Happy Birthday Cake!

So, my Little Man turned two last week.  Yes, I know...it's weird to even say that.  Anytime we asked him about his birthday, he would shout "Happy Birthday Cake" and/or "Be Two" while holding up two fingers, plus his thumb since he couldn't quite get that tucked in. 

We did an ocean themed party, so after searching through Pinterest and seeing other Under the Sea parties, this is what we came up with!  Enjoy!

Yes, my husband is the best ever.  He carved a watermelon shark for me.  You can check out how to do it at www.watermelon.org.

 

I had these fish cut out and ready for guests to write notes on.  I also used the extra cut out fish to send out as thank you notes for the presents he got from his friends. 

B-O-Y Spells Boy

What happens when an English teacher has a baby?  An ABC shower, of course!  This was for one of my very best friends, H., who is having a baby boy in August. 

She loves word games, so we took that and made it the theme of her shower.  We used scrabble tiles (well, actually Bananagram tiles) to spell out things on the tables for an added touch. 

I also borrowed my 2-year-old's blocks for a decoration, since they went so well with the theme. He loves H. so I'm sure he didn't mind.

This is similar to the bunting I made for S. and her little girl, but with 1/4 yard fabric instead of 1/2 a yard.  See the longer, pinker version here.

ABC everything!  The watermelon I cut out with cookie cutters, the letter cookies are from Trader Joe's and the scrabble Cheez-Its were just perfect for the occasion.

Gotta have cake balls, right?

This punch was delicious.  Blue Hawaiian Punch, Sprite & lime sherbet.  It was beautiful and tasty!

Those Trader Joe cookies came in handy for one of our games too.  We let each team take as many cookies as they wanted, timed them as they spelled out baby related words in Bananagram style, and then told them they had to eat all the ones they didn't use before the time was up.  It was hilarious to watch them try to bite the letters into the letter they REALLY needed.  We let them try to justify all the words that maybe didn't quite fit the baby theme of the game, and it was fun to see the imaginations go wild!

Cutest baby bump!

 This game was one that L. found online and it was a hit!  It was a matching game and under each number there was a baby related word such as Poopy Diaper, Bottle, Contractions, etc.  When somebody found a match there was a corresponding candy bar for the prize.   One of the best baby shower games I've ever played.  Super easy to put together and fun to play. 

Print right on the sticky notes to make it super easy!  Here's a tutorial on how!

The ones we used for this game were:

Contractions - Good & Plenty

Nursing Bra - Reese's Big Cups

Bottle - Milky Way

11 lb. Baby - Whoppers

Lullabies - Symphony

Newborn - Sugar Babies

Giggles - Snickers

Pacifier - Ring Pop

Poopy Diaper - Tootsie Rolls

Epidural - Lifesavers

Dirty Laundry - Mounds

Family - 3 Musketeers

We also had people guess when baby was going to arrive.  The one that is the closest to the actual due date gets a prize!  Last time we did this, we sent and e-gift card to Coldstone.  You better believe that made them happy they guessed the right date!

I just want to give a shout out to L. & A. who made this SO much fun and helped me more than they will ever know!  Thanks, Ladies!

Congrats, H.!  Can't wait to meet the little guy!

Lemonade & Pinwheels

So, my good friend S. is having a little girl soon and I'm SO excited!  My friend and I threw her a baby shower and it was so fun thinking pink!  With my little boy running around sometimes all I think about is dirt, bugs & trucks. 

Totally stole this idea off of Pinterest. I used a little canvas so she can put it on a shelf in the baby's room. Canvas, ink pad & a Sharpie.  Easy Peasy.



She loved the idea of pink lemonade and pinwheels, so we went with it!  We did pink and yellow so it wouldn't be overwhelmingly pink, but still very feminine. 

The banner was just 5 colors of 1/2 yard each of fabric, cut into strips and tied onto some rope. My favorite thing from the whole shower. :-) Besides the mom-to-be, of course.

I {heart} paper straws.

One mom let her kids draw pictures on regular paper and then wrapped her gift in it. So cute! Especially loved the "Look on the brite side" written on there. Good advice when dealing with kids, right? (Can you tell I have a 2 year old right now?  Deep breaths...)

