cute circus tent photo booth, the circus sign and a full shot of the favor table!

We did have a real birthday cake this year.  We have an all-time favorite bakery we have always used for birthday cakes throughout our life - Louise's Cakes & Things in Hoover.  Although, the baker who used to do all our cakes opened her own business a couple of years ago and is no longer at Louise's.  But when we get cakes, we always do an enormous sheet cake and they make it half vanilla, half chocolate cake for us.  As always, they do special requests for us and they created part of her invitation as the cake.  I always send the invitation with my mom to the shop and tell them to do what they want!  They also, from my request again, made popcorn cupcakes.

Here are a few more from the food areas...

I hope you enjoyed this party as much as we did!  Thanks for checking it out!

Super Girl Turns Five!

Sorry for the long hiatus.  No excuses but the craziness of life.  I know Christmas was just a week ago but now it is time to plan birthdays.  Yes, our daughter's birthday is one month after Christmas.  Always makes it fun for me to decorate for Christmas, try and buy gifts for everyone and rack my brain for another zany and crazy birthday idea.  

As I was thinking for the upcoming 6th birthday, I looked back on past birthdays and felt like sharing them with you on here. So, enjoy this post... Sullivan's 5th Birthday: Super Girl.

For the past 3 years, we have always rented a large building where we live in Chelsea for Sullivan's parties.  My themes call for a lot of room usually and not being able to use our outside at home since the weather is quite cold, we have always loved this space.

This particular year was an entertaining birthday as Snowmaggedon or the Snowpocalypse happened on January 28, 2014... Sullivan's actual birthday.  Walking home with four kids in the ice and snow for two miles while carrying backpacks and grocery bags with birthday cakes was not our ideal plans for her birthday.  But never fear... the party was planned for two weeks later and the weather was perfect!

Enjoy a look at Super Girl's birthday!  

Her "Super" cute Birthday Invitation... designed by yours truly!  Check out my other invitation designs at Pink Sassafras

Welcome to the Party!

I spent days and nights tracing and cutting and creating and printing and cutting some more and ironing on logos and adding velcro to make each party guest a "Super" cute cape of their very own!  Girls got to pick from pink, purple, yellow or turquoise capes.  Boys got to pick from red, yellow, blue or black capes.  I just bought a bunch of felt at the fabric store and I created the logos from some clip art I had and and ironed each logo on every cape.  A little velcro at the neck and they were done! Along with the capes, each party guest also got a set of felt wrist bands with buttons on them.

Of course, the birthday girl had a very special shirt and cape of her own!

The location of the party was the Chelsea Senior Center.  Sound interesting?  It is so perfect for parties and is rented out all the time to Chelsea residents for such occasions.  It has an upstairs and a downstairs perfect for a party.  The upstairs is the party room... huge open room with plenty of tables and chairs so you don't have to bring your own!  Downstairs is a full kitchen and eating area with an island perfect for laying out a spread of food and munchies.  

I always rack my brain for cute and full activities or games for the children to do during the first hour of the party.  Of course, it all has to match the theme of the party.  This year, I had a building block station set up complete with super hero action figures courtesy of big brother's stash at home.  I ordered the big cardboard building blocks from Oriental Trading along with the large cardboard skyscraper decorations.

We also had numerous tables set up with glitter tattoos, hairspray fun, create a super hero mask, super hero sticker scenes and super hero fuzzy posters.  The masks, sticker scenes and posters were also all ordered from Oriental Trading.    

 The biggest success and one of the most enjoyable stations I set up was the "Silly String a City Scene."  I put a piece of black butcher paper on the wall and using colored chalk, I drew a city scape scene.  I bought 50 cans of silly string at the Dollar Store.  Sounds like a lot, right?!  Nope, should have bought around 100!  The kids loved this and the silly string was gone way too soon.  It made them feel like Spider Man shooting webs at the buildings!

When it came time for food and cake, we headed downstairs where all the adults were already hanging out!  My kids prefer cookie cake over regular cake so that is what we had!  Also, Sullivan loves her some donuts so I called my go to donut shop, The Heavenly Donut Co. and had them make me a couple of dozen of special super hero donuts.  This place rocks and always comes through for me and my crazy donut requests!  Oh and also a shout out to The Great American Cookie Co. for honoring my random cookie cake requests as well!

