A Belated Birthday Post - Cora's Rainbow and Musical Birthday

When Cora turned one, we started taking her to music class.  Even though she could barely talk when we started, she seemed to enjoyed the class and I was pleasantly surprised when she started reciting rhythm patterns on her own.  So when it came time to decide on what to do for her 2nd birthday, I knew it was a no brainer to have her party there. The facility has a party room decorated in bright colors behind the classroom. I decided to embrace the colors of the classroom and that's how I came up my theme. For three months, my life revolved around rainbows and music notes. Here are the details and decorations for the party...

Invitations:

I found a ton of rainbow invitations and a ton of music themed invitations, but not one single rainbow and music invitation.  So I semi-created my own. I found this cute rainbow invitation, added the music notes, and viola! It turned out super cute!

Name banner:

I made this cute name banner using my Cricut cutter for the letters and white circles.  For the rainbow pinwheels, I used my Martha Stewart paper ornament template.

Surprisingly, it only took a couple of hours to put together. I finished it off by stringing it together with rainbow colored yarn.

Water bottle labels:

Cora's invitation had the chevron rainbows on them, so I thought I'd incorporate that into my water bottles. I created these adorable labels and just slapped them on water bottles.
If you like these labels and want to use them for a rainbow birthday party, I created a free template for you to use.  Just click here.  

PB & Jammin' Sandwiches:

Since I was 7 months pregnant at the time of this party, I knew I had to keep my party food simple and easy to assemble. I decided to use Uncrustable PB&J Sandwiches from Smuckers. To keep in theme with my party, I used a music note cookie cutter on tie-dye fruit roll-up to cut out these adorable notes. I cut these out a few days before my party.

A couple of hours before the party, I took the sandwiches out of the freezer and placed them on my serving tray. Since the sandwiches are frozen and the fruit roll-ups are sticky, the music notes easily adhere to the sandwiches on their own.

Pepperoni Prelude Pizza:

Trader Joe's have these wonderful bite sized cheese pizzas. I bought pepperoni slices and used my same cookie cutter to make music note shaped pepperoni.

Music School of Fish:

I used a large music note cookie cutter to   seperate the rainbow colors from the regular cheese color.

A Fruit Melody:

I used strawberries, oranges, pineapple, kiwi, blueberries, and red grapes to make this fruit tray.  The music note is made from black colored candy melts.

Rainbow cupcakes with candy music toppers.

With 18 toddlers coming to the party. I figured cupcakes were the way to go. I made a basic white cake batter, divided it  by four, and colored each small batch.

Each cupcake was topped with cream cheese icing and a music note topper.  I made the music note toppers out of different colors of candy melt. 

Rockin' Party Favor Bags:

For the party favor bags, I used simple white lunch bags. I used my Cricut to cut out the guitars and the rainbow yarn to tie the bags with.  The bags were filled with rainbow music note stickers, colorful birdie whistles, sparkly maracas, and colorful goldfish.

Photography:

Throwing a party can be hectic. You're running around trying to make sure everything is in place, talking to your guest, and sometimes you just want to enjoy the party. All of this makes picture taking impossible. I love having a photographer on hand to capture all of the details and wonderful moments of the party. It's usually my biggest splurge, but its been worth it. Thank you Jamie LeBlanc for taking great pictures for us!

I hope you enjoyed our rainbow and music party.  We had a musically good time! 

A Year In A Flash - Celebrating Cora's Birthday

A few months ago, I was hunting for cute birthday party themes for Cora's First Birthday. I came across Stacey's party and thought it was the perfect theme for us. Here's what we did...

I created a photo collage (above) on my fav photo site picnik (so sad this site will be shut down in April). The collage was used for the invitation and for the cake.

The Invitation

The invitation was created on Paperless Post. I'm not the biggest fan of paper invitations

because of all of the paper waste, but I understand that some people don't have e-mail (like my mom). Paperless Post allows you to create beautiful e-invitations/e-cards, but you also have the option to print them out. Here is what the invitation looked like. I just printed this on nice card stock.

Timeline Banner

Since the venue for the party was already beautifully decorated, I kept my party decorations fairly simple. I knew the colors of the room had a lot of earth tones, so I chose pink and green for the party colors.

I created a timeline banner of Cora's first year. I painted clothes pins in glued on the number medallions with a hot glue gun. The medallions were just a punch of paper and the numbers were cut from my Cricut machine.

The timeline banner held pictures of Cora from each month of the past year.

Treats

I had two tables of food. One table was a snack table and the other was a yummy treat table. Here are the details...

