It's a Dinosaur Birthday Party!

Romp-pomp-a chomp!

Many of you may have a Wiggles song in your head after reading my title :)

Don't worry, this is NOT a Wiggles party!

This weekend we celebrated Keston's FOURTH birthday!

Keston wanted a DINOSAUR birthday party!

Fun, right?!

We chose to have it at a park to accommodate more people - especially those with children, and hey, it's AUGUST - so one would assume it would be great weather. Well, the weather was super chilly & breezy for August :( Blaahhhh!! Setting up at a park with those conditions was extra hard.

But I still wanted to show you the decorations that we DID choose to put out.

I had trouble finding dinosaur decoration anywhere - except online...which doesn't help since I plan everything so last minute. So we used our printer, our imagination & my husband cut up a cardboard box to give the signs a rugged look. His muscles & ideas are SO helpful!

Here is our dinosaur crossing in the yard, to welcome our guests!

Pretend there are lots of green streamers hanging down like vines...that was the plan before the wind arrived.

Some of the cutest dinosaurs I've ever seen attended Keston's party!!!!

My friend Christina brought a Dino-mite Dino-Melon to the party! 

SUPER CUTE IDEA!!!

We also had Strawberry Spinach Salad at the party, which is always a HUGE favorite every time I've served it. Recipe coming tomorrow!

 AND we served the Frito Corn Salad that I recently posted. 

Here's the recipe: 

http://sisterseesisterdo.blogspot.com/2012/08/frito-corn-salad.html

Now here's what I'm wondering...

What foods do YOU like to serve at parties??

A GREEN Birthday for our 3 year old!!

Pardon me while I gush but I can’t believe that it’s been THREE years since Keston joined our family. He was so itty bitty & C U T E when we brought him home!!!!!!

Just look at him!!

Well since then the boppy has been exchanged for a toy story pillow & a blankie but he’s still the same cute & cuddly fireball!

As you may have read in my recent Word-full Wednesday post, Keston was very sick on his birthday. We made the most of his day with gifts & green decorations. HE IS OBSESSED WITH THE COLOR GREEN!  Unfortunately there wasn’t really a party. His fever was rather high all day so we cancelled on most of guests…sad, right?! His grandmas still came though!

New SHOES! He wanted these SO bad b/c they were black & green. I was shocked that he was SO pumped about getting shoes for his birthday! He also got a John Deere Tractor/Semi Hauler, a new BIKE, books, Geo Trax Farm, Hopper Ball,  Animal back-pack & some other things too. The kid has been playing nonstop since he’s been better.

Here’s the tractor cake his Grandma made for him! She does such a great job & I am so thankful! She even colored the cake batter green!

While Keston took a much needed birthday nap, I decorated a little. It was done on a whim & I think it turned out so cute!! All I did was wind thread around the ends of the tied balloons & strung them across the room. (Don’t look at my curtain-less windows…my youngest nearly strangled himself in them too many times so they had to go…for now.)

Watching Keston grow another year older is so bittersweet. He’s so cute, curious, independent & my is he CUDDLY when he wants to be.  His mouth never stops running & the things he says are SO CUTE & often unbelievably FUNNY. I can’t imagine how I’m going to feel when he’s much older than THREE.  I suppose I’ll probably cry a lot missing his little days…and I’ll certainly pray even more than I’ll cry, I know. Actually, I spent a great amount of time this past year doing both of those. I’m looking forward to Keston growing out of the terrible twos. I refuse to accept that threes will be worse. Don’t tell me that…I might hit you with a die-cast tractor & then stop on your toes while I scream at the top of my lungs like a three year old. Hmmm…are you wondering how I KNOW three year olds do things like that? Pray for me people…

Maybe I’ll link this up to some parties this week…I slacked last week & I miss the party scene.

 Check out my party page

Eli's 1st Birthday

Ohmygoodness!

Here we are 3 weeks later &

I just realized that aside from the post about my polka-dot garland,

 I never shared Eli's 1st birthday with you!

