Lucas's Birthday

I am so behind on blogging.  This month of May just flew by!!  We have been so busy and I have a bunch of other posts that I should technically do first, but I decided to just do Lucas's birthday post because it's fresh in my mind and we just had his party with friends today.  This was Lucas's first birthday party with friends and he had a blast!

We decided to do the party right after preschool since I'm teaching preschool this week.  All of Lucas's preschool friends were there.  Lucas wanted a super hero party, but I didn't want to do a strictly "Spiderman" or "Batman" party, so we just did generic super heros.

I made these cute capes for each of the kids as a party favor with their initials on the back.  They were actually pretty easy and super cheap.

We also decorated masks to go with our capes.  The decorating part was really fun for the kids, but the masks did not really hold up very well.  Oh well, at least they lasted long enough for a picture.

 Once the super heros were outfitted with masks and capes, we had to go complete a mission.  I had a small obstacle course set up for them to navigate through.  My favorite part - the LASERS.

 They had to go through the lasers to get a ball and then bring the ball back to shoot into a basketball hoop.  There was also a tunnel to crawl through and a beam to balance on.  It was pretty simple but the kids had a lot of fun with it.

 One of Lucas's biggest requests for his birthday party was that there be a pinata.  Now, aside from the fact that I'm too cheap to spend $20 on a pinata, I also thought it might be kinda fun to make our own.  There are a lot of tutorials and stuff out there but I liked this website the best.  It was definitely worth saving $20, I already had everything I needed so I didn't spend any money on the pinata, but I'm not going to lie, it was a bit of work and took 2 days to let all the layers dry and everything.  We did have fun though.  Lucas helped me decorate it.

 Both kids gladly helped fill it with candy.

I was a little worried that our pinata wouldn't work out very well.  I was worried that either it would break on the first hit, or it wouldn't break at all.  I've seen store bought pinatas that take some serious beatings and still won't break and kids can only handle so much waiting before they get grumpy for candy.  The pinata actually couldn't have broken at a better time.  Every kid got two turns and then the birthday boy broke it and the next kid finished it off.  It was perfect!

 And last but not least, the cake and presents.

 I think the kids all had a good time, and I survived and only got exasperated once.  I'd say we did pretty good for our first friend party.

On Lucas's actual birthday we had a little party with my family.  On top of the usual grandma and grandpa Crapo, and John and Becky, my brother Joseph is home right now from college and my sister Sarah is visiting, so we had a lot of family to celebrate with.  We went to Red Robin for lunch.  I didn't get a picture of the whole table, which is sad, but we did get a picture of Lucas eating the cherry on top of his sundae.

And opening presents...

After lunch we went to this indoor pool/water park.  It had a little kid play area, water slides, and a lazy river.  It was the afternoon and during nap time for the babies so we didn't end up staying as long as I thought we would, but it was pretty fun and Lucas had a blast which is the most important part.

Happy Birthday my little man!!

Baby Boy's Nursery

When I found out we were having a boy I started thinking about how I wanted to decorate the nursery and what I wanted his baby blanket to look like and this idea of an airplane applique quilt popped into my head. I looked at a couple different ideas on pinterest and then came up with my own design. It's always a bit tricky finding fabrics that you love, but I found some really cute ones. To do the applique part I cut out the different shapes and then sewed each of them onto the middle panel. This part wasn't too hard and considering how cute it turned out, I would totally do it again.

Lucas was very interested in the whole process and watched me make most of the blanket.

I'm so in love with how it turned out!

I used grey minky fabric on the back, and silky binding for the edges.  Both of my kids so far love the minky and the silky binding so I had to keep it up.

For decorating the rest of the nursery I wanted to do it as simple and cheap as I could. I used yellow fabric in the quilt so I could keep the yellow curtains I made for Paige. I already really liked the room for the most part, I just needed to change a few of the more girly things. I used airplanes as my theme. I kept some of the same art work that I had up for Paige, but I needed one that was a little more boyish and I wanted something that went with the airplane theme. I couldn't find anything I liked from the original artist so I just copied the same style and made my own. I'm pretty proud of how it turned out.

And here it is on the wall with the rest of the art work.

The only thing left to change was the mobile. I didn't think butterflies were the right way to go. I found some really cute ideas for airplane mobiles online, so I got some paper and made my own. I'm in love with how this turned out too! It's pretty simple but really fun.

Look at the cute little airplanes.

And here's pictures of the whole room.

Someday we'll change out the photo for one of the new baby, but for now it still has a picture of Paige.

And this hasn't really changed at all, but I have to have my comfy chair!

I really like all the little airplane elements I've added to the room.  And overall it was a pretty easy change from how it was before, but still really cute for a little boy.  I'm going to wait a while before I get any of the other boy stuff ready.  I want to keep Paige in the crib until we're ready to move the new baby from the bassinet, and we have a while before that happens.  It's hard for me to not move her and get everything ready right now, though.  I've really been nesting and I just want to get everything into place.

I can at least start planning out how I want Lucas and Paige's room to look.  Any ideas on how to do a cute room for a boy and a girl?

Paige's Birthday Party

We had a birthday party for Paige last weekend.  The party was more for me than anyone else, so I went a little crazy with the cuteness.  It wasn't too over the top; just the right amount, I thought.  One of my favorite parts was the picture clothesline I did with all her month photos that I've done throughout the year.

Here's the cute food table.

You might recognize the pompoms and streamers from her photo shoot.  We had make your own mini fruit pizzas (my favorite), and sandwiches and a veggie platter.  It was all very colorful and yummy.  I also made some REALLY good cupcakes.  They were just from a box, but with other stuff added, and they were really good.  I may post the recipe later.  I put cute little butterfly toppers on the cupcakes to make them a little more girly, cause the pink frosting and pink sprinkles in the batter weren't enough.

The birthday girl wore her cute tutu for her party.

And had fun playing with all her friends and family.

We had coloring and trains to play with.  Fun for everyone!

Paige had both sets of grandparents come for her party.  She's so loved!

We even decorated the high chair.  I can't take credit for this one, though.  This was Ryan's handy work.  :)

Time to blow out the candles.

Here's the video of us singing to her.  It's a little long, but I figure the grandparents will watch it.  I was practicing with Paige for the week before so she could blow out her candle, but she had never been able to do it.  If you watch really carefully you'll see that she blows out the candle in the first few seconds of the song.  I relit it to see if she could do it again after the song was over, but she didn't and we let Lucas help out.

She liked her cupcake, this is my favorite shot of her eating it.  She's really stuffing her face.

Time to open presents!

It was a really fun party and I'm glad so many of our friends and family could make it out for it.  Paige had fun!