Mommy Musings

I don't know about where you live, but around here it's pretty popular to have birthday parties for your kid, and invite their whole class to it.  We didn't have one for Emmy last year, but she went to plenty  for kids in her class.  We decided to save her first class party for this year when she turned five. I'm not crazy enough to have 18 kids over my house, so we definitely wanted to rent a place to do it.  After lots and lots of research, we finally settled on this bounce place about 15 minutes away.  For an hour the kids would play in two different rooms filled  with blow-up bounce castles, slides, etc.  Then we would bring everyone into the party room for pizza and cake. The price tag was a little more than I would have liked to spend, but the place literally did everything  for us.  Invitations, food, decorations, party favors, they did it all!  We just had to show up and have a good time. We held the party on November 30th and Em...

"You Are My Sunshine" is Charlie's favorite song.  So it was pretty much a no-brainer when it came to thinking of what theme to have for her second birthday. I browsed for some ideas for Pinterest, but mainly came up with everything by myself.  I try and come up with a party theme a few months in advance so I can take my time searching for decorations.  For this party I got all the supplies at Michaels, Party City, and Five and Below. For the food, I made the cupcakes, cookies, and macaroni salad myself.  We ordered two 3 ft sandwiches from Stop & Shop.  For drinks I made some lemonade and put out bottled water. Now for all the pictures!! I made the little signs on PicMonkey and printed them out on stock paper.  I taped them onto extra tall toothpicks.  I got these cute little boxes in the dollar section of Michaels and filled them with M&Ms....simple and easy! I ordered this vinyl online and put it onto this piece of wood I had painted I made ...

Today is the most depressing day of the year.  No really .  It's only the beginning of February, so we still have plenty of winter chill left, and since last night was the Superbowl, there is no more football.  None, zero, nada.  Thankfully I still have the 2012 Superbowl on DVR, so I can just watch that whenever I feel the need. Anywho, we obviously hosted a Superbowl party last night.  I swear it's more of a holiday around here than most!  I spent the whole day cooking and cleaning!  It wasn't as big as our party last year , but it still deserved our proper attention.  Now I have found that the easiest way to menu plan for a party these days is to head over to my Pinterest account and start searching.  Most of the food I made last night I found on Pinterest.  What did we do without it?!?! Here are the foods I came up with Tortilla roll-ups found here Pizza Dip found here Chili...not found from Pinterest though:) Buffalo Chicken Bites...

Friday night was Emmy's family birthday party.  We wanted to keep it super simple and low-key this year, and I'm happy to say we achieved that.  It was nice not to stress over things too much, and just sit back and enjoy the family and my little girl. Most of decorations were already up from the day before, which helped.  Skip and I just cleaned a bit Friday morning and added a few more finishing touches everywhere. Everyone got there around 4:30.  We opened gifts first as I think the birthday girl was going to bust with excitement.  The pizza and garlic knots we ordered arrived right about the time we finished the gifts, which worked out perfectly .  That along with a few chips and dip were all we served for dinner {keeping it simple }.  Playing and little sister antics came next, obviously . Then it was time to bring out the cake and cupcakes!  I did splurge on a horse cake pan, and I'm so happy with the way it turned out.  I thought f...

It is no secret around these parts that Emmy is obsessed with horses.  Seriously, obsessed .  I will be shocked at this point if the girl doesn't at least try to be an equestrian at some point in her life.  Pretty much everything she owns is horses: stickers on the wall, clothes, giant stuffed horses, about a million tiny plastic horses.  If there is a horse on it, we own it. As with all kids, I just assumed this would be a phase she would go through, over quicker than football season.  I figured we'd be left with about a million horse toys she had no more interest in.  Well, as with most things Emmy does, she continues to surprise me.  It's been about a year and a half and girlfriend still loves horses.  In fact I think her loves has grown! So obviously with her fourth birthday coming up in two weeks {omg someone hold me} we have to have a horse party!  We're keeping it just a family party this year, but that doesn't mean we can't go crazy...

...a little continuation of our kid-free/birthday weekend.   Saturday morning Skip and I slept in until 11:30!!  Sadly we had to set an alarm to make sure we got up then, as we probably could have slept all day!! But since I had an appointment to permanently alter my body at 2:00pm, we had to get a move on.     Once I was all inked up, Skip and I spent the rest of the afternoon running errands and just relaxing.  It was really amazing just how quiet the house was without the girls.  In the early evening, we finally peeled ourselves off the couch to get ready for another night our with friends.    My bestie thought that a few of us were just going out to dinner.  What she didn't know is that her sister, friend, and I had been planning a surprise birthday party for her for WEEKS now!  I have been sweating it the whole time...how will we get her there...will she suspect anything...will she have fun....will it all go on okay without an...