Look out world-she's 2!

Our little Paigers turned 2 this past Thursday. My mom has been in town almost two weeks helping me get ready for Baby Joshua, and my dad flew in on Thursday night. It was so special to have my parents here!

We had her party on Friday, so Thursday we mostly celebrated at home. We started with Mickey Mouse m&m pancakes on her new Mickey plate. I'm not really into character themes, but Paige loves Mickey Mouse, and I was able to buy all the supplies here in our city, so I figured why not.

Paige got to blow out candles several times-I believe in celebrating your birthday as much as possible, which includes blowing out candles for all your meals and dessert! 

Since we had her party the next day, we didn't have any cake for her to have on her actual birthday. But I refuse to not let her have some type of dessert to eat on her actual birthday with a candle-so we grabbed a piece of peanut butter fudge (my mom made and brought us a few pounds of it!!) and went with it. We accidentally put one candle on her peanut butter fudge and realized it halfway through singing, so we had to stop and start over!

Paige was pretty excited!!

Paige got a lot of presents this year from friends and family, so we tried to spread them out over Thursday and Friday. She loved everything!!!

We've been baking lots of cookies the past few days!

Friday we kept the celebration going with cinnamon rolls for breakfast. We played with lots of toys and got ready for our Mickey Mouse party that afternoon. My mom has almost every cake pan imaginable and is gifted at decorating cakes. So I was pretty excited she was here to make Paige's birthday cake!

We were in the States last year and had a big party, so this year we had a really simple party-just a few friends. But we had a lot of fun and Paige had a blast!

Paige wasn't too much into the cake, she was just all about the icing! 

After the party we went to KFC for dinner. It's a big holiday week here, so almost everything is closed-except KFC that is.

I almost can't believe I have a 2 year old. When she turned 1 last year I just couldn't believe it. That first year went SO fast. But this last year, so much has happened so even though I can't believe she's 2, this year didn't seem to pass nearly as fast as her first year did. 

If you stalk my blog, you might realize Paige is wearing almost the exact same outfit as her birthday last year. I love a good cupcake outfit, so when I found the same outfit in 2T last year, I couldn't resist.

Here she is last year!

And now!

Can I just say it is almost impossible to get a good picture of this girl. She is constantly moving!

I'll do a separate post to recap her stats and everything our little 2 year old has been getting into lately!

Happy Birthday Paige!!!!

THE Party

I've been preparing for Paige's first birthday party since before she was even born. I early on declared Paige a lover of cupcakes and polka dots! Having a baby girl born after Valentine's day is perfect! Last year I stocked up on lots of great stuff and was able to do the same this year.

I love how everything turned out! You just can't have too much pink right?

We had cupcakes, candy, chocolate covered marshmallows, veggie tray, and punch!

I found this idea on Pinterest to serve the marshmallows, and i love it! I just filled glasses with valentine's m&m's then placed the spokes inside. Turned out very cute!

I had so much fun being in america and being able to buy all the party supplies I needed. It almost made me want to throw regular parties just because of how much easier it is here.

Paige's party hat! Which she wore longer than I thought she would!

Her special cupcake!! It was just chocolate cupcake mix and homemade buttercream vanilla icing. My parents came down for the party, and my mom frosted the cupcakes. 

Here are a  few other decorations!

I originally printed out her monthly pictures to display to show her growth, but at the last minute I decided to make it more of a game for the adults. I put the pictures in random order and had the adults try and guess the month of the picture. I tried it out on Daniel and our moms first, and no one was even close, ha! The winner of the game (by far) was Daniel's Aunt-she got 9 of them right. It was a lot of fun!

Paige was a little unsure of what to do with all the people and attention. Sidenote, i've had her first birthday outfit picked out since before she was born. My mom bought this outfit when we found out we were having a girl, and I instantly loved it!

But she was very excited to greet her guests.

I was so excited/grateful that my friend Jen drove up from Dallas with her little girl to help us celebrate. It meant so much to me to have her at Paige's first birthday!

I love this girl and am so thankful for her!!

First up on the party agenda, was to give Paigers her first taste of chocolate! We sang to her and I helped her blow out the candle. Then she just stared at the cupcake for a while. We had 15-20 people standing around taking pictures, so I think all the attention kept her from just diving right in.

Overall she didn't eat too much, I think there was just too much commotion. I gave her a taste of icing and she was not a fan. Maybe it was just too sweet?

Oh well, there's always next time!

After cupcakes, we opened presents. It's funny to see the big difference between Christmas when Paige really didn't have a clue, to now where she was semi-interested. 

What birthday isn't complete without a giant cupcake??

Her favorite thing of course was the Puffs she got, mainly because she can recognize them anywhere.

