Grace's 3rd Birthday Party

I've been such a crappy blogger lately. But that seems to happen, I go through cycles of blogging everything and then blogging nothing. I just realized today that I never blogged about Gracie's 3rd birthday party, which was the Saturday before her actual birthday.  I ended up making lots of the decoration myself, to save money, and to avoid having tons of super cheesy character stuff. Don't worry I still had cheesy character stuff, I just tried not to make it ALL cheesy.

So Grace decided back in August that she really wanted a Dora party, she was torn between Dora, Tinkerbell, and Minnie Mouse (I was pulling for a super cute Minnie party), but she finally picked Dora.I decided to go with a pink and yellow Dora theme. I made a few of these cute napkin flowers.

 

Here's a picture of them hanging with the ruffle streamers I made (you can also see the super cheesy Swiper I tried to draw. Grace requested last minute that Swiper had to be there)

I found this idea on Pinterest, of course and thought it was to cute, so I made one!

 Since I had bought a million balloons at the store I decided to make Grace's party shoes, extra special!

Speaking of balloons I also followed this tutorial to make a balloon banner for Grace. I hung it from our curtain rod to keep little hands off of it until the day of the party.

Hanging up at the party

I printed out 100 pictures of Grace's 3rd year and picked probably around 50 of them to make a giant number 3.

 I also made Grace a birthday hat, well, because I do every year. I have saved her hat from each year, why I don't know, it's a little memento I save each year. 

I attempted to make Grace's birthday dress. I usually make her a tutu for her parties, but thought that now that she's older she might be annoyed with the tutu. I bought the pre-smocked fabric and made her dress using that.

As far as the food goes, I tried to stick with the theme. 

So I made some Dora oreos using those pre-made sugar decals.

 

Some chocolate covered bananas, you know because Boots likes bananas! I also made some pink lemonade cookies because they matched the color them.

I also made some pina colada dip, Boots butter, Jalapeno popper dip, corn muffins, chips and salsa, and pizza.

I also ordered the cake and cupcakes from Walmart.

 

 And since it was a Dora party, we got a Dora bouncy house!

Grace jumping away!

And some random party pics

After the party while Cole and I cleaned up Grace tried on her new cowboy boots and was just soaking in the fun of the day.

Sew-tastic

I've been trying to get crafty lately. Every project gets a little better, but they are still far from perfect. I started with a dress for Grace's birthday. Grace really wants a Dora party, so I found some Dora fabric that I basically had to just sew the ends together and add straps, super easy.

 I had a tiny bit of Dora fabric left over so I made a onesie dress for Emma to wear.

 

I decided to have the twins have a thing 1 thing 2 themed birthday party.  So I made Emma a tutu to wear. I made it a little crazier then normal tutu, seeing that thing 1 and thing 2 are pretty crazy!

 

 And I found the cutest tutorials on my favorite site, Pinterest, so I decided to mix this tutorial and this one and made a Halloween dress for Miss Grace.

Felt Board

The other day I dug out my scraps of felt and decided to whip together a felt board for Grace really quickly.I just glued down the one full piece of felt I had (green) on a piece of cardboard. I then cut out shapes out of the scraps. Felt is great because it sticks to itself without the need of any glue. This way Grace can create and recreate what ever she wants.

Faces happy or sad

Shapes to build a house

Snowman shapes

Grace playing with her felt board

 

I also made a tree with removable leaves, a Christmas tree with removable ornaments and a star, a snowy scene, a build your own Elmo and Muno (from yo Gabba Gabba), plus a sun and clouds. Grace really seems to like it and it was easy to make and cost me nothing, sense I had all the supplies already!

Arts and Crafts Part 2

I blogged about Grace and I working on some arts and crafts last week, here. I just finally uploaded some more photos of our stuff yesterday, so thought I'd share!

Horse ornament Gracie painted.

Gracie's Santa ornament.

Grace and her hand Christmas tree

And because she's a goof she wanted to pose with her Christmas card from Nana.

and posing with the tree again, she was so proud of herself!

Arts and Crafts

Since Jack, the elf, left Grace some paint your own ornaments, Grace and I decided to paint them while Cole was at hockey last night.

Grace painting the ornaments

The ornaments

Since I already had the table prepped for a mess, we decided to do a few different crafts, once the ornaments were done.

Painting a Christmas tree

We finally made some count down to Christmas links, only a few days late.

Carter loves the look at the Christmas lights, so this is what he did while Grace and I painted.

The messy aftermath!

A Few Pictures

A picture of the ultrasound from last week. Emma & Carter's heads smushed together.

Grace trying to share her binkie with Lily

I was able to check a few things off our to do list. I finally was able to track down a going home outfit for the twins. After looking at Target, Babies R Us, and TJ Maxx, I finally found what I was looking for at Walmart. I really wanted the babies to have matching outfits, just in different colors, I had no idea how hard that would be to find!

I got Carter the yellow onesie with a blue owl on it. I got blue pants and socks to match.

We got Emma the same onesie, but in pink with a yellow owl, with a matching bow and pink socks.

I also finally raised the crib and put Emma's bedding in it.

Carter's bedding is the same thing except with green instead of purple. We only have one crib right now which is okay, since I plan on them sharing a crib for a few weeks.

You can see Carter's bedding print on the comforter on the back of the rocker here:

I was also able to get some things done for Grace's birthday party. I made her hat, her tutu, her birthday sign, her bow, her shirt, and her matching bloomers. I managed to remember to take a picture of the hat and tutu.

And I am spent now, I did all this in the past few days, which has left me feeling pretty tired. I also had my glucose test this morning. I should hear back by Wednesday about whether or not I passed.