S. made these to give to everyone and they blew me away! They're so adorable. Sorry, I can't tell you how to make them because I have no idea!  My contribution was eating the jelly beans.  

Cake in a jar = happiness.  Especially when they make a cake mix that is pink lemonade flavored and happens to go PERFECTLY with your party theme.  Thank you Pillsbury. 

Congrats, S.!

Excuses

Sooo....it's been two months.  I know.  I'm bad.  I have some really good reasons for not posting anything during that time, like this:

The Disney Wonder, folks. 

Yes, that is a glacier on the right.

The Great Alaskan Lumberjack Show.  Coolest.  Thing.  Ever.

Or this:

Celebrating Independence Day at George Washington's house.  Yeah, we're cool like that.

Daytime fireworks over the Potomac.

American dream, right?  Free stuff.  Happy Birthday America cake. 

Backyard Show!

Oh, and did I mention I did two baby showers, my son's birthday is this weekend and I leave for Germany next week?  No big deal, right? 

Okay, now I feel better.  I'll get back to posting regularly now. 

Surprise!

A couple weeks ago D. showed up from work with these:

My pictures don't do them justice, but they were gorgeous!  He asked if I wanted to go to dinner with him, and of course I said yes! 

We went to this delicious restaraunt called the Euro Bistro and it was so good.  Best.  Food.  Ever.

Plus, the presentation was beautiful.  It really was like artwork on your plate.  Here's our dessert:

And yes, it did taste as good as it looks.

To add to the ambience of the place, they even had a lady dressed in German garb playing the accordian.  It was amazing.  She even came over to our table and played and sang "Zee Eensy Veensy Spider" for Little Man.  He was mesmorized.  She went to each table individually and played something for them.  It was both a little awkward and a lot of fun all at the same time.  Here is a video we "secretly" took while she was playing for another table:

So, there I was thinking that D. just wanted to have some nice German food (because he LOVES everything German...well, almost everything) and in the middle of dinner he said he had snuck a surprise into my purse.  Sneaky, sneaky.

It was a Milka chocolate bar and I should have been suspicious when I saw that it was conveniently in a resealable packaging, but I was oblivious still to what was about to happen.

Am I the only one that wants to sing the "I've got a Golden Ticket!" song from Willie Wonka right about now? 

That's right, folks.  D. got accepted to do a month of German language training IN Germany and we get to go with him!  Munich, here we come!  We'll be heading out later this summer and I'm SO excited! 

My next task: Hit up Pinterest for ideas on how to keep a 2 year old busy on an 8 hour plane ride...

Date Night Game

I was looking for a fun date night game idea we could do for our anniversary last Monday, but nothing was striking my fancy, so I decided to make one up!  This was SUPER fun and easy to put together.  I created a game board with my paper scraps and I love how it turned out!  

Each colored square represented a stop for our date, and each had a corresponding card of the same color with instructions of what we needed to do at that location.  D. had a lot of fun with this and was so surprised since he thought we were just going to dinner and then coming straight home.   Here's how we played the game:

I just picked places that were close by and that I knew would be fun to go to.  Here's what our evening looked like:

First Stop: HOME DEPOT - Game Piece

Task: Find something under $1 to represent you for the night.  This was fun because we had to actually have a reason behind what we got.

Second Stop: TARGET - Accessorize

Task: Find & purchase something to wear tonight.  D. got a fun watch and I got a bling bling necklace!

Third Stop: EURO BISTRO (quite possibly the BEST German food ever!) - Dinner 

Task: Eat delicious food

Fourth Stop: BEN & JERRY'S - Dessert

Task: Find an ice cream flavor to share.

Fifth Stop: BARNES & NOBLE - Game

Task: Purchase a game to play when we get home.  We love games!

To add another element of fun, we used scrabble tiles and picked letters before each stop.  Then we chose one of these three cards that told us whether we had to use both letters, either letter, or neither of the letters in our task for that location.  It was super fun to try to find something on the menu with both B & O in it...I know, great letter combination.  It was also fun to see D. try to justify what he was getting and how it went along with the letters even if it had nothing to do with them.

We had a great time!   Highly recommend this for a fun date!