29

Last Thursday we celebrated my sister Dolly's 29th birthday! 

Dolly is our middle sister and she and I are just 18 months apart.  If you figure all of that out, I was just nine months old when my mom got pregnant with her.  Two years after Dolly was born, my sister Yvonne came along.  As you can imagine, it was a busy life for my parents but my mom loved every single minute of being a mom since she waited so long to become a mother.  My poor dad got made fun of a lot at work since all three of us came in such a short span of time.  Now that I have our three girls, I've been getting a taste of what it's like for random people to put in their two cents when they see us all together.  That is definitely something I'll be touching on later in the week because I have lots more to say on that topic!

Back to the party...We had a small get together at Dolly and her hubby Manny's house.

The night before the party, I went to Target (super last minute, I know) and found some cute black and white damask plates and napkins for the party.

At first I thought they were pretty plain but then my next thought was how cute it all would be if we could add some hot pink to the mix.  I even found some cool hot pink mini buckets in the dollar section and got some tissue paper in the party colors to stuff in the buckets.

 On the day of the party, my other sister Yvonne and I met up so that I could give her all the stuff for the decorating the party and got back home so I could start baking. 

When I got to the party, I was so excited to see what an awesome job Yvonne did with the decorating!

My BIL said he had already ordered  a little cake, but I decided to surprise them with cupcakes too.  Little did I realize that Yvonne and I think way too much alike.  Turns out when I got to the party, she had the exact same thought in mind too.  Down to the hot pink cupcake liners and chocolate cake mix! The only real difference is the way we decorated them.  I think they all turned out awesome!

Her cupcakes...

My cupcakes...

One thing I decided after making these cupcakes is that I'm done with using the gel color pastes from a certain brand you'll find at Michael's.  I was trying to get a super hot pink color for my frosting and put a lot of coloring in it, and as a result, the taste of the frosting was CRAZY strong.  I've learned my lesson and a couple of days ago, I decided to order the gel paste you see pictured at the left here from Amazon.  I can't wait to try it out for the next party I'll be making cookies or cupcakes for!

I had a fun time at my sister's party and hanging out with a few of her friends from work even though I ended up arriving REALLY late.  I had the best of intentions of making some super yummy and fun decorated sugar cookies but after mixing that in with cupcaking making and getting three girls ready with a Hubby who was gone for the evening, that didn't end up working out.  I have to keep reminding myself that I should try to limit what I can take on because things are a lot more complicated now that I have three kids.

I had fun taking pictures at the party although at times I'm finding my camera does weird things.  I MUST learn how to use this camera as soon as I can sit down to figure all of that out.  I know it can do lots more than just sit in the Auto function, where I usually keep it. )

Here was our mom and our girls, minus Livvie...

And my favorite Livvie pic of the night...

I love her smile!  She's looking SO much like Alyssa did at this age!

And here's one last picture of all of us girls.  For some reason, it came out a bit blurry, but I still wanted to post one of all of us. 

Our mom with her three girls and my three girls plus my niece.  I wonder if we'll ever get any boys in the family.  Maybe someday! :)

It was a fun night and I just can't believe my sister is only a year away from thirty!  It's crazy how fast time flies!

Flip Flop Fun!

The last couple of days I've been trying to sort through pictures from Alyssa's birthday party on Saturday to share here on the blog.  It was tough sorting through close to 200 pictures and deciding which were my favorites.  Here's just a tidbit of our birthday party fun!

The weather ended up being really yucky the day of the party.  We had reserved one of the spots at the park across the street from our house to have the party at because of the amount of people invited and the fact that our house is pretty small.  It was super convenient to have the party literally steps away from our house but it was really tough to decorate and put stuff out on the tables when the wind was literally blowing things away. 

A couple of weeks before the party, Veronnica was super sweet and asked me if she could make some things for the party and here's one of the things she made for us...

