Dr. Seuss 2nd Birthday Party: Part One

March 16, 2015 by

Here it is! I give you Samantha and Amelia’s Dr. Seuss 2nd Birthday Party…Part One (because there are, of course, about ten million photos, 89% of which I’m not even posting here).

For the girls’ party, we reserved a pavilion at one of our favorite parks, but since I wasn’t allowed to start setting up until 2 p.m., that only gave me an hour and a half to get everything ready (versus three DAYS of set-up last year). 
The party this year was certainly scaled down from last, but myself, Jake and our party crew (Sarah, Mike, my dad, Ali and Michael) were frantically scurrying around to get everything set up in time, nonetheless. 
For food, I hired a taco catering company and additionally bought my own “kid food” and extras like chips, salsa, fruit, veggies and over a hundred drinks. That added up to three large coolers and two Costco shopping carts full of food, which almost killed us hauling from the car and setting up– particularly in 80+ degree weather. 
Add to that banners, tissue paper pom poms, table centerpieces, and party favors and we had our work cut out for us.  If you ask Jake, however, I’m completely exaggerating and the set-up was a piece of cake. While I was stressing out the entire time, he was as cool as a cucumber, as per the usual.  
Jake was on banner and pennant flag duty. 
Sarah and Mike practically duct-taped on 15+ tablecloths due to wind. Mike and Ali made two trips to the party store to pick up balloons since not all of them fit in their car, while my dad was on ice detail. Aunt Linda and Uncle David came to the rescue by showing up early and helped get the food out of coolers and onto tables. It truly was a team effort!
The sign-in table with Dr. Seuss’s Happy Birthday to You books for guests to sign for S and A. 
Next to their books were photos of the girls with their 2nd Birthday chalkboard stats. 
The “Truffula Trees” were made from red metal pails I found at the dollar store filled with vase filler and rocks. A wooden dowel was secured in some floral foam inside the pail and some awesome red fur I found at Michael’s was hot glued around the pail. I then stuck a tissue pom pom on top and completed them with red polka dot bows. 

My favorite sign. 
Grandma and Grandpa had the most important job of all– getting S and A to the party after the girls woke up from naps! Not a task for the faint of heart, let me tell you. 
Let’s get this party started! 
Our sweet friend, Marsha, couldn’t make the party, but stopped by beforehand to say hello. We were so happy to see her!

Family started arriving and it was go-time! 

The baby star of the party: Cousin Noah. 
Surprisingly, the girls actually kept their tutus on most of the time. One week later, whenever they see their Thing 1 Thing 2 shirts, they beg to wear them. Maybe they think their outfits will magically make a party appear? 
Attempts at family pictures before everyone showed up. Did you find anything up there, Samantha? 
And the award for angriest twins at their own birthday party goes to…
The girls turned those frowns upside down after Great Uncle David helped the girls to some tacos. 
Yum! Note Anthony, the taco guy, in the background. I sadly didn’t get any pictures of him and the taco cart in all the chaos, but may I say, he did a fantastic job. 
My goal for this party was to do as little myself as possible, hence hiring My Taco Man catering to do the main course. Anthony hauled in all the food, plus a grill an hour early and cooked it all in record time. Before the party started, I was getting nervous as to how he was going to get it all done, but I was proved wrong and ended up amazed at how fast he worked!
Our final head count was 84 (not including babies), so cooking that much food was no joke. 
The taco selections included chicken, Hawaiian pork, carne asada, and grilled veggies, along with rice, beans and toppings. He also did mini quesadillas for the kids upon request. Anthony– you are amazing and we loved it! 
And in a special twist of fate– it turns out Anthony is a twin himself and his twin brother, Hector, works at the same catering company. Could it get any more twintastic? 
Tacos in my belly and I’m happy, happy, happy!
Can’t forget the best part– churros! I had paid for mini churros with the catering order, but when Anthony arrived, he said they must have accidentally given him regular size churros instead. No complaints here. Did I already mention we love you, My Taco Man?!
Poor Noah. Just give me a churro!
More family pictures with Grandma and Grandpa. 
Aunt Sarah and soon-to-be Uncle Mike. The girls are already practicing their flower girl duties. 
Uncle Mike and his girlfriend, Ali, both of whom drove all the way out from Wyoming to be here. 
The Arnoff-Yeoman-Whitehead clan. Samantha may or may not be picking her nose again. 
Great Aunt Linda and Uncle David.
  
