Cora's 6th Birthday Celebrations

Cora Jean is someone that loves a good party... which is fitting because she was named after my grandma that loved parties. Cora talked about having a birthday for months, so she was extremely excited when the day finally came.

We did a joint birthday party with my aunt and uncle. We stuck with the birthday brunch because it is fairly easy to do and Saturday mornings are a perfect time to have a party and celebrate without eating up the entire weekend. We had bagels, smoked salmon, fruit, veggie tray, and a variety of drinks.

On her actual birthday, Ben took Ida on some jobs with him so I got lots of one-on-one time with Cora. After school, we stopped by the elementary school plant sale and headed over to my sister's for dinner with the family.

For Cora's friend party, we just did a simplified lunch version of the family party. I made a veggie tray, ordered some pizza, and made a big jug of lemonade. Cora loved getting to run around and play with her friends. She was excited to see each friend and ran around the entire time. Later that day, she told me she wanted to start the whole day over again because it was so much fun.

See Cora's previous birthday posts here: birth, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, and 5th.

Cora's 5th Birthday Celebrations

We're really stretching out Cora's birthday celebration this year. Not quite as long as last year, but we had multiple parties spread over a week. Cora loves parties and hanging out with people, so she has been having the time of her life with all of the family and friends and get togethers.

The weekend before her birthday, we had a joint birthday brunch with my aunt and uncle. We reserved the pavilion at a park near us so we could enjoy the outdoors and the kids could play at the nearby playground. It turned out to be really cold, so we were all celebrating their spring birthdays bundled up in our winter gear. We didn't let the weather get us down and we all ended up having lots of fun. We had a similar menu that we had at the birthday brunch last year (bagels, hard-boiled eggs, fruit salad, etc), but added in smoked salmon, parfaits, and coffee. I was able to make the day-of prep a lot easier by scheduling a grocery delivery and panera pick up early in the week.

Cora's actual birthday was during the week, so I took some time off work so we could take a little trip to the zoo and have lots of together time without feeling rushed or stressed. We brought some of our favorite cookie cake to share with her class and she asked me to make her a birthday shirt for her about an hour before school. She loved getting to share a treat with all her friends and getting to wear a crown for the day. 

We spent the afternoon just the two of us while Ida and Ben napped. As independent as she is, she always enjoys a good momma snuggle and uninterrupted chat with me, so it was perfect. That evening, my parent's had our family over for dinner. Cora picked the menu of spaghetti and angel food cake with strawberries. The girls loved running around with their cousin and enjoying the nice weather.

Saturday, we had a tiny party with a couple school friends and our next door neighbor. Cora loved running around with her friends and was so excited to have them over to our house. It started to drizzle towards the end of the party and Cora jumped at the chance to show her friends her room... until she realized that having that many people play with all her stuff made it a little messy. My mom said she saw her pulling toys out of her friends hands and putting them away because she wanted to keep her room tidy. We had a fun time and after everybody left, she told me "I wish my birthday could last forever!"


See some of Cora's past birthday celebrations here: 1st, 2nd, 3rd, and 4th

Easiest Cookie Cake Ever

This is the easiest cookie cake and my new go-to for celebrating birthdays!

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Buy two packets of the break-and-bake cookies. I used to buy name brand, but have found store brand is just as good.  Put both packets in a 9"x13" and bake in the oven at the suggested temperature for about an hour. Time may vary depending on your oven and the brand dough you buy, so I usually start checking it around 30 minutes to make sure I don't burn it. 

Optional: after the dough has melted a bit (anywhere between 10-30 minutes), I like to use a spatula to smooth out whatever creases there are.

Let it cool for an hour or so (I usually wait overnight) before you start decorating the top.

I use Betty Crocker Easy Flow Icing to decorate. I love the different nozzles and I'm slowly getting the hang of different ways I can decorate with it. This comes in a bunch of different colors and so easy to use.

Enjoy!

The Longest Birthday Ever!

