March Madness Recap - Ellie Turns Eight

You may not know this, but Taylor Swift is the coolest thing to many 7-8 year old girls right now.  I knew Ellie liked her, but had no idea the response that we would get for her party.  I created some invitations that I thought looked pretty good and got the response from girls like they were actually going to the concert.  Score one good mom point for me :)

The thing that was tricky about this party was that is was on the same day as prom, so fun but simple was the key.  We started as I always do, with a little activity as kids arrive, because they NEVER all arrive at the same time.  Ellie loves wordsearch puzzles right now, so I thought it would be fun to give one to the girls.  Like at Catie's party, we put some background music on - Taylor Swift of course, and this is what happened.

Ellie wanted to make some Taylor Swift flowers for the girls hair, but needed something a little more complicated than the ones from Catie's party the week before.  After some searching, I found a very easy tutorial here.  

 

Enoch again stepped up and helped - we cut the big circle and spiral and let the girls roll them up.  It was the perfect level of difficulty for them - hard enough to make them feel grown up but easy enough for them to accomplish without taking too long. 

The blonde girl to the right of Ellie is her best friend Melanie - they call each other Mellie and Ellie :)

We had cupcakes, opened presents - several of which were Barbie related - and all the girls agreed that the Barbies must be played with right then, and that is how the party ended.

The next day was Ellie's actual birthday, day after prom, Sunday, and we ate dinner at my mom's house, with me bringing Ellie's cake as dessert.  She really wanted chocolate cheesecake and I really didn't have it in me to make a proper one, so I went to my trusty recipe book and pulled up the chocolate cheesecake dessert, adding additional layers both to make it feed more people and make up for the fact that it wasn't "real" cheesescake. 

I the midst of prom decorating on Friday, I left to take Ellie for her birthday present - she got her ears pierced.  I forgot to get a picture of the momentous occasion, but I promise she was shocked at first ("Mom, that hurt!"  "Ellie, they put holes in your ears."  "I know but it hurt!") but then couldn't stop smiling.  She thought that was her whole birthday present, but we gave her three cards of earrings to open on Sunday.  Last week was the six week mark, and Ellie has switched to a different pair every day.  

March Madness Recap - Catie Turns Six

It is difficult to believe that Catie is six.  I have often heard parents say they still envision their children at certain ages and I just think Catie is five.  I loved her as a five year old.  She is one of those kids who just is happy - skips randomly when most people walk and doesn't take a bad picture. 

This year, for her birthday, it was all about Tangled.  Lots of fun for party ideas, but difficult to think of a conceptual cake.  How to make a Tangled cake, with my time frame and baking abilities...then it hit me when I was walking through the store - Hostess Ding Dongs!  A few skewers through the middle to keep them from falling over and some canned icing (don't judge me...) and we have a cake.

I was actually pretty proud of the way it turned out and Catie seemed excited, so we called this one a win!  We had this as the dessert with the relatives that were able to come over on her birthday.  

We had Catie's friend party the Saturday following her birthday.  Tangled was still a pretty new concept for birthday parties, but I found some great ideas on the trusty internet.  I stole the idea for the party invitations from this blog and since I forgot to take a picture of ours, so I'm including hers.

Totally cute and it got the girls very excited.  They arrived, colored Tangled pictures and made flowers from felt to wear like Rapunzel does.  Enoch gets all sorts of dad praise for his willingness to help 5-6 year old girls make felt flowers.  Seriously, how did I get so lucky?

They turned out really cute and were VERY easy - if you are looking for cute and simple, the instructions for these are here.  We also had the girls make the bookmarks from the same site, teaching them the basics of braiding.  We had the Tangled soundtrack playing during all of this and moved on to the best part - decorating cupcakes :)

You can see the girls are wearing their flowers.  Advice for having kids decorate cupcakes - icing in a can doesn't make a huge mess and is somewhat user friendly.  It was a very fun day and I think all the girls enjoyed themselves.