DIY invite

super proud of my creation for Lovie's birthday party invites:

i used the free version of picmonkey (love!).

i'm so ridiculously excited to put the whole shebang together. should be a ton of fun.

if your child is coming to Lovie's party don't let them see this

The goody bags have been assembled and I cannot wait for the 29th!

 

There will also be Bubble Guppies party hats (and the birthday girl will be wearing a Bubble Guppies birthday shirt). I took some short cuts to save a ton of money but I think they're super damn awesome bags if I do say so myself.

 

Firstly, I got everything from Shindigz.com whom I discovered when I hosted my Fisher Price Playdate via HouseParty.com.

 

Then I google image searched high res Bubble Guppies artwork and found the image shown on the bag, downloaded it, and added the Thank You message. I then printed them out in color, cut them down, and glued them onto the plastic bags (from Shindigz for an insanely cheap price).

 

NickJr.com actually has a ton of printables so that's where I got the images for the hats (not shown yet). You can just assemble the party hats after printing and cutting, but i took it a step further and ordered super cheap plain party hats from, you guessed it, Shindigz and will affix the Bubble Guppies image to them.

 

For her cake, I'm just going the same route I did last year and getting a big sheet cake from Costco. Then I'll make lollipop sticks of some Bubble Guppies to stick in the cake- much like I did last year with her Team Umizoomi cake and Ni-Hao Kai Lan cupcakes (wow, do we need to back down from the TV much or what?).

 

Man, I cannot wait till the party day. And, bonus! I just ordered some new bras so maybe I'll be able to jump with the kiddies without injuring anyone! : )

All opinions stated here in this post and elsewhere on my blog are my own unless otherwise stated. None of the companies mentioned here even know I exist; I'm not being compensated to write this. We clear?

Great (playdate/party) day

Fisher-Price and HouseParty have a new fan in me.

I signed up with HouseParty a couple months back after being invited to a Pull-Ups party and one day I noticed via their Facebook or Twitter that they were offering a Fisher-Price Playdate Party for this past Saturday. I quickly applied and when it was announced that the hosts were chosen (I think there were 5K chosen across the States), I quickly logged into my HouseParty account and was beyond shocked to see that I was one of the 5K chosen.

Me. Hosting a party?

I love having people over, but just don't ever do it much at all because I'm kind of like Aly Sheedy's character in The Breakfast Club.

But I:

• invited some folk with kids and told them over and over again that I would not be selling anything, they would not be buying anything
• got a huge box from Fisher-Price and HouseParty full of some of the coolest toys
• unboxed everything (and made a badass Clubhouse for Lovie with the box)
• put the toys together
• rearranged the living room
• baked cookies
• and had a kick-butt party on Saturday

As the good old Fresh Beats would say, It was a great day!

WW: Zip line fun

from her party on the 7th.
want more from her party (and/or bday)? click here, here, here, or hey why not here!


linking up with Parenting By Dummies

Party recap

Lovie's 2nd birthday party was Saturday and it was a blast. Better than anticipated, really. Absolutely no regrets for doing this. Sure she's still very young and won't remember this party, but she'll have pictures and some video to help remind her. And she had the time of her young life (and we had very little set up and clean up to do!).

Look at that smile!

When we first arrived, she didn't really think much of it. We were just at Gymnastics (as she calls it). But then her first little friend from school came and she started getting super excited as she wanted to show her friend around.

notice her shirt? it's a big 2 with Team Umizoomi characters on it- matching her invite

They jumped on the trampoline. They dove into the ball pit. The ran around squealing and giggling.

After a bunch more people started to arrive, the teachers gathered everyone around a large circle and sang Happy Birthday to my Lovie who sat with a big grin on her face. Then they brought out a huge parachute and laid it down for everyone to grab a hold of and start to shake. And sing Happy Birthday. Then Lovie laid down on top of the parachute and everybody shook her back and forth. Then others joined in.