After presents, we all went outside and played for a while. It was a beautiful day!!! 

Grandma and Grandpa have had this little tractor for a while, but it was the first time we got it out to play.

We tried getting some family pics, but the sun just wasn't working with us. oh well!

I may just need to work on the editing. But I think we all look good together :)

We were so thankful to have friends and family all come together for Paige's birthday party. Being in the states for her first birthday was so special!

After the party we all went to dinner at Slim Chicken's. It is one of our fave places!

Happy Birthday Little Cupcake!

love

laura

Girls Nite In

Daniel is travelling this week with a few friends, one of them being my friend's husband. With the boys gone, my friend planned a little Girls Nite In at her house last night for a few of us.

We had fudge brownies, rolos (from AMERICA!), popcorn, and hot drinks (it's been a lot cooler here lately).

My friend asked us to bring some old magazines to use for a craft project she had planned for us. I wish I had taken more pictures, because my friend had set up a cute craft station and also a mani/pedi station with lotions, towels, places to soak our feet etc....It was so cute!

Our craft last night was to cut things out of the magazine-words, pictures, etc...to make a collage of "Where are We now?" So the 5 of us cut thru magazines to make our collage of where we are now-our general feeling of where we are in life, how we feel about things going on, etc....then we shared it.

This was mine:

Yes, it is already hanging on my fridge. I had my nephews artwork hanging there, so it just made sense to add mine :)

The main theme for mine was Celebrate the Season. No matter where Father has me in life, or what part of the roller coaster (up or down), I feel like I am on-I want to celebrate whatever season He has me in. Easier said than done sometimes.

The cupcake, polka dots, and Valentine stand for our little girl, who is due around V day-and how much I want her to wear cupcakes and polka dots for life, ha! Then there's the pic of the sandwich because you better believe I will be having a huge lunch meat sandwich after our little one arrives. 

I just wanted to share this, I thought it was a great idea and craft to have at your next girls nite, or just to use as an icebreaker to get to know people better.

has anyone done this before?

love

laura

Gender Reveal Party

Ever since I became pregnant, I knew I wanted to do a gender reveal party. I had seen blogs and things on Pinterest of people who had them, and they looked SO fun! And with this being our first child, I thought it would be a great way to announce the gender.

Honestly, I wasn't sure if the party was going to happen. I made my appointment this past Tuesday, and invited everyone over to celebrate on Friday nite. I was SOOOO worried that the doctor wouldn't be able to tell the gender and we would have to postpone the party, and that my mom wouldn't have enough time to get things together for when she comes to visit NEXT WEEK! Seriously, the past several nights I've barely slept. You would think my focus would be more on finding out if we are having a girl or boy, ha!

So.............

Here are some decorations:

We had a spot for people to suggest baby names for us....some suggestions were: Amelia, Nicholas, Caleb, Ruthabell Lee, Cameron, Gabriel, and the kid suggestions were: Mom, Cutie, AC, Rhoda, and Sweetie. I loved that the kids got in on it too!

We had a board where people could vote girl or boy with lips or mustaches. Lips won 8-7!

I copied this idea from a few different gender reveal blogs. It's a board showing the Old Wives tales and I circled my answers.

I printed my belly shots and hung them up for people to see the progress of the bump.

Food Table:

Cupcakes, mint chocolate chip brownies, veggie tray, and grapes.

I planned to make White Almond Wedding Cake, dye the inside pink, and then we would cut into it to reveal the gender. I've made this cake several times in the States. However, last night was probably by far, the biggest disaster I've ever had in the kitchen.

Here's the batter:

I put the batter into 2 round 8 inch pans. Again, this is how I've always made it. I should've taken an after picture....because when I took the cakes out of the pans, they literally just fell apart into pieces. I thought I might be able to salvage them and cover it with icing, but I had time to make it again, so I did.  The exact same thing happened again!!! So I tried to put it all together like a puzzle, and it did not go well.

So I panicked. And then decided to make mint chocolate chip brownies instead, and decided we would just use the cupcakes I'd already made as the way we would reveal the gender.

Since I'd used all our eggs on the cakes, I didn't have any for the brownies! So I sent Daniel to our neighbors, while I started making the brownies (from scratch people.) The brownies were just coming out of the oven when our guests arrived. In the midst of the Kitchen Disaster 2012, we just moved the cake and covered it up. 

This is how it looked after the party....

AND we received our very first baby present!!! It's actually the only thing we have, cos Daniel and I haven't bought anything......but hopefully soon!

(our friend who gifted this to us actually didn't even know the gender yet, she was just convinced we were having a girl!)

Yay for gender reveal parties!!

love

laura