Parties and Showers

Hayes's First Fiesta: The Fiesta Details

Filed Under: Featured Posts, Hayes, Parties and Showers

May72012

We had Hayes’s First Fiesta at the historic home where Todd’s firm is located. They have some gorgeous grounds around the property and we held the party on the grounds. It was so green and so beautiful!

All the kids were able to just run around the whole time. It was so much fun watching them all play together! And the birthday boy was really happy!

My friend Rachel came to Columbia for the party and she took pictures for me! She did such a great job. Katie came, too, and they both ended up helping me finish setting up. So thankful they were there!

The dessert table had all of Hayes’s monthly pictures labeled with number labels from Sweet Birdie’s Nest, my go-to party goods girls! The “Fiesta” painting was done by Nat Kat Designs, the same talent behind the “Celebrate” painting we had at Hudson’s party. Natalie was so kind to do a painting for Hayes, too!

We had cupcakes, the smash cake, chocolatti cookies and Mexican wedding cookies. Oh my goodness! Everything was so yummy!

Cupcake toppers by Sweet Birdie’s Nest and cupcake wrappers are from Shop Sweet Lulu.

I used the same 12 buckets that I had from Hudson’s first birthday, but my mom and I covered them in colored paper napkins so we could get as much color as possible.

We made the yummy individual 7-layer dip cups from Pinterest. And I made the topiaries out of paper drink umbrellas. I filled the pots with dried black beans.

You can see the little cactus favors we gave to all of the guests. We found the cacti at Home Depot the day before the party. We wrapped the plastic pots in tissue paper and included the little “muchas gracias” tags from Sweet Birdie’s Nest.

The main food table included paper poms made out of paper napkins. We served a fajita bar from Moe’s. Moe’s delivers and is so easy to work with.

The little utensil wrappers and food tent labels were done by Sweet Birdie’s Nest. I love wrapping utensils while watching television late at night!

We had about six small pinatas around the yard. Todd filled them all with candy and small toys the night before. The pinatas hung really low so they were at eye level with the little kids. I think they liked them!

The adorable iced cookies were our other party favor. The wonderful folks at A Dozen Eggs came through for us again. The iced cacti, sombreros, and burro pinatas were so cute!

We had five round tables set up around the yard. They were covered in yellow paper table cloths and striped table cloths. We used a different color stripe table cloth on each of the five tables. I loved having so much color around the yard.

We topped the tables with vases of paper flowers. Each table also had a bowl of chips and some salsa.

We set up a little photo booth using a sheet hung on the outside of the house. Sweet Birdie’s Nest made the cute banner. I had about 6 large sombreros, some sticky mustaches, and maracas to use as props in the photo booth.

The fun “blog girls” that were there! Rachel, Megan, Katie, and Tiffany were so great to come celebrate the day!

Vendors:

Paper Goods (banner, cupcake toppers, stickers, favor tags, high chair banner, and favor sign): Sweet Birdie’s Nest

Invitations: Sarah from Life Sweet Life

Cupcake liners: Shop Sweet Lulu

Fabric for table cloths: Oil Cloth By The Yard

Poms: Made with paper napkins by my mom and me

Cookie Favors: A Dozen Eggs

Other cookies: Ally and Eloise

Paper fans: Party Express

Sombreros, Maracas, Papel Picado: Amazon.com

Little Man baby shower, movies, and brothers!

Filed Under: Parties and Showers

Jan312012

I’ve got a mix of a post for you today. But I wanted to do a full update.

On Saturday morning, my friends and I hosted a fun “little man” shower for our friend, Julie. Julie and Matt are having their little boy in just a few weeks and we’re so excited for them! (I left all the hostess pictures off the blog because I didn’t ask their permission if I could post it. Ha!)

Between all the six hostesses we put together a yummy brunch spread. Todd was kind enough to let us use his office (an old home) for the shower.

We had banana bread, key lime cupcakes, pistachio pineapple salad, sausage and egg casserole, cinnamon rolls, veggies and mini ham biscuits. It was a delicious brunch and I am seriously impressed with my friends’ culinary abilities.

The talented girls at Sweet Birdie’s Nest created the fun “little man” paper collection for us. Once again, the paper quality is great and the designs are adorable. And they are so easy to work with!

And my friend, Lulu McGee made the fun little tie and bow tie onesies for Baby Matthew.

My friend (and co-host) Rachel, brought the most fun game to play. I’d never played it before, but really enjoyed it! She played a CD where every song had the word “babe” or “baby” in the title. The guests had to write down the name of the song after hearing 30 seconds of the song and name the song artist. It was lots of fun!

Julie got some wonderful gifts and it was a fun morning with friends.

Todd and I are on a mission (I guess I’m on a mission and Todd is along for the ride) to see all of the Best Picture nominees before the Academy Awards.

We’ve seen The Help, War Horse, Moneyball, Midnight in Paris and we saw The Descendants this weekend. I have really loved all of the movies I’ve seen so far! We have The Tree of Life coming via Netflix this week and I’ve been warned that it’s a little bit “different.” I can’t wait to see!

I’m not hosting a party this year, but I’ll definitely have my popcorn and ballott ready on Oscar night!

Y’all, I am just so excited that my boys are starting to interact with each other. Hudson asks to sit next to Hayes in the little chair a couple of times a day. In some way, I think he knows he’s getting his picture taken, even though he refuses to look at the camera, but he likes sitting by his brother.

He also likes to get in the crib with Hayes to play just about every day. Sometimes they laugh and sometimes they fight over a toy. Hudson actually did try to hit Hayes once, but I figure that’s the first of many times that will happen. But I’m just so excited that they’re laughing together and that Hudson is talking to Hayes.