They played with puppets. One of the teachers hid a bunch of small toys around the place so they had to run around and collect them and bring them back. They brought out a buttload of pom poms for the kids to play with.

They hooked up a huge swing that all the kids were able to sit on and ride. (This was funny to watch because all the parents grabbed their cameras to take photos.)

They built a fort and played hide and seek (Lovie hid by covering her eyes with her hands- *cutest thing ever*) for a couple of minutes before hiding Lovie in the back room for everyone to find.  After a minute, they directed everyone to the front of the gym to wait as they brought Lovie out in a car.

And it was the cutest 30 seconds of her life. I swear to god. She was smiling from ear to ear as one of the teachers wheeled her out in circles while everyone clapped and the Beatles Birthday song played in the background.

Then the teacher got her out of the car and brought her to the cake (Team Umizoomified with little toppers I DIY'd), lit the candles, we all sang and she blew out her candles.

The kids ate pizza and cake and went back out to play for another 10-15 minutes.

The party ended with another sock puppet show followed by bubbles. Lots of bubbles (they brought out a fan and huge thing of bubbles they placed in front of the fan causing all these little kids to try to pop all the bubbles).

After the last bubble was popped, the teachers announced that all the kids needed to get their socks and shoes on so they could get a goodie bag. The party was over but hopefully not forgotten for a while.

Nearly two hours of smiles, giggles, laughter erupting from all corners of the room. It was pure fun, fun, fun.

I'm pretty darn sure we'll be doing this again in another year, too. Yahoo for winter birthdays keeping us indoors!

everybody craaaazy shake!

Tomorrow. Her party is finally tomorrow! : )

I designed the invites myself. Not too shabby, eh? Well I don't think they are (I mean did you see I got a photo of Lovie inside of Bot's belly-screen?!??). I think they're damn cute, tyvm!

Because I blurred it all out, the party is going to be (for little kids) at a little kid gym place...The place Lovie's been going to since October for her "Gymnastics." She loves this place. Loves it. So it was really fitting to have the party here. And the price really couldn't be beat- especially considering we don't have to worry about doing any kind of set up, clean up, entertaining, etc. Nope. We just show up with a cake. Play. Pizza will be delivered at 3:30 (party starts at 3). We'll eat pizza and have cake- after singing Happy Birthday to my girl, of course. Then it's back to play play play!

My header at the top of the blog? That's from the last time we were at Gymnastics. They have a ball pit which Lovie adores. Ack, she's going to have SO much fun. She always does but once she realizes that everyone is there for HER... eek! :) I can't wait to see her reaction.

I'm a bit nervous because every single person RSVP'd that the were coming except for a small handful of people so we're going to be at the max the place allows! And then there's the chance that some additional child(ren) will show up as my husband's family kind of does their own thing.

I can't worry about any of that, though; we'll just have to wait and see what tomorrow brings.

My main focus is Lovie having a blast... and somehow, someway getting some pictures of it all to help us remember. We can only do what we can do and the H and I have already discussed that we would swap taking pictures and playing whenever we could.  So fingers crossed we get some decent photos (I'd love to have a group shot of *all* kids but not sure how/if that could work with 20 kids.)

Eek, this is gonna be so much fun!!

• After work today, I pick up the cake (just a generic one from Costco... I made Millie, Geo, and Bot characters to stick into the cake. Was hoping to keep the cake in the car overnight but our temps are supposed to be in the 50s today!).
• Bottled water and juice boxes are in the hallway at home.
• Little goody bags assembled and ready to go (with a Team Umizoomi sticker- that I made- on them)!
• Pizza to be delivered at 3:30.
• Paper plates, napkins, plastic forks, candles all in a bag ready to go, too.
• Team Umizoomi "2" shirt ready to be worn by the birthday girl.

This is gonna be soooo much fun.

And then on Sunday, we get to go to a 1 year old's pizza party! So it's definitely going to be a busy weekend. How about you?