A Tangled 3rd Birthday!

Well I can't believe Maddy will be 3 on Friday! We had her birthday party yesterday (Sunday). She loooooves the movie Tangled and asked for a Tangled party this year. It was a lot of fun planning because this was the first year that she actually had an opinion and got to help with the planning and decorating. 

  Here is my birthday girl! All dressed up in her princess dress up clothes! 

Happy 3rd birthday Maddy!!

Tangled theme birthday cake for my Maddy's 3rd birthday!

Floating lanterns and sun flower banner

Another picture of the "floating" lanterns and sunflower banner

I made some tissue paper flowers and purple lanterns to decorate the table . 

I made several purple sunflower banners to hang around the house. Here is a picture of one of the banners over the back door.

And here are some pictures from her party!

waiting for the party to start

She whispers, "I think there is a princess in there!"

playing with cousin Aaron

 

Ethan checking out Maddy's race track from Uncle Chris

Time to blow out the candles. Maddy gets very shy when all of the attention is focused on her.

Present from Granddad and Grandma Locke

Maddy when she first saw the gator.

Checking it out

The party guests

Very excited!

Playing princess dolls with Uncle Eric

trying on my dress up clothes!

 
Playing princess with Daddy and Uncle Eric... I'm not sure who is having more fun! :) 

Sweet Ethan taking a walk

Playing dress up in her Tinker Bell costume. She kept jumping up and down and saying "Mom, why can't I fly." I explained that she needed to find some fairy dust. She has been looking for fairy dust all morning. :)

Playing dress up!

Pretty shoes!

Happy Birthday Maddy! We love you!

We hope everyone enjoyed the party! Thank you to everyone for coming and for all of her wonderful gifts. We really enjoyed her day! 

Father's Day Projects

This year for Father's Day, I decided to try to be creative. Not too sure if it paid off but here is what I decided to do. 
Since my husband LOVES popcorn, I decided to make him a special popcorn bowl. I initially planned to use a ceramic bowl for the project and was going to visit our local pottery decorating place with the children. But... I decided I was better off completing the project at home since I couldn't think of a way to occupy my two little ones while I concentrated on putting the finishing decorating touches on the bowl. So ... I looked everywhere for a plain white ceramic bowl. I found a square one at Target but then stumbled upon a glass bowl that was just the perfect size!! 
So I found some non-toxic paint, picked three colors and went for it! Maddy was so helpful!  Here is how it turned out... 

I did not pay attention to the hump in the middle of the bowl until I was trying to paint it!

My initial idea for the hand prints was to use Maddy's right hand and Ethan's left, so that the thumbs would come together to form a heart. HOWEVER.... I could not get Ethan to let go of the toys in his left hand for ANYTHING so... we went with the right hand. Hey, the print didn't turn out too bad for an almost 9 month old!!



 We also used Maddy's little fingers to make the "popcorn" pieces around the bowl. She had so much fun doing this!

The finished product.

For the grandfathers this year we decided to go with a "Grandpa/Granddad Rocks!" theme this year.  I got the idea from Pinterest, (of course!) which lead me to this blog. 
I did not think that either grandfather would like the cookies and cream fudge so I went with different recipes. I used a regular fudge (adding crushed almonds on top for Grandpa Harper, and no almonds for Granddad Locke) as well as Peanut Butter Balls.
I did not use mini chips as a topping, as I was trying to go with a "rock-like" theme. I decided to add some plain cocoa powder to the top of some of the PB balls to make it look more like dirt. :) 
Hopefully the grandfathers enjoyed them. My husband definitely loved them!! 
So... for Grandpa Harper... since they play in the sand at the lake house all of the time, I used a little bucket to place his "rocks" in and placed a picture of the kids on silly cartoons. Here is how it turned out... 

For Granddad Locke... we took the "rock" theme in a different direction. Since Granddad plays the drums... yeah you see where I'm going with this.... I tried to make a drum out of a tin. I found silly cartoons and used fun pictures for the "band members." 
Here is how this one turned out...

With a homemade card by Maddy in the background.

Well the gifts were fun to make anyway. :) I hope everyone had a wonderful Father's Day weekend!