Our family always jokes about spreading out our birthdays a week or so with our family parties and other festivities, but this year Cora wins the cookie cake for spreading her birthday out three whole weeks. We had some birthday celebrations the weekend of her birthday, but never got around to her family birthday party due to family members being out of town and me having too much on my plate to plan something.

Well we got our act together and had a little birthday party for her last weekend. I wanted to do something pretty easy since I'm a little busy these days working and momming. Tuesday, I called up and reserved the park near our house then ordered ahead everything we needed from Panera and Kroger Clicklist for a birthday brunch.  My girl loves balloons, pink, and all things party related, so I wanted to get a couple things to jazz the shelter up a little bit. We stopped by Target during the week to pick up some pink and white themed plates, napkins, table cloth, utensils, and balloons.  It ended up being too cold/windy for the balloons, but we still put out the table cloths and had the pretty pink plates and napkins.

We served bagels, fruit salad, hard boiled eggs, and various drinks. We had a homemade cookie cake for dessert. had everything loaded up in a cooler, large bag, and my stroller and it was easy to setup and tear down. It was pretty stress free party, so I definitely think the birthday brunch is here to stay.

We had so much fun with all of the celebrations and spreading them out was easier and less stressful, but I'm glad all of her birthday festivities are finally over. Happy birthday Cora!!!

Baby Shower Gift Guide

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With Cora's recent birthday, Ida growing out of her newborn stage, and tons of my friends having babies practically every other day, I'm feeling a little nostalgic about Cora's baby shower and thinking about all of those newborn goodies.  There is so much baby stuff out there that it is hard to wade through all of the options.  We always aimed to keep our baby stuff to a minimum, so I'm sharing some of our must have baby items to register for.

1. DIAPERS - We try to load up on Pampers, but Honest company diapers are always nice to have too.  They are so cute for little photoshoots with the baby... How cute are these patterns?!

2. WIPES - We're equal opportunity when it comes to wipes, whether it's Honest company wipes, Up&Up, Pampers, or Member's Mark, but it's safe to say that you will be using lots and lots of wipes for the next 2+ years and don't need to worry about the sizes like you do with diapers... so stock up on wipes!

3. DIAPER RASH CREAM - definitely register for diaper rash cream so you're not forced to run out to the store at first sign of a diaper rash.

4. BABY DHA - With my first, our physician was constantly telling us to make sure we give her some vitamin D... so go ahead and get it on your list ahead of time.

5. LACTATION PLUS - sometimes, breast feeding is hard.  It's different with each person and each baby, so it never hurts to have a little boost.  If you plan to breastfeed, it's nice to have these on hand to give yourself a little boost

6. FRENCHIE MINI COUTURE TOWEL - I got one of these for Cora and I love it.  We've used it for every single one of her baths for the last 4 years and it is still great shape.

7. LITTLE UNICORN SWADDLES - Ida was gifted these when she was born and they are the best. They're the perfect size and we're constantly getting compliments on the cute pattern.  My sister was gifted this swaddle set and I love that pattern for something a little more gender neutral.

8. CHILDREN'S BOOKS - you probably don't even want to get me started on the children's books I love (that's a longer post for another day), but I think one can never go wrong registering/gifting sentimental books.  Some of our favorite books are I Love You Forever, Giraffes Can't Dance, and On The Night You Were Born.

Another thing on our must have list before having our second child was setting up a bunch of subscriptions for a ton of our everyday products.  We love Grove Collaborative for a lot of our household cleaning products, The Honest Company for lots of our baby care needs, and of course Amazon Prime.

What are some must have baby items on your list?

DIY Heart Garland

It will come as no surprise for those of you that follow my Party board on Pinterest, that I love the look of garland.  I wanted to make some decorations for our Valentine's party coming up, but I did not want to spend any money.  This took me about 2-3 hours while watching TV, taking nursing breaks, and letting my toddler help me with the sewing machine pedal.  If I didn't have all of the distractions, I would guess it would probably take about an hour to make 8-10 strands of 5-7' of garland.