An awesome personalized banner which we ended up hanging here in our kitchen archway.  I tried hanging it at the park but it was SO windy that it was getting all tangled up.  I was so bummed.  What was actually neat was that we were still able to enjoy it since we all kept coming and going from the party, and even after the party, we had family from out of town over to visit.  The banner was such a special touch and it's actually still hanging here in our kitchen where I'm planning on leaving it up for a while for us to enjoy and continue the birthday fun.  Thanks so much for doing that V! :)

For entertainment, we rented a bounce house.  It had a fun tropical theme to it with palm trees on all four corners!  It even had a flamingo on it, which Alyssa loved!

We wanted to just do a simple BBQ and that's what we did.  We served hot dogs and hamburgers, beans, pasta salad, and these yummy fruit skewers which have been a summer party tradition of ours for the past five years.

And here's how the flip flop cake turned out.  I think it ended up turning out pretty good and everyone else seemed to be excited about it too!

My sister Yvonne make these yummy cupcakes.  I think they turned out really cute!  My favorite part were the fun little sunglasses and flip flop picks that I found to match our theme!

I also made number five cookies as favors.  This has also been a tradition of ours since Alyssa and my niece Natalya had their first birthdays.  These do take some time to make, but I think they're totally worth it and add a special touch to the party!  If you look close, you can also see the super cute tags Veronnica also made for us.  They said "Alyssa's 5th Birthday" on them plus the date of the party!  I think they made the cookies look so awesome!!!

My mother in law also wanted to be sure we had a pinata for the party so she took Alyssa to go buy one on Thursday.  Only thing was, they couldn't find one that matched our flip flop theme, so she let Alyssa pick out one she liked, and wouldn't you guess, she chose a duck one.  At least it matched the colors of the party, right?

Although it was a cold and windy day, the birthday girl and everyone else had a great time!  I can't believe my girl is five years old now.  Alyssa got some awesome gifts and now has a full summer wardrobe to choose from!

It was an awesome birthday!

A party planning we go!

This week, we've got party planning on our minds!  Alyssa's birthday is in a little under three weeks and in my usual last minute Charlie fashion these days, (having three kiddos is a good excuse to always be running behind, right?) I realized I've got to get a move on getting ready for this party!

When I asked Alyssa what theme she wanted to go with, she said she wanted a party with "those pink birds" she saw in a party catalog we got in the mail recently.  I asked her to show me what she was talking about and quickly realized she was talking about flamingos!  That night after she went to bed, the wheels in my head started turning and I got to thinking we could do a Hawaiian luao theme, but I just wasn't too excited about it considering that it didn't seem all that great for a 5 year old's birthday!

I decided to go to Betty Crocker.com where I had found that idea for the butterfly cake we did for Audrey's party back in March, to see if I could find any summery themed cakes.  I was so excited when I found this one...

After checking out what it takes to make this cake, it really didn't seem that hard.  All it really requires is baking a rectangular cake and using the templates they provide on the website to cut out the cakes to look like flip flops.  The rest just involves frosting it and decorating it.  The website also provides the neatest video tutorial on how to make the cake.  You can go here if you want to check it out. I love how they make it so easy to make some really neat cakes yourself!

The next step was convincing Alyssa to go with the flip flop theme since she was really wanting to go with flamingos! :)  I told her it would be fun to use these party supplies from the party website we always use that sells party stuff on discount.

It will be fun to use this cute centerpieces...

My Hubby and I already talked about the menu and I've got that all planned out so that's good.  Oh and Rachel, if you're reading this, you'll be excited to know I'm putting my uptight issues aside and we're gonna light up the BBQ pit in the driveway!  We can even bust out our lawn chairs and do a little wannabe block party, what you you think? :)

I'm feeling good about the progress we're making and I'm hoping to make things as organized as I can now that I have three little ones this time around.  I LOVE parties and I can't believe my big girl is turning five already!!!

A Butterfly Birthday!

Yesterday was the BIG day!  Our family got together to celebrate Audrey's 2nd Birthday!

(The birthday girl snuggling with her Auntie Dolly here)

Like I talked about last week, my goal was for the party to be just an easy and small party just for the family.  The only problem was, in my book, there isn't really such thing as just a simple party.  I love making all the extra treats and decorating to my heart's content.  Normally I can handle it all, but this year was different.