Zack, Allison and Cousin Noah. 
The girls with Great Grandpa. 
The Kagel-Gerin-Whitehead crew. 
The girls were excited to see cousins Eleri, Rhys, Jack, Great Aunt Annie and Great Uncle Johnny. As an aside, Amelia is now addicted to Perrier sparkling water…with lime, of course. 
Samantha with Great Aunt Annie.

In addition to the taco cart, we had a “kid food” table set up with carrots and dip, fruit, applesauce pouches, fig bars, cheese sticks, yogurt pouches, Pirate’s Booty popcorn, cheddar bunny crackers, fruit chews, and juice boxes. Samantha couldn’t quite choose amongst them all, so she just sampled everything.

Socialite Amelia greets her friends as they arrive. 

It wasn’t until we gathered everyone to sing Happy Birthday that it dawned on the girls that all this hoopla might just be for them. The majority of the time, S and A did pretty well considering all the over-stimulation. 

Speaking of over-stimulation… with the arrival of Elmo and Cat in the Hat, the party could officially begin!

More to come!
Lots of love, 
Signature

Filed Under: Parties

Allison’s Ahoy It’s a Boy Shower Part Three: The Party

June 10, 2014 by
Now that I’ve covered the decorations and the food for the Ahoy It’s a Boy baby shower I threw my cousin, Allison, it’s time for how the shower actually went down.
The mom-to-be/cutest preggo person ever!

As guests entered the shower, they mingled and stopped by the sign-in table to write some advice for Allison. Guests who brought diapers for her dropped their raffle ticket in the jar for the Diaper Raffle.  I also had a basket full of diapers on which guests wrote funny messages so that Allison can get a good laugh when she’s up late at night!
 As guests were just starting to arrive, we made sure to take a few photos with Allison before things got too busy.

Aunt Lynn, Allison, me and my mom. 

Daughter and mom.

Allison with her fun mother-in-law, Mindy and adorable sister-in-law, Rachel. 

My mom and Aunt Linda chilling before the shower started. 

Chatting it up. 

Allison and the lovely Marsha. 
This was Allison’s third (or fourth?) shower, so for this one, the guests were an eclectic mix of family, Allison’s friends and Lynn’s friends. 
Allison with Rachel and her friends from high school, Nana and Whittney. At one point, Allison, Whittney and I started talking about strollers and other baby-related items, boring Rachel and Nana to death! It’s funny the conversations that just come naturally once you have kids.

After giving everyone some time to eat and chat, we gathered in the living room for games. Our first game was Baby Price Is Right. I held up different items, like diapers, wipes, a board book, baby shampoo, etc., and guests had to guess what they thought the price of each item was. Whoever’s total was closest to the actual total of all the items won. 
There were some tough ones in there…I never would have guessed a 20-pack of Pampers diapers cost $8.99. I’m so used to buying huge boxes of 192 Pampers in bulk from Amazon that I’m kind of out of the loop.
Our next game was called, Daddy Knows Best. I had emailed Zack (Allison’s husband) prior to the shower and asked him to answer a series of questions. Guests were shown the questions and had to guess whether or not they thought Allison would be able to match Zack’s answers.
 Then, I asked Allison the same questions. If her answer matched Zack’s, any guest who had already marked that they thought her answer would match got a point. The one with the most points at the end of the questions was the winner. 
The questions were a mix of factual questions (How many hours does a newborn sleep per day on average?) and personal questions (Who will cry more when the baby is born? What feature of Allison’s do you hope the baby will have?)
Winner!
Allison matched an impressive number of Zack’s answers–they should go on a game show together. We all got a kick out of some of Zack’s answers!
Question: What feature of yours do you hope the baby will have? 
Zack’s answer: Height (Allison is very petite!) 
Question: Who will be the first to hear the baby cry in the middle of the night? 
Zack (and Allison’s!) answer: Cooper (their dog). 
The question, “How old will Baby be when he goes to his first U of A football game?” caused quite the stir among the grandmas as both Allison and Zack answered three months old. “NOOOOOOOO!” protested Allison’s mom and mother-in-law. “It’s too DANGEROUS!” 
The rest of us thought it was hilarious. 

For the next “game,” I drew a name out of the diaper raffle jar and the winner received a prize, as did the other game winners. We then adjourned for cake (yay!) and treats. 
After everyone was sufficiently jacked up on sugar, we convened on the couches for gift-opening. While Alison opened her gifts, I handed out Bingo cards to the guests, who wrote in what they thought Allison would receive. Any time she opened something they had written down, they could mark an X on their Bingo card. The first one to cross out five in a row won a prize.  

I’m in love with all the boy presents she received!