1. Gather old packaging paper, gift bags, and birthday cards or anything that you can find that fits in your color scheme.  The pink hearts are cut out from old Victoria Secret bags or birthday cards and probably would have looked good with some of my toddler's drawings from school
2. Start cutting out tons of hearts. For those of you that aren't as cheap as I am, you could probably purchase this heart hole punch and save yourself a lot of time.
3. Feed the hearts into your sewing machine.  Make sure they face the same direction.
4. Hang them all over the place and enjoy!

DIY Party Bunting/Garland

I made a couple easy DIY decorations for the pre-wedding parties and I thought I'd share them.  For the bachelorette party, I made the pom garland and tissue scrap streamer.  For the shower, I made the photo bunting.  I forgot to take pictures when I was finished, so these are just some quick phone pictures.

POM GARLAND

These are pretty common.  I knew how to do the larger tissue poms, so I just made them smaller poms.

1. stack four sheets of tissue paper

2. cut to rectangles (about 6"x9")

3. start folding the shorter length accordion style

4. cut the ends to points and little grooves in the middle

5. use wire (I used twisty ties for some) or ribbon around the middle groove

6. tie to longer ribbon

7. 'fluff out' the pom

TISSUE PAPER STREAMER

This is super easy and pretty quick.  I don't recall seeing these anywhere before, but I've seen similar things for sewing paper together for table runners.

1. cut tissue paper into squares

2. messily stack 2-3 squares and start sewing

3. feed tissue paper into the machine making sure to mix up the colors

PHOTO BUNTING

I wanted to display old wedding photos of the parents and grandparents of the bride and groom so I thought this would be easy and cost effective.

1. turn photos black and white (I used iPhoto, but would have preferred Photoshop)

2. crop a far and close version of each

3. print of 4"x6" prints

4. cut off the ends of the photo to make a point (I just eyeballed it)

5. sew to ribbon 

I just eyeballed adding the photos to the ribbon.  I also folded the ribbon in half when sewing.  If I was making this again, I would just use a thinner ribbon and not fold over.

Shower Invite

My sister is getting married so I'm throwing her a family shower soon.  I decided to make my own invites to make it a little more personal.  I came up with a lovebird theme and I sketched a couple of birds on a branch for the header.  I just scanned them into Photoshop, sized them correctly, added the words, and printed them off at Kinkos.

Worked my watercolor magic.

These were fun to make because each invitation is a little different.  I also got to play with different color combinations and strokes.

I also found this 'bird on a wire' washi tape to seal the envelopes.

I'm thinking about starting up an Etsy shop and it would include something like this and some other artwork.  It's still kind of a work in progress, but hopefully I can get that up and running soon.

Baby Shower Weekend

I'm still winding down from last weekend... and feeling a little spoiled.  I had two baby showers and some friends and family that came in town so there was a lot going on.  I took Friday off of work to hang out with Jazz.  We went out to breakfast, hit up Ault Park, and relaxed around the house until we had happy hour at my parent's house.

Saturday, Jazz and I took Clove to the dog park, chilled around the house, then went to my first baby shower.  This shower was a combination of my high school and college friends.  The shower was full of great food, fun games, cute decorations, and good company.  I wish I would have gotten more pictures with people at both of the showers, but I forgot to ask.  (All Saturday photos are courtesy of Jazz.)

Tissue poms, paper straws, mimosas (not for me), toddler picture of me/morphed picture prediction of the baby/toddler picture of Ben, and strawberry lemonade.

Fruit skewers and the best carrot cupcakes ever!  ...seriously.  I won't even admit to how many of those I had.  This was just some of the good food that was there.

After the shower, we hung around at my parents for dinner and a little sleepover.  Everyone went a little picture crazy in the evening... people love the baby bump!

Colleen, Margaret, Me&Baby, Celia, and Jazz

Mom, Celia, Me&Baby, Vicky, and Kathy

My Mom's friends threw a shower for the baby on Sunday.  There were lots of people there.  That shower also had great food and company.

Me&Baby with da Momma

Welcome Baby!

I had a great weekend and feel so blessed that my baby is already surrounded by people that love her so much!  Less than a month to go until we finally meet our baby...