Saying Goodbye to Summer

I have took a loooong hiatus from blogging, but the spring baseball season kept us on our toes! The Summer blur started out by taxing my two kiddos to a few VBS's (always loads of fun), and a ton of time spent at the baseball field, 1 of my favorite places to be! Adler's team-the Cincinnati Reds (American Girl Doll Kit's favorite team) had a pretty good little season, we seen a lot of improvement and they finished strong :) Below is a picture of Adler and her "Coach" (her Daddy) with the girliest trophy we could order; there were only 2 other girls on the team, so the trophies belonging to them were a little different from the boys- Try out trophydepot.com they ship so fast (you can usually get Free Ground Shipping for orders over $99), and ordering/personalization is so quick and easy! Plus, look how cute they turned out!

Of course, with any of my kids' end-of-season ball cook-outs, there's the cookies:)

This 2-tier platter is 1 of my favorite finds from TJ MAXX Homegoods! I love it!!!!

 

Brant's team, the Mini Mayhem (named after their older travel ball team predecessors) went undefeated for the entire season, coming in 1st in the league in their age division and took the entire gold bracket tournament as well with a perfect record.

You can barely see Brant peeking out of the "mayhem" but he's looking back at us and the memories and excitement of this day will last a lifetime! I'm so glad 1 of our baseball mom's snapped this picture!

And again, I was back in the kitchen shortly after rolling out some more baseball-themed cookies! I've become a lot more "efficient" at getting these done, since I've got 2 playing spring/fall ball.



Shortly after ball season was our family vacation to the beach, where Brant requested we host his birthday party. He really enjoyed last year's birthday party at the beach and it truly makes things a lot easier on me, so I was happy to oblige. Check out Brant's surf birthday party from last year here http://catchmyparty.com/parties/brants-6th-surf-sand-and-sun-birthday-party



In keeping with this year's "beachy" birthday theme, Brant chose a shark theme. And, since we were traveling, I kept the party details as simple as possible. Here's a few pictures:

 

Party printables always make things more clean and simple and of course help to "define" the theme I bought the entire shark printables file from Paper & Cake Printable Partyware

http://www.paperandcake.com/?s=shark&post_type=wpsc-product

 



See the entire party here! This was a lot of fun and so easy! http://catchmyparty.com/parties/brants-7th-birthday-party-swimming-with-the-sharks
 

And, of course, while I was at the beach, I had to get in some "summer reading" ;)

Another summer birthday, my niece Payton turned 7 and I got to make Hello Kitty cookies for her party too!



 All in all, it was a whirlwind of summer days spent grilling out, swimming, going to the ball field or park, the library, and a few trips to the drive-in movies thrown in for good measure! We're buckled down for a fun school year!







So much has been going on ! I didn't get to share my sweet Adler's 5th birthday party, but the good news is, Jillian Tohber Leslie from Catch My Party selected it as party of the day a few weeks ago! I love her website and it is such a great place to see amazing parties as they unfold with awesome attention to detail and easy lay-out! You can see more on the link she provided me here:
http://catchmyparty.com/party-of-the-day/2183

Happy Mardi Gras!!!!!!!!!!!

I wish I could be in the streets of New Orleans catchin' beads! But, my co-workers and I had a lot of fun food today at work and since I have been cookie-ing, I have never got to make Mardi Gras cookies, so this was the perfect opportunity. I may need to buy me a cutter set next year..my masks were a little off LOL

Happy Fat Tuesday everyone! Go out and have some fun!

Valentine Fun Re-Cap

I have never had a Valentine's party....and since my kids are only little once, I decided to do something simple and have an Ice Cream Social. It was a lot of fun and I did a pretty good job keeping things simple. I also got to put my big jars to use!

I wrapped the cones in V'day scrapbook paper, dipped the waffle cones/bowls in chocolate and loaded them up w/ lots of V'day sprinkles

Look at the little wooden spoons I found at Williams Sonoma! They were so cute, here's a close-up:

And of course, I got to have lots of fun with my new cookie cutter set from Kookie Kultura~very unique and fun!

