Bryn's Princess Party

I've never thrown a birthday party for Bryn before (December 30th is tricky timing for a birthday!), but this year Bryn had her first one! As per her request, it was a "Purple and Pink Princess Tea Party" ...I love being a mom to girls :) 

 I had tons of pink and purple felt already, so I made a bunch of felt princess crowns in lieu of party hats.

I also made some simple princess wands with felt, ribbon, and spray painted wooden dowels. 

Bryn pointed out that fairies - not princesses - have wands, but we just kind of went with it :)

 The decorations were pretty simple with balloons, crate paper, etc. But the night before the party I got out my cardstock and added this banner and paper flowers. It was a good way to fill my big empty wall!

 I also made some simple garland for the kitchen with the same colored cardstock paper. I just punched circles and then sewed through them.

Here's the kitchen set-up. It was pink and purple overload!

But Bryn went nuts for all the pink and purple :)

 One quick shot of Bryn and Mya before the guests arrived

When the guests arrived they used stickers, crayons, and markers to decorate their "princess name card" for the table.

Once everyone arrived we did our first game: "Pin the Jewel on the Crown"

The bedazzled crown

After that the girls each got a little cups of beads and string and they made princess necklaces.

We had beads spilling all over the place, but finally we thought to tape one end of the string to the table and then it worked much better!

The girls also got another little cup of beads and a stick of pipe cleaner (is that what it's called?) to make a bracelet. 

 We had pink lemonade and lots of pink-ish snacks

 Josh (a.k.a. the Party Master) did an impromptu game of Disney Trivia and the girls got so into it. It was really funny. (That's what the above picture is of).

We played a "Floating Lanterns" game where they had to keep the balloons up in the air. 

We also played a "Find the Princess" game that I don't have pictures of.

 Mya stood back and watched, and was very well entertained by all the chaos.

 Opening presents

 Such a fun group of girls! Bryn is lucky to have such cute little friends.

Planning a party takes more work than I realized(!!) but the party was such a fun time. Josh and I are still laughing about all the cute/funny moments. And best of all, Brynlee was completely thrilled about the whole thing. Love you, princess Bryn!

Mya's One Year Photos

I had Mya's one year photos taken in Utah and I just got them back yesterday! They were taken by Christine Olson, a friend of a friend, and she was fantastic. Here are way too many of the pics....

 These pictures make me so happy. I love these two sweet girls and being their mom is the best job in the world. 

(The only thing that would make these better is if Josh were in them! Mya's "one year photos" kind of turned into family photos minus Josh, so we need to get family pics taken soon!)

Easy Crib Skirt

 After nearly three months of sleeping on a blanket on the floor, Mya finally started sleeping in her actual crib a couple weeks ago. We didn't set it up in California because we were moving, so she started sleeping on just a folded blanket. Then we didn't want her to sleep in her crib in her room (since she shares a room with Bryn) until she was sleeping til 7 or 8 am so that she wouldn't wake up Bryn. Anyway, to celebrate the move to CRIB sleeping, I made an easy crib skirt to cover the bars that raise the mattress up and to hide the blankets in the drawer below. 

 To use less fabric and to make things easy I finished the edges of a long piece of fabric and just used velcro to attach it to the perimeter of the bars. It's not my idea- I got this idea a long time ago from somewhere online, but now I can't remember which website. It was such a quick and easy project!

Garlands

GARLAND #1

I couldn't afford to make new curtains for the girls' room, and I wanted to try to use up fabric that I already had. So instead of curtains I made a couple strands of fabric garland to hang above her windows. They turned out bolder than I envisioned, but that's okay. Hopefully they won't stick out so much once I'm used to seeing them day after day. I just cut 15-20 strips of each color of fabric (I think 1.5" x 30" each) and then folded the strips in half and tied them to strands of twine. I just hung them with two clear push pins on each end.

 I also cut up Bryn's black-out curtain from California and miraculously each half covers these two windows perfectly. So we put that up sometimes for napping since the lovely garland offers zero coverage as far as darkening the room goes.

 GARLAND #2

Our birthday garland/bunting that we hang for Bryn's birthday is pink, purple, orange, and totally girly. So I made some boy-ish garland to hang for Josh's birthday. (I think we'll re-use the green strand for St. Patrick's day and maybe I'll make a red strand and do red and blue garland for the 4th of July). 

The best part about this project is that it used up lots of fabric scraps from past projects. I made my friend Linds a quilt last year with blue and green fabrics, so most of these fabrics are leftover from that. I also used up some blue and green bias tape for the "string" of the garland. (Did I mention that I inherited a big shoe box full of  bias tape and trims? It always comes in handy for random projects that pop up.)

GARLAND #3

....Just kidding. No more garland for a while :)

Free Craft #1: Hair Clip Holder

I've had a few projects on my list, but I needed to make them "free" projects because:

(1) We are paying for grad school tuition now! Yikes!

(2) My fabric stash is way too big.

(3) I'm still too scared to go shopping alone with two kids, so venturing out to the craft store for any new supplies is not possible yet.

So here is the first "free" project Bryn and I made last week with materials we rounded up at home.... 

Tada! A hair-clip holder!

Every mother of little girls has probably already made one of these, but we'd never had a place for Bryn and Mya's bows before! And we needed a project to keep Bryn busy for a little while.

I've seen adorable and stylish versions of this craft, but this is the simple version! :)

 Bryn was my little helper with this project and it's so cute how proud she is of our finished product!

(She slipped into this picture to demonstrate her "wink" face. It's a good look).

 We started with a cheap canvas that I have had lying around forever. We just used a staple gun to staple some fabric around it and then a few ribbon pieces around it. That's it! It should have taken about two minutes to make, but Bryn had to help with every step and every staple, so it probably took an hour!

 Bryn's favorite part was attaching the clips, of course. She's sometimes a little OCD about putting things in color order, so she was in heaven arranging them :)

Bryn used to change her hair clips all day long when they were within reach, so I hung the canvas up high in the bathroom. Just out of reach!