Emmeline's Third Birthday : Candyland

Emmeline's birthday is harder than it should be. It's December 12, so I have three choices as to what to do with Christmas: 1. Wait to decorate for Christmas until after her birthday; 2. Ignore it and pretend it isn't there and decorate around it; or 3. Try to incorporate it somehow. I guess I could add number 4: have her birthday somewhere other than our home, and I actually am possibly thinking about that for her fourth birthday (OMG FOUR NO FREAKING WAYYYYYY). But for her last three birthdays, I've tried to incorporate it a bit and also just complete ignore it. 

The one thing you have to know about Emmeline is that she is a sweets FIEND. She will sneak a piece of candy like a friggin' pro. She'd eat candy literally all day every day if I let her. She can have a cupcake, and then ask for "dessert" two seconds later. Hopefully she grows out of this at some point. O_o 

So Candyland was an obvious theme. We have the board game and the girls like it, but the theme was MOSTLY chosen due to her candy obsession. 

Almost everything was purchased from Amazon or Oriental Trading Company. I used a lot of the pieces from our games, too. And lots and lots of cellophane wrapping and balloons.

Chris 3-D printed these classic game pieces at his work and I painted them. They're basically my favorite.

Floor decals were really cute (and reusable!). I wrapped a ton of balloons in cellophane to make wrapped "candies."

Lanterns wrapped in cellophane to make wrapped "candy." Things wrapped in cellophane were about 90% of the decor.

 

How long did I spend hot-gluing gumballs and gummy bears to this E and 3? TOO LONG.

Super simple cake made to look KIND OF like a Candyland game board. I had big plans for this, but....um....yeah. Somehow I ran out of time. I can't imagine how. It's not like I EVER wait til the last minute for anything. 

LOL why did I put that lone "3" there? It looks awful. Literally I should Photoshop it out and pretend it never happend.

The candy necklaces were a big hit!

Carys picked out a Moana costume for herself Emmeline.

At the end of the party, the kids went absolutely bananas with the balloons. So next year's party will probably be "room full of balloons" themed and BOOM done.

Carys's Fifth Birthday : Lego Rainbow

Let's see - it's been nine months since this birthday party, a length of time during which I could have gestated and delivered a baby, so it's probably about time to blog about it.

Carys has her birthday parties for the next few years already planned out: Moana, Harry Potter, Star Wars, Unicorn, Hatchimal (?!?! we don't even have one ?!?!), zoo, ballerina. She sometimes alternates WHEN she wants WHICH party, so it's a little touch-and-go when starting to plan a theme: yes, she wants Lego rainbow NOW but what will she want in two months?! So I have to latch onto a theme and then just hope that she doesn't change her mind, because once that box of birthday stuff starts getting filled up, that sucker is set in stone and I am not re-doing everything on the whim of a preschooler.

However, Carys LOVES Legos [side note: I know the proper term is Lego bricks but OMG I'm just going to say Legos and please don't write me angry fan mail about it] [LOL as if I have fans] and has been really into them for about two years, so once she mentioned it as a theme, I went ahead and started planning - knowing that her love of the toys probably wasn't going to go away in two months' time. I tacked on "rainbow" as part of the party since Legos by themselves are a little limited in terms of decorating possibilities (for this lazy mom, anyway).

I'm going to be REAL honest here and tell you that I don't remember where most things came from or details about the party other than what I can see in pictures. I do know almost everything was purchased off of Oriental Trading or Amazon or my beloved Target Dollar Aisle (yes, that needs to be capitalized to give it the respect it deserves).

One of the things I was most excited about was this minifig photo prop. I freehand dresw it, then free-handed the letters and number and WHOOPS does that lettering ever look awful. OH WELL.

See the shirt she's wearing in this picture? I COULD NOT FIND IT ANYWHERE come party day. That's what I get for being behind in laundry, I guess.

I LOVE those forks and spoons. They're dishwasher safe so we kept all of the extras and still use them.

Dump a bunch of frozen fruit into lemonade = heaven. Hint: don't use a dispenser like this; use a pitcher. Otherwise the fruit will get stuck in the spigot and clog it.

Goodies! Lego straw cups, and a little baggie with a Lego keychain, some Target Dollar Aisle fake Lego bricks, Lego minifig crayons (omg so cute), a little rainbow striped blank notebook, and I honestly don't remember what else, nor did I apparently take a picture of the contents. #fail

I covered all the doors in tablecloths and paper plates to make giant Lego pieces.

Rainbow window cling for the front door. Which we left on for MONTHS until a letter fell off and was lost forever because who doesn't need a reminder to be awesome today?

My dad created these CARYS letters and they were basically my favorite thing ever.

 

This rainbow tassel banner gives me life.

Rainbow popcorn, rainbow fruit skewers, rainbow suckers, rainbow skittles.

The giant cardboard Lego blocks were perfect.

We have this gorgeous printing press drawer and I have no idea what to do with it. For the party, I filled it with Legos.

