little farmer boy

February 7, 2017February 15, 2017Leave a comment

My nephew turned 2 and we celebrated with a barn raising!

Well we taped plastic to the wall to make a barn door, but that’s a lot like barn raising right? Along with our barn door we made farm-themed food; decorated everything with pigs and cows; and of course we dressed in plaid, overalls, and braids. It was a hootin’, hollerin’, good ole time out on the farm.

M LOVES tractors. And that’s an understatement. So we made sure that the kid had tractors everywhere, including wrapped in most of his presents. This was such a fun party to prepare for and of course Pinterest helped us with ideas along the way.

Check out pictures from M’s 2nd birthday party below!

This cake though! My sister somehow became a master cake maker without any training at all.

Our farmer outfits were so much fun to put together and wear for the day – I am in my late 20s and I still love to play dress up. I hope this might inspire y’all to plan and execute your own barn-raising!

monster bash

March 1, 2016Leave a comment

My nephew turned one last month and I was so happy to get to help out with the party. Themed parties are certainly the way to go if you ask me because a theme can give you direction for everything. Once you have chosen a theme you can more easily make decisions about the location, the decorations, and the menu. My nephew, M, is too young to have any favorite TV shows, movies, or toys so my sister just decided to have a monster-themed party for her little one-year-old monster.

We really went big with the monster theme; go big or go home, right? The best part of this theme is that all you have to do is stick eyes on everything and just call it a monster. Here are some photos from the party:

Olive-eyed monster sandwiches, monster fingernails, monster fingers, and Kool-Aid with eyes, this party was packed with monster food.

Monsters, monsters, monsters. This party was crawling with them. I hope you can be inspired to throw your own themed party!

ladies night

January 6, 2016January 7, 2021Leave a comment

Every Monday night I get together with my favorite gal pals that live here in the city. More often than not we keep it pretty low-key with just dinner and hanging out. In the summer we like to be active outside either swimming, playing tennis, or just going for a walk. However, to kick off the cold weather here in naptown I decided that it would be fun hosting a warm and cozy comfort night with the girls. I kicked my husband out (sending him away with dinner, of course) and we spent the evening having fun doing all things girly.

I set up stations throughout the house for us to easily transition from one activity to the next. Our night included Chinese food, crafting, a chick flick, and lots of pampering. I find it hard to pick my favorite part of the night; it was nice to stop thinking about our jobs and just focus on spending quality time with each other and having fun.

I had dinner ready for when the gals arrived. What says comfort food better than Chinese? I made my own adaptation of bourbon chicken (I substitute wine for the bourbon, so am I still allowed to call it “bourbon chicken”?). This is a surprisingly easy meal to make with the chicken simply cooking in the crockpot all day. I just serve it over quinoa and top it with some green onion.

After dinner (and a whole lot of chatting) we got in our comfy clothes and did facials. We used an avocado clay mask that I found at the convenience store. We also used Mary Kay’s Satin Lips product.

Finally, it was craft time. I decided to teach the girls how to make the card display frame that I blogged about here. For their frames though, I went ahead and got some extra decorative accessories to make the frames look pretty. They both chose to put their initial on their frame along with some bows and ribbon. In the end, I decided that I am going to have to revisit my own card displaying frame and decorate it more like Beth and Jade’s. While they were working on their frames, I painted my own initial (the letter L) for a window project that I have in the works.

Our drink of choice for the night was an adaptation of amaretto sour. I realized when I went to make the drinks that I didn’t actually have the sour mix, so I just mixed the amaretto with apple juice instead. We decided to call it an amaretto apple. We all thought it was very tasty.

After crafting, we settled down under our blankets with a fire going. Of course we had some popcorn and chocolate chip cookies to snack on and we watched Twilight. During the movie we also did our nails because what is a girl’s night without manis and pedis?