Mommy & Daddy hanging out with their "Super 5 Year Old!"

And of course to end the party fun... a few random shots from the day!

Thanks for checking out our "Super" fun and "Super" cute party!  Be sure to come back and look through our other parties from years past that I will be posting!

Disney in Numbers... Our Magical Vacation

In all honesty, Disney World had never been on my priority list of vacations.  I had never been in my 35 years and my kids had never been either.  Chris had spoken with a Disney Planner while at work and the ball got rolling for a Disney Vacation.  Mainly, a Disney Cruise but we also got to spend a day at Magic Kingdom.

To say I had a lot to buy and plan after we booked the trip was an understatement.  I am not a big "character" fan so my kids owned no shirts or clothes Disney related.  Actually, other than toys, they had nothing Disney... so the shopping began!

I thought it would be fun to share our experience with Disney in numbers!

35

Number of days left until the trip when we finally told the kids.  We kept this a secret for over two months which was hard but we did it!  A scavenger hunt on the last day of school led to surprises along the way and ended with a Disney Cruise video and a huge box of Disney surprises!

6

...in the morning.  The time we left the house for our trip.  Waking up at 5:00 was bad enough for me.  Waking the kids was even worse!  As you can tell, Sullivan was not very thrilled with being up this early and having her picture taken!

8.5
The number of hours we had to drive to get to Disney World.  Why didn't you just fly, you ask?!  I hate flying.  Like, really hate it so driving it was!

6-28-14

Our full day in the Magic Kingdom.  It was a long day but so worth it.  I was just as excited as my kids were and it totally lived up to everyone's love for it!

2

Number of minutes we waited to meet Elsa and Anna.  Thank you Fast Pass... that was the best choice I made the whole trip and to see the excitement on Sullivan's face was priceless!  I had kept meeting them a secret just in case Fast Pass lines were long as well!

120

Number of minutes people without Fast Passes had to wait to meet Elsa and Anna.  Again, thank you Fast Pass!

20

The longest amount of minutes we had to wait for any ride and/or character.  It was an awesome day! Chris and the kids are waiting to go on Ariel's Under the Sea ride.

13

Hours spent in one day at Magic Kingdom.  Our kids rocked!  They never complained, they never whined, they never once said they are tired.. nothing.  Nobody fell asleep in our arms and everybody had fun!  But by the end of the day, they were done!

6-29-14

Day we drove to Port Canaveral and boarded the Disney Dream.  So, so exciting!!!

14

Number of passenger decks aboard the Disney Dream

8612

Our stateroom number aboard the Disney Dream.  We loved our room and I have already asked Chris to book the exact same room on the next cruise.  I'm sentimental and think it would be neat!

35 (again)
Our table number at each restaurant.  The kids loved it because our table number was the same as Mama's age!

217 and 1115

The height in feet  and length in feet of the Disney Dream

26

Approximate number times Camden and Chris rode the Aqua Duck... Disney Dream's Water Roller Coaster.

13 (again)

Number of feet the Aqua Duck hangs over the open waters of the ocean without the ship under it!

765

Number of feet long of the Aqua Duck.

24

Number of cookies ordered from room service.  We would order 4 Chocolate chip and 2 Oatmeal Raisin (for me) every single night around 10:30 or 11:00.  Those cookies were huge too!

1

A few things fall into the number one.  This is number of escargot I tried.  I thought they were disgusting!  This is also the place our kids took in the Vegetable Car race aboard the ship.

6

Number of Disney Princesses aboard the Disney Dream.  Sullivan was so excited to get to meet Tiana, Ariel, Rapunzel,  Snow White, Cinderella and Belle.

7

Number of Disney movies we watched while swimming in the pool.

0

Number of times anyone got sea sick!  Thankfully, the trip was smooth sailing and no one had problems!  We did have back-up just in case.

1258

Number of pictures I took myself on the trip.

100 

Number of pictures the ship photographers took of our family!

I hope you enjoyed our Disney in Numbers!  This does not even begin to touch the pictures I have to share but thought this would be the most fun way to bring you our Disney Memories!