Happy Angry Bird-day!

My son Benjamin recently turned SIX! I know, that's crazy! And each year when I ask what type of party the boys want...lately their answer is always STAR WARS! I don't quite understand what the appeal is with Star Wars, so I was very happy when Ben suggested having an "Angry Birds" party! He loves playing "Angry Birds" on my husband's phone, and I have to admit I like playing it too!

I found many ideas on Pinterest. And since Angry Birds is fairly new, there isn't any type of party decorations (unless you have a ton of money to spend on Etsy). So I had to come up with ideas on my own or should I say with the help of the internet! ;)

I LOVED this balloon idea! It can be found HERE.

 The party stores in the neighborhood wouldn't fill latex balloons with helium, so I bought a small helium tank from Walmart and filled my own. Or should I say my hubby filled them for me! I know that latex doesn't hold helium long, but my balloons started falling about a half hour after we filled them! :( So that was a bust! But they sure were cute while they lasted!

What was neat about making these little characters was that the paper weighed down the balloons a little, so we left them hang from the ceiling and it looked like the little angry birds were looking down on us! ;)

 I think the little blue one is my favorite!

 I found these little plush pigs and angry birds at Toys R Us...so I bought them and we set up our own little lifesized Angry Bird Game.

 We were going to use a real slingshot, but it was too hard for the boys to work, so they just threw the angry birds! They had a blast!

 As for the cake, I ordered it at Walmart. I could have baked a cake like this, but I try to eliminate as much added stress as possible lately, so we had the party catered, and I ordered the cake. I did however decorate the cake myself. I was going to make little angry birds out of clay or fondant, but again I wanted no stress, so I ordered the Angry Bird Game off of Amazon.com and just used the game pieces. I think it made the cake look fun!

I was a little upset with the fact that the cake decorator inscribed the cake wrong. I specifically gave her what to write in writing, but she still managed to screw it up. It was supposed to say: "Happy Angry Bird-day Ben!" But she wrote: "Happy Angry Bird Birthday Ben!" But oh well, it's just minor and bothered me just a little! ;)

 But in the end Ben loved his cake and that's all that mattered! :)

Here is the invitation that I made him. I think it's horrible, and I could have done a much better job had I hand drawn it, but I digitally drew it on the computer which is hard!

And finally here we are in our Angry Bird shirts that I waited to the last minute to buy. In the end I traveled about an hour to find our shirts in our sizes! Alex is going through this stage where he makes faces everytime we take a photo! It's exhausting! lol

So that was our simple Angry Bird party! Do you play Angry Birds?

Living a chaotic life!

Wow, it has been such a long time since I last blogged! I apologize, and I probably lost many readers, but December is one of the most chaotic months for me!

My photography business is finally picking up, Alex's birthday is on December 12th, and then there is Christmas! There's just a ton of stuff packed into one month! I know I'm behind, but I'd still like to share some photos from December! Here are some photos from Alex's 4th birthday party! As you can see it was "Lego" themed. I was so excited when I found this t-shirt, I thought it would be perfect for him to wear for his party!

 He's very excited that he is now 4!

 I haven't made a themed birthday cake in a few years, but this year I thought I'd try to tackle a Lego Brick cake.

 I made this yellow brick cake and the blue one that you can see behind it. I wasn't super happy with how it turned out, but the kids seemed to love it! I even used one of his little Lego characters to hold one of the candles!

 Here is the table centerpiece. I used a Lego gameboard that I found at a thrift store and a vase that I filled with Lego Bricks. The little boxes were filled with treats and I stamped each child's name on the box. I wish I would have gotten a photo with all the little Lego Man boxes, but the kids snatched them up pretty quickly! lol

 I made these gift bags for each child that were made to look like Lego Bricks. I purchased solid color gift bags and used a hole punch to punch out circles from cardstock and used dimensional stickers to add them to the front. Very inexpensive and very easy.

So that was basically his fourth birthday! He had a great time and got tons and tons of what else...LEGOS! :)

I plan to start updating my blog on a regular basis, just please stick with me. I've gone through a tough time in the last month and I'll share that with you soon. Hope you are staying warm in whatever part of the world you are in! Have a great week!

Here We Go Steelers....Here We Go!

Today we went to my father-in-law's for a Steeler party! I was very excited because a party meant that I could make a cake! I don't even like eating cake, I only like creating them! Here is a photo of the cakes that I made. Yes: "cakes!" I was only supposed to make one, but my husband didn't think that would be enough- so I spent all day decorating! The darker one has chocolate icing, and the lighter brown cake has butter cream icing. One would have been plenty, half was left of each cake!
The Steeler logos are actually done out of white wafer chocolate. I put the wafers in a Ziploc and dyed the candy accordingly to what I needed, then cut a very small whole in the bag and piped it onto wax paper. First I did the white background of the logo, then I waited until that set, and then I did the black outlines of the diamonds and after that set I filled it in with color. It's an awesome technique that I love to use. I got the idea from the book "The Whimsical Bakehouse." It gives you awesome ideas for creating a really cool personalized cake.

Before the game we had dinner. My father-in-law made cabbage rolls...they sure were delicious! After dinner we took the boys and went sled riding. This was the first time my boys ever went sled riding. They had soo much fun! Actually it was Ben who had the fun. Alex ended going down the hill once, and lost a shoe....that was it for him! He's still at that age where he's scared of things. He went inside to watch the game with the boys, while Ben had fun sledding with his Aunt and cousins!

Here's a photo of Ben and myself before we went outside. I love the look on his face, he said "Daddy are you done yet?" Ben gives attitude when I constantly take his photos!

Here's Alex going up the hill behind everyone. It reminded me of Randy on the Christmas Story when all the kids leave him behind in his giant snowsuit!

Ben has found a new sport that he loves: snowboarding! He always has to do what the big kids do!
How cute! He looks like a little pro! He did really good! His cousin Nick would leave go of him and he'd go about ten feet before falling!

And here's a photo of me and my boys in our Steeler gear! Yes I am wearing a Steeler jersey, it's just PINK! My husband says it doesn't count because it's not black and gold, but that's ok by me....with an all boy household I need to make some things as girly as possible!

Here we go Steelers....Here We Go!

Hugs,

Ruth Ann