My uncle and I made the wonderful cake pops. I find that traditional cake balls are too sweet, so instead of balling up cake and icing and dipping them in chocolate, we just just cut out pieces of pound cake, inserted the pop sticks, froze, then dipped in colored chocolate. The decoration on the pops are from chocolate transfer sheets. the flower pot was $0.79 at Ikea. I just cut out a large flower and a C on the Cricut and glued it on.

The cookies are done just like my easy no bake thin mints. Except that I used colored chocolate instead of Andes mints and used the chocolate transfer sheets again.

The popcorn bags were made from small treat bags. I used the Cricut to cut out C's and 1's and glued them on the bag. The popcorn was a salty/sweet mixture of cheese and caramel popcorn.

More Goodies!

I knew I'd be crunch for time to do a cake so I purchased a 1/2 sheet cake from Costco and asked them to only ice it in white. I took a jpeg of the collage picture from Picnik and had an edible sugar sheet made at a local cake supply store. I also purchased the colored Sixlet chocolate balls to border the cake. I found the CORA letter candles at Party City.

In keeping with the colors of the theme, I offered 2 beverages: pink strawberry punch, and cucumber water. I put them in beverage dispensers.

Since my party started at 2:30 in the afternoon, I just had deli and veggie trays, love dip and chips, and fruit skewers. The chocolate oat crisp cookies came from Ikea (I love those cookies!).

Photobooth and Party Pics

I made fun pink and green shades and moustaches. I also made talk bubbles out of chalkboard contact paper, matting board, and wooden dowels. I hired a photographer who captured photo booth type pics and all of the other party pics. I really love how this turned out!

Party favors

Last but not least, since I had leftover chalkboard contact paper, I decided to make mini talk bubbles to put in the party favor bags. The kids got mini talk bubbles, chalk, stickers, and other various goodies.

We had a wonderful party and Cora was showered with a lot of love! I hope you enjoyed the pictures!

Have a happy day!

Turning 38

Yes, this past week, I turned 38. Seriously, where does the time go? This year I decided to keep things low key. I went to brunch with a few close friends and went home and enjoyed my little chocolate and raspberry mousse.

I finally got my new Bodybugg to help me track my calories in and calories out. I've used the device before and got great results (40lbs lost). I decided to update my device and got the new SP version. Thanks to the bluetooth in this device, I can sync it

up with my iPhone and track my results as I go. On the old version I had to wait till I got to my computer (which was usually the end of the day). So I'm excited about using it. I'll post my daily log and results on my blog like I did before, but probably not as often since it's hard for me to blog sometimes.

Along with the Bodybugg system, I am adding a little acupuncture to help me with my late night snacking and stress eating. I've never done it before, but I was expecting to lay down while the doctor sticks a bunch of needles in me... Wrong! For weight loss, I wear 3 tiny needles stuck to a band-aid like piece in each ear for a week. You can barely see them. I go in every week to get them changed out. Here's a close-up of what they look like...

The pressure points are suppose to help me with stress, hunger, and to slightly speed up my metabolism. So far I've worn them for a week and I noticed that it does help my hunger. The jury is still out on the stress eating. I did stress eat once during the week, but that is less than the previous week. When I get stressed, I am suppose to tap on the little needles to stimulate them. I'm not sure if it really works of if it just distracts me and reminds me not to eat. At the end of the week, I was down 2.5 lbs. The entire acupuncture treatment lasts 10 - 12 weeks. I'll report my results when I get to the end. Let me know if you've tried this and what you thought!

Shellac! I thought shellac was just for your average home project, now they are putting it on your nails. I went to go get a mani/pedi with my mother in law and the manicurist was telling me about the shellac gel they are now using. It's not suppose to harm my natural nails and the polish is suppose to last for 2 weeks without chipping. Since I am constantly washing bottle, dishes, and doing all the other household choses, I decided 2 weeks of a chip-free manicure may be worth it. It was! My nails were just as glossy and chip-free on day 14 as it was on day 1 and I even peeled 5 lbs of crawfish. The only thing you saw were the new nail growth below the polish. I took a pic of my day 14 so you can see it. I didn't think to take a day 1 pic of my first shellac manicure, so I took a pic of the day 1 of my 2nd shellac manicure. That's why you'll see 2 different colors on the pic.

The pros: high shine, lasts for 2 weeks, no chipping, completely dry when you leave the nail salon, great if you need your mani to last through a vacation

The cons: removal of the polish requires you to soak in nail polish remover for 10 minutes, longer process since you have to throughly dry after each coat

Of course I have to mention my little sweet pea. She got a beautiful hand knitted dress and bonnet from a good friend of mine. I can't believe she made this! Thank you Pat for the lovely dress. It's such a wonderful keepsake.

For Rachel!

Here is a little collage of my fav pics of Cora over the past 2 months.

I hope everyone has a happy and healthy day. I'll try to post up daily logs and results often.