Hayes in his funny “baby legs.” (He spends most of his time in plain onesies or pajamas, so we have to warm up his little legs.)

You Are My Sunshine baby shower!

Filed Under: Featured Posts, Parties and Showers

Nov72011

This weekend, with 5 of my friends, I co-hosted a baby shower for a very dear friend.

We decided on a You Are My Sunshine theme for the shower. We focused on yellow and orange with touches of gray for the color scheme. She’s having a baby boy, so we wanted it to be boyish without being too dark.

I called on my friends at Sweet Birdie’s Nest to do the invitations, banner, party circles and cupcake toppers. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. They’re so good!

I started looking on Pinterest a few months ago for some inspiration and found a handful of things.

For the drink table, we had water garnished with oranges (which was really good) and my mom’s yummy banana and pineapple punch. That stuff is so addicting! The banner said “Allyson’s Little Sunshine.”

The board with the You Are My Sunshine lyrics came out of my guest bedroom.

We decided to keep the food pretty monochromatic. We were able to think of lots of food items that we could serve that fit the orange and yellow color scheme. We even had things that we thought of that we didn’t use.

We served Chick-fil-A chicken nuggets (one of Allyson’s favorites), fruit salad with banana, pineapple and oranges, a pineapple pretzel salad (and now we all want the recipe), pimiento cheese sandwiches, carrots and hummus, cupcakes and miniature cheesecake bites.

Outside, we decorated with fall items that we already had like pumpkins and mums. We also blew up a few balloons and used the ribbon wreath. I also had some pinwheels from Hudson’s first birthday party and we used those outside, too.

The other hostesses and the mama-to-be are very special friends of mine. We have a lot of pregnant friends right now and I love seeing all of these families grow. I can’t wait for Allyson’s little boy to make his arrival so we can all love on him!

I saw an idea on Hostess With the Mostess to do a fun, sunshine-themed playlist for the party. I used some of their suggestions and some other sunny songs that I like. The playlist ended up being really cheery and I have been listening to these songs a lot in the last couple of days.

This is the playlist we used for Allyson’s shower.

Details and Vendors

Serving Pieces: our personal collections, Anchor for Target, and Willow House

Cupcakes: Publix

Paper goodies: Sweet Birdie’s Nest

Food: Chick-fil-A and our kitchens

Punch Recipe: My mom and there’s a link here

Pinwheels: Hobby Lobby

Ribbon Wreath: Tutorial here

You Are My Sunshine artwork: Sugarboo Designs and Etsy seller Pretty Smitten Prints

Hudson's Birthday: The Party Set-Up

Filed Under: Hudson, Parties and Showers

Jun132011

Hudson is absolutely obsessed with Sesame Street, so we threw him a Sesame Street birthday party this year. He loves all of the characters and just stops whatever he is doing if he sees anyone in a store who lives on Sesame Street.

Because I knew I’d have a one-month-old, I decided to have Hudson’s party at one of his favorite places, The Little Gym. The Little Gym staff does all of the set up and clean up, they keep track of who gave presents (for thank you note purposes), and provide drinks, napkins, plates, and forks.

The staff was so helpful to us and I am so happy we had the party there. They also took care of all of the activities for the kids– something that is hard to do for toddlers.

I did choose to get our own decorations and favors (Little Gym provides a balloon) to bring more of Hudson’s favorite Sesame Street characters to the party. I loved the balance of low key and easy party and still being able to decorate a bit.

The food and favor spread

Party circles/centerpieces and Sesame Street character favor bags

We put goldfish (also known as Dorothy from Elmo’s World) in little Chinese take out boxes

(Not sure why this picture is so blurry)

Cookie favors from A Dozen Eggs with character tags and “Hudson Street”

More favor bags and the yummy Publix cupcakes. Publix makes the best cupcakes!

Cups for the kids from Kelley Cards

Gummy worms for Oscar’s Pet Worm “Slimey.” Hudson was so excited about the gummy worms!

Rubber duckies for all the kids just like Ernie’s Rubber Duckie.

All of Hudson’s Sesame Street “friends” were at the party, too!

The plates and party hats are also from Kelley Creations. They are SO cute!

Vendor Information

Paper Stuff

My sweet friends at Sweet Birdie’s Nest created all of the paper stuff for us like the cupcake toppers, the circle centerpieces, the table confetti with Sesame Street characters, the favor tags, water bottle labels, banner, stickers, and food labels. It all turned out perfectly! They are so easy to work with and really helped me out this year! They also made Hudson’s invitations that I’ll show you later. I highly recommend them for all of your birthday party needs.

Cookie Favors

A Dozen Eggs creates the most delicious, most creative, and most adorable cookie favors! We used them last year for Hudson’s green ham cookies (for Green Eggs and Ham) and they made some adorable “Hudson Street” cookies. The toppers were our favorite part– after the taste!

Plates, Party Hats, Favor Bags, Bubbles, Play Dough, and Cups

Kelley Creations created all of these adorable items by hand! By hand! I am just so impressed with what they do and their creativity really made some adorable favors for Hudson’s friends.

Each favor bag included a bottle of Sesame Street bubbles, Sesame Street play dough, and a lollipop. And each guest also took him a Sesame Street cup, a rubber duckie, and a Hudson Street cookie.

(The paddle ball game and frisbee are shown in the photo and we didn’t order those)

Cupcakes

Publix is our go-to place for delicious cupcakes!

Rubber Duckies and Lollipops

These are from the always inexpensive and always easy Oriental Trading

Pictures of the birthday boy tomorrow!!

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