Airplane Themed First Birthday Party

This Airplane Themed First Birthday Party was so much fun to plan and watch come to life. This is such a cute theme for a 1 year old and I just love the vintage touches and colors.

 Sweet Tree's Cottage Bakery made these adorable cupcakes and of course my friend Kristin and I didn't recreate the banners as adorable as she had them in her display but they were just perfect!

I love those propeller cupcakes! The best part is that they taste just as good as they look!

Sweet Tree's Cottage Bakery also made these adorable cookies all set in bags to take home for the guests. The pictures don't do them justice! They are such a great favor to send home with someone as a thank-you for coming!

Little cups of cheese and caramel popcorn are a great snack to carry around while enjoying the party.

The invites came from Lullaby Loo found on Etsy. Kristin mentioned when we found these invites how she loves to call Maxton her 'little guy' so she was sold on these right away.

And of course mason jars of candy matching the colors of the theme are an easy thing to add considering Party City carries every color you can imagine of gumballs, sixlets, suckers and more.

Little gift bags for all the kiddos to take home included airplane stickers, suckers, toys, and those cute little styrofoam airplanes.

I love to hang things like these somewhere in the party to add some dimension. We cut out airplanes and clouds in different shapes and sizes out of cute decorated paper and glued them onto bakers twine.

The banner looked great hanging in the archway between the kitchen and dining room. It was so big that I couldn't quite get the whole picture but you get the idea!! :)

Once you learn to make your own banner, you likely won't buy one again. They aren't that hard especially once you create the infamous prototype.

This poster came from Ollie and Lulu from Etsy. It's a personalized chalkboard poster. All you do is e-mail the stats and facts about your child and what colors you would like. She creates it and sends it back to you for you to print yourself. We printed this at Costco for under 10$ and then just glued to a foam board you can find at your local craft store for around 2 to 3$.

Kristin found this idea on pinterest about pinning the propeller to the airplane. Once she showed me the picture I just drew it on brown paper and cut out each shape in the colors to match.

Another adorable touch is the water bottle labels. Can you guess where from? Yes, Etsy. Here

The birthday boy woke up just before I left so I grabbed a quick shot! Love his matching shirt.

Halloween before Halloween

There's a lot of great reasons why to have Halloween before the real Halloween. One of them is carving pumpkins early. I love having a date where my cousin Kate can come over and use her mad pumpkin carving skills to whip up whatever pumpkin the kids ask for! This isn't just any pumpkin carver, she wins contests!!

The kids love to have the 'ok' to grab pumpkin guts and get all messy. Not that they would need the 'ok' to do it, because they would anyways. But why not carve pumpkins multiple times? They go bad in a few weeks anyway, well in Ava's case it was a few days. For whatever reason her pumpkin was rotting inside and her Kitty turned out to be known as Smelly Cat. I think we sang Smelly Cat about 50 times that day.......whaaaaat are they feeding youuuuuu......(if you don't know what I am talking about, go back in time and watch some Friends episodes....or just turn on TBS right now.

Ava is obsessed with kitties right now. Thank-you pottery barn for carrying a kitty costume. Now if only Ava's kitty impression didn't sound like a dying cat.

This is one of many costumes Austin may wear for Halloween. This one happens to be somewhat tight, apparently he grew since I ordered the costumes in June. Ok not June, but I did get them really early. Never can be too prepared.

Another reason to have an Early Halloween is putting on those costumes for the first time and capturing it on a beautiful day. When has Halloween ever been a nice holiday with sunshine? Hasn't it rained for the past 5, 10, 15 years!?

Apparently Kitty Cats climb on pumpkins....

Love that tail!

the many faces of Leonardo

We also like to make Halloween books that are spiral bound mini booklets filled with pictures of the kids carving pumpkins, wearing their costumes, and trips to Post Family Farms.

my favorite one! hi-yah!!!

As many kids change their minds as it gets closer to Halloween about what they want to wear, I want to make sure I capture them in the moment that they actually want to put on their costumes.

Enough Kitty pictures!? ok just one more!

Can you make out the kitty face? Kate did a great job considering the stinkin' pumpkin was rotten! Smelly cat didn't last long on our porch!

There is Austin's ninja turtle pumpkin! He loved it. He kissed it over and over and was so proud!  It's not too late to dress up your kids and have Halloween before Halloween. If we have any good days left...

Golden Birthday: 30 on the 30th

My birthday weekend extravaganza was nothing short of amazing. I had told Jason months before my birthday that I didn't want to 'just go out for dinner' for my birthday. Don't get me wrong, birthday dinners can be amazing, a night out with just the two of us is so cherished these days. BUT, this year was my golden birthday!! Not a big deal!? Well, it was to me!

Plus don't all girls cringe when they hear the word thirty? I shudder. I don't want to be thirty. Nor do I want to be twenty. I am glad I am done with being broke in college and not to mention the constant exams in PA school. But surely most parents dream of the days before kids. Wondering what we did with ALL that spare time!?  And why didn't we travel more!?

But Jason, my parents, and great friends made my birthday weekend pretty amazing.

Jason and I ran to Chicago just for the day on Friday to go shopping. We made it downtown to go to the Louis Vuitton store to pick up my birthday present and then ran like crazy to make it in time for our reservations at RPM Italian. I've wanted to go there ever since it opened and it was just as amazing as everyone said it was.

Then on Saturday night a birthday party was put together at our neighborhood club house (which looked the most amazing it ever had in my opinion!).

 We had our own wine connoisseur since it was a wine tasting party!

 Jason built this bar in a few short days that fit perfectly in the clubhouse.

 Adorable decorations of candles, jars, burlap, and old pictures!

 Tammy made a peach sangria that was right up my alley!

 He is nothing short of amazing! It was a beautiful and fun party that I will never forget.

 My parents were there tasting wine and enjoying the party. Most everyone in the neighborhood know them by now!

The room was filled with people I love! I felt so very blessed! The weekend finished out with a neighborhood couples golf outing on Sunday and all of my family coming over to share Labor Day with us. It was a such a nice long weekend.

I look forward to a nice night out for birthday dinner next year ;)