Samantha and Amelia got their cousin some clothes and holiday stickers like “My First Hanukkah” to put on his onesie for photos. 
During the shower, Zack, Jake and the other boys had been hanging out at our house. They flocked in to devour what was left of the food as the shower was ending. 

Gerin family photo. 
Great Grandpa stopped by the after-party as well. 

Samantha was really confused as to whose party this was. WHAT? THIS ISN’T ANOTHER BIRTHDAY PARTY FOR ME? BOO.
Amelia was happy to join in the fun, no matter whose party it was. 

Cousin Jack, Jake, the girls, and their twin cousins, Eleri and Rhys.  
After presents, guests grabbed a favor (bath salts) on their way out. The rest of us started packing up food and taking down decorations in record time. 
The shower was so much fun to put together and it seemed like everyone had a good time. Allison threw me the most adorable owl-themed baby shower last year before the twins were born, so I wanted to make sure she had a cute shower as well! 
Me and Allison as babies. We are four months apart. I look like Godzilla baby compared to her!
While we had fun putting everything together, I was so glad to finally get my house cleaned up from its disastrous crafting-and-baking-in-progress state. 
A behind-the-scenes look at the kitchen pre-baby shower:

No more parties for a while!

Lots of love,

Signature

Filed Under: Parties

Allison’s Ahoy It’s a Boy Shower Part II: The Food

June 6, 2014 by
Ever since Samantha’s hospitalization on Monday, Jake and I have been pretty drained and still in semi-shock. Although I’m way behind on getting things done around the house, I’ve put our never-ending laundry pile to the wayside and have simply been enjoying playing with the girls at the park or at home. It’s hard to believe that at the beginning of the week, Samantha was completely out of it, and now she’s running around the house, laughing and playing with Amelia. It’s so nice to have our Samantha back!
I’ve also been backlogged on posting updates about all the happy, fun events that occurred prior to our horrible experience on Monday. So, while the girls are napping, and since I’d rather be updating the blog than doing laundry, back to Allison’s Ahoy It’s a Boy Baby Shower…
This post details the food–my favorite part! (Part One: The Decor can be viewed here).  
First, the cake:
The cake was a team effort and was the product of our fourth attempt to make the perfect-tasting lemon buttercream cake.  I baked the first attempt, which turned out Death-Valley-dry. I tried it out about a week before the shower and sent it to Jake’s work, asking the other lawyers and staff there to give me honest feedback. The nearly unanimous opinion was that the frosting was yummy, but the actual cake needed work. 
Back to the drawing board.
For attempt #2, my mom was fortunately here and researched a bunch of ways to make the cake more moist. We again sent the test cake to Jake’s work and, while this attempt received more positive feedback, it still needed some work. The cake still wasn’t moist enough and definitely not lemon-y enough was the consensus. 
Our third attempt was the charm! My mom tried using a boxed lemon cake mix, and added lemon pudding mix, fresh lemon juice and sour cream to make it more moist. The cake, combined with her homemade lemon curd and my lemon buttercream frosting was divine!
We ended up eating half the cake ourselves before sending it off to Jake’s work for more opinions. Jake said people were stampeding to the break room to try a taste after word got out. Tons of people asked for the recipe, so we knew we had a keeper!
Our fourth attempt was the cake for the actual shower. My mom baked the cake and made the lemon curd the day before. I made the lemon buttercream frosting and dyed it four different times, inserting the frosting into piping bags to sit overnight. Jake did the actual piping after I showed him a YouTube tutorial on what I wanted because my hands ached after squeezing the piping bags for that long. I then placed some brown sugar “sand” on top, and placed some white chocolate “seashells” I had made using a chocolate mold. 
This delicious lemon cake contained four layers, each separated by some very tart homemade lemon curd, and iced with lemon buttercream. My mouth starts to water just thinking about how amazingly delectable it was. 
Cookies! For the Nutter Butter Flip-Flops, I just piped some frosting onto the cookies for the “straps” and placed a white or green candy pearl in the middle. Super easy and super cute! 
I baked the whale and starfish sugar cookies a few days in advance and made homemade royal icing the day before. Jake helped me pipe the icing onto the cookies and my mom and Jake added the adorable edible googly eyes. 
Starfish sugar cookies. 
My favorite treat of the event! These Clam Cookies were a huge hit and were both cute and tasty. We bought the madeline cookies at Costco and my mom and Jake iced them. We used yogurt-covered raisins for the “pearl” as well as edible googly eyes. I then arranged them on brown sugar “sand.” These were so easy to do and the cutest of all the desserts. 
Cake Pops are more of a decoration than a dessert in my opinion, but I had fun baking them anyway with my BabyCakes Cake Pop Maker (if you are reading this, Jake, I TOLD you I’d get some use out of it!) 
After being inspired from a photo of these I saw on Pinterest, I decided to include these chocolate-covered marshmallow pops, which  were easy to make. I melted down some blue chocolate melts, dipped a lollipop stick in the chocolate, stuck them in the marshmallows and placed them in the fridge to set. 
After the chocolate had set, I dipped the marshmallows into the melted chocolate, swirled them around a bit to get rid of excess chocolate, dipped the bottoms in brown sugar and then stuck a goldfish cracker onto the front and miniature candy pearls for bubbles. I made them the day before and then arranged them on a platter with brown sugar (sensing a theme yet?) for the “sand.” 