And remember those little metal mailboxes Target has in the Dollar aisle every Feb? I used those for

teachers gifts and they turned out so sweet!

I'm also LOVING my Americolor cookie pens!

More Valentine's Food Fun:

Hope everyone had a "Sweet" Valetine's with the ones  you LOVE!

It all Starts With A.....Pink Lemonade pre-party Planning!

A napkin, plate, a dollar aisle item, or in this case, a piece of fabric.....Anything, at any moment can spark an idea that heads straight down a path of party planning, which is 1 of my most favorite things to do! I knew the theme a long time ago, and got it ok'd with Addie, but had been struggling w/ the color palette; Stupid I know, but a playful stressor. There's pastels and traditional/ vintage-inspired anything for a lemonade-themed party and I was prepared for that, but then I found this:

It's the fabric in the foreground! Unfortunately, my camera is awful but when I seen the bright "lemon" yellow I knew I had tablecloths at home that would work great with this! With any luck, I will get one of my sewing friends to trim this out in big hot pink poms and we'll be in business! Hoping to tie it in with some fabric penannt banners too! Not at all what I had orginally envisioned, but I am finally excited about the possibilities :) Can't you just see a huge jar of bright yellow lemons sitting on this?

Who doesn't like FREE????? Valentine's Day Printables

I am planning a Valentine's Ice Cream Social. I can't help it. I have always wanted to do a Valentine's Day party for my kids and I'm trying very hard to be "good" and keep it simple, which is why I chose an ice cream social. After visiting a few of my favorite places for stationery, I was out of luck on Valentine's stock. But lo and behold, I found all kinds of printables for FREE on one of my favorite blogs-Catch My Party. Buffet labels, straw flags, banners, everything-for FREE!!!! Here's the link http://blog.catchmyparty.com/2011/01/20/free-valentines-day-printables-from-magnolia-creative-co-2/t
This is 1 of my favorite ones, but there are more styles and vendors to choose from!

Fun Shopping Finds, Party Re-organization, and Cookies of the Week!

Shopping is probably one of my favorite things to do, and often times, I do buy ahead or after holidays for the next season. The downside is, you have to have storage space, but the upside is, I save money and I always forget what I've bought, so it adds a little excitement when I'm pulling everything back out the next year. I love to celebrate, and I always like to have plenty of party stuff for any occasion or an impromptu cook-out or "get together" with friends. I re-organized all of my party stuff today. Christmas, Halloween, Birthday-I'm ready!

I also found some cool stuff for next Christmas this week! I bought 5 boxes of Christmas cards/invites for next year, plus, some stationery for my 2 kiddos that I'm sure will end up in their Valentine's Day treat bags. I skipped the pricey set-up fees, and came home and personalized the stationery w/in 5 minutes. Everything was under $18~ Yahoo!

I think they turned out pretty good! Not bad for $2 a box

I also got to run in Williams Sonoma. I really like using apothecary jars, etc. for decorating and of course, for parties. I like groupings of 3 in pretty much anything I do....it's the Trinity; whether it's flowers/shrubs outside or candlesticks inside. I already had 2 jars and needed 1 more in a certain shape. That's when I found this:

If you look closely, the lid has a cut-out area. It's really a punch bowl, but  it will have a dual purpose and only $19.99

 Here's what rolled out of the kitchen this week:

Boston Red Sox cookies for Isaac

Hello Kitty, Snowmen, and Baseballs for our baseball coach's daughter.

My Little Corner of the Internet~Joining in the Blogging Fun!

O.K. I don't know why I haven't checked into doing a blog a lot sooner.....I love to write and I love the creative outlet they provide! It's kind of under unfortunate circumstances that I looked in on the whole blog scene, as I was watching over my very sick little girl who was asleep in my bed as I surfed the internet all night.  I have utilized blogs over the years countless times for detailed party and cookie ideas. I figured if they have helped me, maybe some of my ideas could help others too :)