Our baby turned 1 on April 3rd...yep, it's been a year already.

I think just about every parent feels like their baby's first birthday approaches quicker than they would ever expect.

That's certainly the case for us!

As I told you in this blog post, we decided to throw a Mickey Mouse birthday party for Eli. It turned out great!

Rather than making all of our families travel to us & our small house, we took a lil road trip to them & had the party at my sister's house (The Thrift Store Rock Star).

Thanks Aunt Chelle & Uncle Pat for letting us borrow your house!

Grub time!

Our families are awesome!

They all helped us with the food which totally took my stress level down when it comes to party planning.

My dad made an amazing Mac & Cheese, Gram made her super yumm-o potato soup, My sister made an asian slaw & butterfinger grape salad dessert (recipe here), and mom & I supplied the fixings for turkey sandwiches & subs. Thank you family!!

 My talented Mother-in-law made Eli a Mickey Mouse cake!
It was awesome!!!!

So detailed & so cute! It was perfect - and delicious too!

All this singing!! For me??!!

 See that sneaky two year old in the corner?

He was quick to help Eli blow out his candle!

 He wasn't sure what to do with that giant Mickey shoe at first...but he figured it out!

He was pooped after all that singing & cake!

Hahahahahaha

Present time!

Eli got some great presents! He was given a mega block table, an activity table, a rattling ball that looks like a chicken, a bug themed drum/instrument set, a glow worm, some cars, books, a piggy bank & conviently some money to put in it!

The kids had fun playing with Eli's new toys!

We enjoyed the party with our very special family & close friends.

The Sweet Hillery Family & Our surprise guest!

She joined us all the way from Massachusetts!

Me & My Ashley Marie

(mentioned earlier in this post)

She's so good at surprises & I LOVE IT!

Making Polka-Dot Garland (a kinda-sorta tutorial)

For Eli's 1st birthday party I took a stab at making polka-dot garland. Rather than using streamers I thought this would be something fun, different...and reusable! I had everything I needed on-hand so it was cheap, and it was super-super-easy to make! I'm so excited to re-use it for future parties!

Since this was a trial for me, I snapped a few pics during the creation process...

so here we go with my 1st kinda-sorta tutorial!

I came up with 2 kinds of decorations.

1. The short single dot strands (that I hung from doorways)

2. The long double dot garland. (that I stretched across the room & attached to balloons)

How did I do it?

 First I chose 3 colors of felt that I wanted to make my dots with and gathered my supplies..

FELT

CIRCLES TO TRACE - I used 3 different sizes

FABRIC MARKER

SCISSORS

THREAD

 I laid my circle guide onto my felt & traced a bunch of circles with my fabric pen...a fancy circle cutting tool would've been handy, huh?! (boy would I love one of those!)

Then I cut out my circles.
*Moving your fabric as you cut, rather than moving your scissors, makes the edges of your circles much nicer.

The amount of circles you need depends on how close you want your circles to be & how long you want your garland to be.

Here's where I stopped with my pictures.

Next, using my sewing machine, I stitched each felt polka dot from one end to the other. When I reached the end, I continued to let my machine stitch so that they strands of thread would twist together. I did this for approx 3-4 inches and then began stitching another polka dot.

The first few chains of polka dots I made I stitched with brown button thread. The weight & thickness of it was great but the brown looked terrible on my felt. So I went to using regular white thread.

When I make it again, I'll use white (heavy duty) thread.

(or it would definately work to use a heavy string & fabric or hot glue - great option for someone who doesn't want to sew!)

I also started by stitching one dot at a time and didn't like how thin it looked...plus the dot would shift & slide..making the spacing uneven.That's when I decided to double layer the dots. Much better!

I love how it turned out! Hopefully the next time around goes even better since this one was my first.

It was so quick, so easy & definately fun to have up to decorate Eli's 1st birthday party!!

 PaRtY TiMe!!!