We made some chocolate seahorses and shells using a chocolate mold. 
The chocolate cupcakes ended up looking not so pretty because the white chocolate frosting I made was too soft while I was piping it. To make matters worse, the frosting started melting completely after sitting out at the party for too long by the hot window. You win some, you lose some. 
I ended up taking out the seahorses and placing a white chocolate seashell on top of each cupcake, which looked a lot cuter, but I didn’t get a picture of the final product. 
I didn’t get a close-up of it, but I also made a layered blueberry parfait inside a trifle dish that was, sadly, the most healthy thing there.

Thankfully, Aunt Lynn (Allison’s mom) offered to take care of the luncheon. That helped out SO much since it allowed me to focus on the games, desserts and decorations.

She told me what she had planned and we came up with some cute beach-themed names for the food that I printed out on little signs. The chicken salad sandwiches became “Chicken of the Sea Sandwiches,” the pasta salad became “Shell Pasta,” and the pita chips became “Sea Salt Chips.” 

She also put together some appetizers, fruit salad and cranberry spinach salad to complete the luncheon. 

The food and desserts worked out great and I don’t think anyone left hungry. If anything, they all left in a sugar coma!

And now, a little behind-the-scenes action!

Me placing the brown sugar “sand” over the top of the cake before arranging the seashells and cake topper. 
My slaves helpers worked diligently on cookie duty. For the most part, Jake and my mom were happy to help out with everything from tying tiny bows onto the cake pop sticks to decorating cookies late into the night. 
A couple nights in, however, they started getting a little cranky and unionized against me, demanding meal breaks and rest periods. We ended up negotiating a compromise wherein I agreed that they would work no later than 9 p.m. It’s so hard to find good (free) help these days 🙂
In all seriousness, Jake and my mom were amazing and I couldn’t have pulled off the shower without them. Case in point: Here, my mom is using tweezers to place each tiny edible pearl onto the starfish. Now THAT’S dedication. 
Jake kept claiming that the arms of the starfish cookies were breaking, thereby giving him an excuse to eat them. When I started getting mad after the sixth or seventh missing arm, Jake suggested that we could just serve the cookies, but tell people the starfish would grow the arm back or that the arm had attached to another starfish. I think we were all a little delirious at that point in the night and couldn’t stop laughing. 
It was a lot of work, but we had FUN. 

In the next post, I’ll detail how the actual shower went down, including pictures of actual people!

Lots of love,

Signature

Filed Under: Parties

Allison’s Ahoy It’s a Boy Baby Shower Part I: Decor

May 30, 2014 by
Last weekend was the big baby shower I had been planning for my cousin, Allison. Although I had already ordered my craft supplies and planned out the desserts/decor way in advance, finding the time (and energy) to make everything after putting in full days with the twins proved difficult. 
Fortunately, my mom flew in to my rescue the week before the shower. It wasn’t much of a vacation for her, to be sure! We took the girls out and about during the day, and at night, exhausted, we worked on decorations and desserts. The shower never would have come together without her and Jake’s help! 
Since there are a ton of pictures from the shower, I’m dividing them up into separate posts. This first post details the decor. 
Allison picked an Under the Sea/Ahoy It’s a Boy theme and chose a cute invitation from this Etsy shop (redacted for this post):
I also included a diaper raffle ticket in the invites, but I think I must have printed them too small because several shower attendees said they never saw their raffle ticket in their invite. Tear!
After collecting a million ideas from Pinterest, I decided on a Caribbean blue, royal blue and lime green color scheme: 
The colors worked out nicely!

Poor Zack (Allison’s husband) has fluffed 30 pom poms in the past few months, a task he surely loathes by now. He’s helped me with them for Allison’s shower, the twin’s birthday party and my Dad’s 60th party! I told him he can officially retire now. 