I thought I had it all together but time just seemed to fly by and I didn't really feel like I had a good handle on getting everything done by the time I wanted to.  Somewhere in the middle of the day yesterday, I had a meltdown.  (THANK YOU, PREGNANCY HORMONES)!  I sat in my room, cried like a baby and then re-grouped.  With the help of my two awesome sisters, Yvonne and Dolly, everything fell into place and we were able to get things done by party time!  My sister Dolly helped bigtime to get dinner made, which included homemade chicken enchiladas, beans and rice (thanks for the help on those, Mom), while Yvonne finished up with all the yummy treats!  

I ordered all of our party decorations from Birthday Direct.  Their prices are always so good and what was even cooler was that I was able to use part of my $100 gift card that Betty Crocker gave to me through MyBlogSpark to buy the decorations.  What a blessing! 

I baked these butterfly cookies and Yvonne did the best job decorating them.  So cute, huh? :)

On Friday night, we put these goodie bags together and attatched some tags I made on my computer to give the treats some personalization. 

And somewhere in between making all the other treats yesterday, Yvonne and Dolly managed to make these yummy chocolate covered strawberries too!

And... if those treats weren't enough, we also made these yummy cupcakes too!

Here's my birthday girl chowing down on chips and dip!  It's kinda hard to see her t-shirt really well, but it was made especially for the party by Kristin!  It had the cutest butterflies on it with her name just under the butterflies.  So, so cute!

And last but not least, here's the cake we ended up making with some help from Betty Crocker.com!  If you go HERE, you can even watch a cool video they have on their website that shows you exactly how to make this cake!

Let me just add in here that I am far from a professional baker!  It was a bit of a challenge to decorate the cake just like the one that Betty crocker provides on their website!  Since I only had one chance to get the wings right, I decided to put aside my perfectionist tendancies and just go for it with decorating the cake!  I probably should have practiced a little bit before I started, but in the end, I think it turned out okay.  With the help of the glittery sprinkles, and the other candy decorations, I think it turned out pretty cute and it tasted delicious!

All in all, it was a great party!  What made it even more special was that I got to take some video with my new Flip video camcorder that was also given to me by Betty Crocker through MyBlogSpark!  Here's just one video of us (I'll work on sharing more this week) singing the Happy Birthday song to Audrey!  It will give you a little glimpse of our silly family and you'll even see me and my ever growing belly!  Only six more weeks to go until the next big event!!!

Happy Birthday, Audrey! from Veronica on Vimeo.

P.S.  A big thank you to Betty Crocker and MyBlogSpark for providing me with the awesome blessing of the VIP Betty Crocker coupons, the $100 gift card and the Flip camera!  It will be a party to remember!

Party Weekend

We had a super full weekend jam packed with fun and way too many sweets!

The festivities started on Saturday when we celebrated my niece Natalya's 5th birthday!  It was so much fun, and my sister Yvonne totally outdid herself!  She planned the most fun zebra/hot pink themed party and it turned out so awesome.  Since I've been feeling a little under the weather today, I'm just gonna post a few pictures from the party and you can see for yourself how great everything turned out!

My sister and her friend made these yummy cupcakes and cake...

The birthday girl and her cousin!

The number five cookies Alyssa and I baked and my sister decorated.

My sister Dolly & I.

More treats...chocolate covered pretzal sticks!

My mom, "Grandma A" & Natalya.

Super cute treat bags!

The next party we went to was on Sunday afternoon to celebrate our nephew Elias's 10th birthday!  My SIL Ynidra did a great job putting a Sponge Bob themed party together!

Here's Elias and my MIL, Sylvia.

and some cute and yummy cake!

After we ate, the kids got to hit the pinata outside.  This was Audrey's first time and she looked so cute!

Here's Alyssa and her cousin Breanna being silly and posing for the camera!

All in all, it was a super fun weekend and now this week is all about planning for Audrey's birthday party!  I'm also looking forward to getting some packages in the mail this week, including Alivia's bedding which is supposed to arrive tomorrow!  I'm getting excited!