So I thought I'd use white chocolate and then food coloring and make these chocolate cupcake toppers in Lego colors but HEY WHADDYA KNOW you can't use water-based food coloring with chocolate because it'll seize up. You need special chocolate candy coloring. Which I did not have and was not going to go out and search for since I was doing these the day before the party. So we ended up with just regular chocolate toppers. These molds are from Amazon.

I'm pretty proud of this cake. Made using marshmallow fondant, which I discovered with Carys's third birthday and have used for everything since.

Blowing out the candles! (And how amazing is that "5" picture in the upper left??!?!? It was yellow, but I photoshopped it to be rainbow for the party.)

 

I don't have a lot of pictures of the kids at the party, because apparently at this age they all just run off and play independently without you.

 I made EVERY SINGLE PERSON at the party take their pic inside the minifig photo prop. But I'll only humiliate my immediate family by sharing our pictures.

Hey look! The post is finished and we haven't even reached Carys's sixth birthday yet so all in all I'm going to call that a WIN. 

Life Updates

God, I miss blogging. I miss being able to go back and read what life was like, what the girls were doing, what stages they were at, what we did for birthdays, how we were celebrating holidays. I really blogged for myself: a journal of these oh-so-fleeting stages of the girls' childhoods and our life together. And I'm really mad at myself for letting it lapse.

Easter 2017

I've been busy, but that shouldn't be an excuse. I'll probably never fully forgive myself for not continuing the 2x a year letters to the girls - I need to start that up again. I have such a terrible memory: Emmeline says something hilarious and I tell myself I'll write it down and then I forget and then a year has passed and I've basically forgotten how entirely hilarious she was (and still is) between the ages of two and now. I missed blogging Carys's 5th birthday and Emmeline's 3rd birthday. WHAT DID WE EVEN DO FOR THEM?!? A year plus of holidays has gone undocumented...missing Halloween posts, Christmas posts, Easter posts....(there are plenty of pictures, sure, but when do I get on the computer and look at them?! Rarely.). And I miss writing. I love to write, and I think I may have forgotten how to form intelligent, cohesive, and dare I say humorous sentences. Like entirely forgotten. I used to be funny and a good writer. Now I can barely pull myself together to write down a grocery list.

October 2016

Life is so different now than it was in 2015 when I was last regularly writing. Carys is getting ready to start kindergarten this fall (deciding to wait until this year to send her is a post in and of itself). She can read and write and is the most creative, kind-hearted kid I've ever met. Emmeline's three and barely even a toddler - she's a full-on preschooler who knows letters and opposites and how to spell her name and write a (small) handful of letters and is just silly and fierce. And the picture of "doesn't give a fuck." We had Emmeline's third birthday a full 3.5 months ago - Candyland themed. We're planning Carys's sixth (SIX?!?!) birthday, and it will be Moana themed. Carys is in dance class and swim class and drama class. Emmeline does swim class and "messes" class, a toddler class at the Y where they paint and run around like maniacs.

Emmeline, March 2017  - - - -  Carys, April 2017

We're getting ready to go to Disney this summer - I earned a trip for myself to Disney through my work with Usborne books and it's been a flurry of planning and research and seriously? When I earned the trip I didn't even know what Disney WAS. Like...I knew it was a theme park. But I didn't really understand if it was rides? Shows? Characters standing around everywhere to meet? If it was just rides, what made it that much better than going to Worlds of Fun that's only two hours away and probably literally $5,000 chapter? I still am completely clueless, but I now can name about five restaurants at every park, list all of the Disney resorts, and tell you the list of all of the rides in Fantasyland in order of popularity. So I'll be a well-informed clueless first-timer.

April 2017

We got a guinea pig (named Link) and a beta fish (named Azul, or as Emmeline calls him, Blue in Spanish) and we're like REALLY working on Chris to let us get a dog. The hypothetical dog is already named and the girls and I know exactly where we'll put his food and water and dog bed and whose job it will be to pick up poop and where we'll take him on walks.

October 2017

We've done shit to the house - new chairs, painted the front door, finished other rooms. There's still a lot to do (I mean it's only been TWO YEARS what do you want from me?!) but it's coming along nicely. Mostly. We haven't touched our bedroom and it's kind of making me twitchy so maybe that will be this summer's project. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
 

Checking out baby chicks; April 2017

We visited my mom in Dubuque and went camping. We went to the zoo and children's museum and had playdates and went on a boat and oh, my god, went to an amazing, fun family reunion to Lake of the Ozarks and dude, I CANNOT FIND MY PICTURES FROM THAT TRIP ANYWHERE and if I'd been blogging I'd at least have a record on them here. What the hell. We went to California and I DO have pics from that trip but I don't think I've edited them yet. See, I need the pressure of a blog post in order to make me edit pictures!

I might go back and blog a few of the things that I want to share: the girls' birthdays (maybe before Carys's next birthday in three months!) (goals!), Halloween, vacation, I don't know. I just know that I want to get back to this space. I want to write again and document again and share again.

October 2016

LET'S DO THIS LARA! You got it! Go team!