Another angle of the dessert table. I LOVE how it came together.  
For the main banner, I used a template from this shop on Etsy. I then Photoshopped in my own letters to create the “Ahoy It’s a Boy” banner. 
My mom and I found the lime green gladiolus flowers at the grocery store, of all places, and thought they would provide some nice height as a contrast to everything else on the dessert table. Other flowers at the shower included lime green mums and blue/white/green hydrangeas. 
The view walking in. 
The buffet table before it was filled with food. 
Each table was decorated with a tablecloth, table runner, and fishing net, as well as flowers or some other centerpiece. 
My mom made the fabric banner which turned out so cool (and kinda looked like seaweed, too!)

 My mom also made these centerpieces. My original plan was to hot glue a blue ribbon around the sand and shell-filled vase and then glue the starfish on, but my mom instead suggested wrapping twine around the mouth of the vase and leaving the ribbon off. She was totally right. 

I tied the napkins and silverware up with twine and a lifesaver and stuck them all in a festive sand pail (thank you, Pinterest!)
I of course HAD to include giant glitter letters, as I did at the twin’s birthday party. The grass “seaweed” spouting out of the vases was cut by Jake from the day lilies lining the sidewalks in our neighborhood (shhhh…don’t tell our neighbors!)
The sign-in tables. 
How cute are those flip flops? On sale for $3 at Children’s Place! A lot of the beach decor I already had, and the rest was on sale at Michael’s, on top of coupons. I downloaded some whale-themed scrapbook paper off Etsy and used Photoshop to create all the signs. 
I originally had an adorable sign for the basket on the table that read: “Late-Night Diaper Changes: For Mom’s Use Only!” I never did figure out what happened to the sign, but am guessing it fell off before I could set everything up. 
Anyway, the basket held a bunch of diapers on which people wrote funny messages for Allison so she can have a laugh when she’s up late at night changing diapers. Some examples of messages people wrote on the diapers included, “Only 5,000 more to go until I’m potty trained!” “It’s 2 a.m. Isn’t this fun?” and “Isn’t it Daddy’s turn yet?” 
Advice cards for the mommy to be. 
Allison’s friend, Whittney, made the adorable diaper cake. It turned out so cute!
I placed a few baby pictures of Allison and Zack around. 

One of the few crafts I actually put together myself included ten lantern jellyfishes. I was so excited about this project, but it turned out to be such a pain.

First, you have to cut the lantern in half, THEN cut strips of fabric/streamers, THEN crinkle and pinch said streamers/fabric to create a swirly effect, THEN stretch out strips of plastic tablecloth to make ruffles, THEN glue the tablecloth ruffles on the border of the lantern to create a “skirt,” and finally, hot glue the legs of the jellyfish onto the skirt.

The problem was, the hot glue was HOT (shocker)! It tended to melt through the fabric and plastic really fast, burning my fingers in the process. It was such a tedious project, but they all looked way cute hanging from the ceiling.

My mom found the perfect onesies for our onesie banner– in the theme colors, no less. 

Jake spray painted some clothespins with blue glitter spray paint for me and I made little round clothespin toppers that said “Ahoy” or “Baby Boy.” 
The present-opening area with another  “Ahoy It’s a Boy” banner from this Etsy shop. 

I told my mom she needs to open an Etsy store selling these tissue banners. She made one for the girls’ party as well. They only cost a few dollars in tissue paper and ribbon to make, but generally sell for $30 and up on Etsy.

Baby Zack and Allison. 
Under the Sea banner. 
Table centerpieces for the round tables. My mom and I totally lucked out by finding blue, green and white hydrangeas at Trader Joe’s, which is exactly what I had envisioned. 
Centerpieces for the rectangular tables:
Yay Balloons!
My mom pretty much put together all the favors herself. I ordered some cute glass cork jars off of a discount craft website and my mom mixed together sea salt, peppermint epsom salt and blue food coloring to make some soothing bath salts/foot soaks. I used Photoshop to create a little tag that read “From Allison’s ‘shower’ to yours. Thanks for coming!”
Phew! All those late nights working the decor paid off because everything turned out the way I had designed and imagined it. I can’t speak for Jake and my mom, but I had fun putting everything together! 
I think Michael’s Crafts and Hobby Lobby need to make me a VIP customer or something…one of the cashiers started recognizing me after a few times of going in and even gave me some tips for making my cake pops more flavorful!
Details on the food (my favorite part!) and other shower happenings to come. 
Lots of love, 
Signature

Filed Under: Parties
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