It's a Pony Party!

This was a fun one and the highlight was seeing our daughter light up like a christmas tree with her special surprise we have been keeping for months and months and months (all of the family pitched in to make it happen). She was in shock and she was soooo blessed. As you may have heard me say numerous times before, Nevaeh is in love with horses and now the color purple! Anything purple. Anything resembling a horse. So her 7th bday party had both....LITERALLY....

When she walked into the backyard there were two decked out ponies waiting for her!

 

She even got to decorate & brush her mane for the party!

Ruby helped out with the other pony (it was hard work but someone had to do it) & they had a whole hour to themselves with "their" ponies before guests arrived.

 

Oh yes & little little sis got her chance to sit on a saddle

As far as the party details, here are a few little ah-ha touches:

A "watering hole" filled with mini water bottles. Each bottle had some ribbon tied to the top for flare. Let's not forget about the peanuts- what would a party be without peanuts??? Nev likes them so there you go.

 The horse was a word document image and was printed off for the decor.

The rest of the time the kiddlets took turns riding the ponies, being silly, and painting water color pics (all horse themed from the dollar store).

And then there was the cake which was John & I's first attempt at making a fondant cake- or fondant anything! It has always seemed very intimidating to use but it turned out to be funner & easier than I thought! The base of the cake was made from white cake (straight from a box) which was coated in frosting with rolled chocolate fondant placed on top to finish the look and create the shape. The eyes & flower were made from air heads that were molded by hand.

All in all not that bad of a horse cake- or as one cutie pie referred to as a "cow" cake =)

Look at all of those girly personalities! I have to say this was a far cry from my little Nevaeh who use to sleep in a spiderman costume, who hated pink and dresses & out of all the things she could ask santa for a few years back, asked for transformers....but I think I can get used to it =) Just maybe. Love you sweetie.

PS. If you are live in the NW, look up "Dazzling Pony Parties". They were seriously amazing! Helmets & safety instructions were also provided along with a lot of genuine fun!

Growth in pictures: Part Two

Missed out on Part One? Hasn't she grown so much?

Nerdy father's day gift: Edible tackle box

How many ties, shavers, gift cards, & shirts can you buy before feeling like you are getting the same thing over and over for your dad? After all, I am a daddy's girl. Like pretending to love football and even memorizing the stats of players to feel closer to him as a kiddo and going out of my way to "HELP" him. Although somehow that always got me into trouble....like the time I cleaned out his oil pan to "help" and he was mortified to find his little girl covered in car oil. But I did have that pan spick-and-span let me tell you LOL. Or how about the time I tried to defrost a can of olives (who puts olives in the freezer anyway) and blew up the microwave. Hey I was just a kid TRYING to help and it was out of love right?

Some of my FAVE memories are being on the docks fishing together. Most of the time it was just me and him doing the fishing as it was not my mom or sister's thing which meant more time for just the two of us. Since he has started up fishing again (and that is the plan for father's day) we made him an "edible tackle box" for a small gift.

You can use a real tackle box or a craft organizer like this one that was re purposed. Whatever is clever. 

The funnest part was filling it with goodies (all found at the dollar store of course) to which my girls GLADLY ate a boat load helped fill the box with "bait" for fishing:

To personalize it further and create a label, I modpodged some pretty paper along with a heartfelt quote:

The kids can't wait to give it to him & I am looking forward to honoring him on Father's day and catching some REAL fish!

Dude. It's an explosion of pink.

Pink. Ruby's is soooooooooooo in love with pink and it melts my mama heart because it's just so, well, GIRLY. For her big 3 yr old bday party (like weeks ago- or was it a month and a half ago?) we had to make sure it was extra girlified AND not too much effort to pull off with a newborn attached to my um...anyway....

I found these cute little gumball machines for only $0.50 right before valentines day! My kind of deal. The tags were easily covered with pink poster board that was glued on, along with a personalized note of pure awesome cheese: "Hope you have a ball! Love Ruby".  I couldn't help myself ha ha ha

They were the cutest party favors and fit into the theme=)

As far as entertainment, we came up with the idea of having a tattoo/earring station for the kiddos and I loved how entertaining and SIMPLE it was.

Pink buckets were filled with stick-on earrings (found both at target) & temporary tattoos (you can get a whole booklet of them from Old navy).

Ruby was our very first customer.

Getting her ears "pierced" & some tattoos...by the end of the party she had partial sleeves just like her daddy!

The kids also got a kick out of being able to draw on our chalkboard wall that we did last year, which is always a go to for entertainment. Admittedly, we have had to make a few apologies after friends have visited and their kids went home with the mindset that they could actually draw on other walls. Oops. Guess it comes with the territory.  It will still go down as one of my all time favorite projects that we've done and is great for rainy days (you can check out when we experimented with drawing with chalk under a black light here).

You can snag a small can of chalkboard paint at Home Depot for under fifteen bones and it goes a loooooonnnnngggg way. So if you've ever wondered about painting a wall- DO IT!  

Back to the party- for snacks we put out strips of seaweed (by request by our girls because they beg for it) & rice crackers with seaweed.

We also had pink lemonade and lychee drinks. All pink of course.

 And we couldn't forget octopus hotdogs!

Let's take a moment and reflect on these awesome pink and yellow plates from target because they are spiffy and you need to go get some. (Wait...that came out wrong. This is a family post afterall).

Our only splurge and Ruby's main gift from us was getting a cotton candy machine from our local party store for the day (they normally run around $35). It was sticky and fun! We actually had to have it in the backyard because all of the cotton candy was flying around and the machine was gigantic LOL

So worth the sugar rush!!!!

Just ask the birthday girl =)

Growth in pictures

 

Here is Part Two 13 to 19 weeks!