A Birthday Party for Two!

To celebrate both Peter's and Claire's birthdays as well as a bit of a farewell, we hosted an ice cream party.
It turned out really well, in my opinion.

The party started with a specially crafted invitation.

I can't take credit for the creation of the actual design of the card. I found and bought it in the Silhouette Online Store. I used my Silhouette to cut all of the pieces and  then glued it all together. The only part that was faulty was my handwriting. Haha. It couldn't be completely perfect!

Preparing for the party was also a work of love.

I made mint chocolate chip and chocolate ice cream and offered 30 different toppings in tribute to Peter's 30th year.
It was really hard to come up with 30 different toppings. I used Pinterest and Google as my sources and still had to come up with some things on my own. I wasn't able to find a single party with so many options. Probably because 30 toppings really is quite ridiculous. But it was quite a sight.

As for the decorations, I bought a lot of it at Zurchers: the table cloths, the straws, the cups and utensils, the "30" banner, the party favors, and some of the serving utensils.

I made the two pompoms with tissue paper that I had in my gift wrapping stash. The "Welcome" sign, game, and the "ice cream" banners were made using my Silhouette cutting machine, again.

I was able to spread out a lot of the prep work, but it still felt like a lot, but it definitely was worth it!

It wasn't a large party, but we had some friends and family arrive to celebrate with us despite the nearly torrential rain storm that happened not 30 minutes before the start of the party.

So Happy Birthday to my sweet little family!

Claire's Second Birthday!

This year we planned a trip to visit my parents in Texas to coincide with my brother's wedding open house and Peter's overload time at work. Which left us in limbo with Claire's birthday. It was the very same day of the open  house.

We couldn't just NOT celebrate her birthday at home with Peter. That was completely out of the question. So instead we celebrated early, on Tuesday.

Claire woke up to balloons covering her floor and streamers on her door.

On her way up the stairs, Claire was greeted by her physically biggest gift, a kitchenette. She almost didn't want to come to breakfast because she was so excited to play in her "ti-tin."

For breakfast she had her choice of cereals--her very favorite thing to eat at any time of the day.

Then, I was feeling a little sad that Claire wasn't getting a party. (I guess I was sad to miss the opportunity to throw whatever kind of party I want and to the extent that I want for my little girl.) So I decided that the theme for the day would be the zoo. We got dressed and ready with sunscreen and lunch and headed to the zoo.

When we came home we made a quick batch of blue raspberry jello jigglers shaped like zoo animals. Then it was nap time.

After her nap daddy arrived as a special birthday surprise! Claire and I baked her birthday cake and cupcakes: devils food cake with strawberry frosting.

For dinner we had her favorite everything for dinner: hot dogs, french fries, green beans, and sprite.

We shared dinner and cake with Peter's dad and brother.

Claire got several new books and puzzles. I've been saving them for some time now, waiting for her birthday. Sometimes I find it really hard to save toys--especially books-- when we're practicing learning things like letters and numbers. So she had a rather large looking pile of gifts. Some were from grandparents. A lot were from us though. She wouldn't have noticed if it was a smaller pile, but I'm pretty sure she also won't remember being a bit spoiled on this occasion.

It was a fun-filled day! We ended up changing our zoo tickets into an annual zoo pass. I know we'll have lots of zoo days in our future, but this was the first to be remembered.