Samantha's Candyland Celebration

So now that you have seen all of the components of the party, lets put them all together shall we :) Here is Samantha's Candyland Celebration!!!

In the front yard as you walked up the drive on the left was The Gingerbread Tree

and Lollipop Lane

Here is the front door entry

A close up of her door sign hanging on the door

As you walked through the front door you got a glimpse of Gum Drop Pass

A close up of the signs I made to label everything

But Upon entry to your immediate left was

The whole buffet

The right side

the center with a sign that I made that says " Thank you for making my day so sweet, dont forget to take some treats"

and the left

After all the oohs and aahs at the buffet you then immediately ran into the face painting station. A HUGE thanks to Derrek's cousin Jennifer (who majored in Art and is an art teacher) for face painting all the kids.She did an awesome job!

My nephew Zachary getting his face painted

Mason getting in on the action. A big shout out to my friend Jenny for making Mason's ADORABLE shirt!! Thanks Jenny it was a huge hit!

The finished look

Even the birthday girl got in on the fun and had a tiara painted on her forehead. Here she is with her Ya-Ya.

Just past the Candy shop and to the left of the face painting station was the drink station

As you passed through Gum drop Pass you came upon the make your own gingerbread table

And behind that was her happy birthday banner. All of her presents got place underneath this area at the bottom of the fire place.

And to the right of Gum drop Pass was the Peppermint Forest Potty.Thats right even the potty got a festive make over for this party. heehee

To the left of Gum drop Pass was our food station. We had rainbow goldfish, pin wheels, Pb&j sandwiches cut in the shape of gingerbreads, a veggie platter and in the far right you can see the chocolate fountain with the fruit to dip in it. The fountain had a sign over it that said Chocolate Swamp Fountain but I dont have a picture of it running or of the sign :( It was really awesome though and worked great!! A big shout out to my sister Ronnie for making me all the adorable table runners!! Thanks sister!!

Just past the food are was the Dessert Table. This was the table I was second most proud of. Doesn't it look so pretty? We had the rainbow frosted cupcakes, Samantha's Smash cake, chocolate covered rice krispy balls, eclairs, cream puffs and white chocolate covered popcorn. DELISH!!! A big thanks to my friend Heather for the giant ice cream cones.

As you headed into the backyard there was King Kandy's Castle and a jumping house to the right of it. This part kills me b/c I have pictures that i took in the back yard BUT I completely forgot to get pictures of my adorable centerpieces and the large candies hanging :( This just makes me want to cry. We also had a beer cooler that had a sign on it that said Adult Liquid Candy on it. haha I crack myself up :)

Now its time for cake. We had to hold her arms down while we sang b/c she wanted to grab the candle. This is also a good shot of her high chair banner that i made her.

At first she wasn't quite sure what to think of it all. I absolutely adore this picture b/c she looks so happy.

She started out slow

and got a little taste

Then I cut a piece of it to make it easier for her

and the girl went to town

But wait I forgot to get a family picture. Hurry do it now in the middle of Samantha chowing down on cake.

As you can see once she figured out that it wasn't going to get taken away from her

She had the best time eating it. Child ate about 1/4 of it by herself before we did have to take it away from her. haha! My girl sure can eat :)

Mommy with the Birthday girl

Thank you to everyone who made my precious girls 1st birthday so wonderful and memorable. We were so glad to get to share it with so many of our family and friends!!!

Components of a Candyland Wonderland

As you know Samantha just turned 1. I started planning for this celebration 3 months ago. The theme: CANDYLAND!! The second I picked this theme I knew I was in trouble. heehee :) The possibilities for this are ENDLESS!! So I started to google and get ideas. Holy Moly!! Every single party I found with this theme was incredible. I wanted so badly for my party to be just as fantastic for my little princess as the ones I had scene online. So I got to work (literally). I ended up making more then half the stuff I used for the party just to try and cut down on the cost. I think that I did succeed in keeping the cost down too. Don't get me wrong it was still a bit costly BUT it could have been so much worse :) So lets begin shall we

The invitations

I wish I could say this is an original idea but it is not. I did however change things up a bit to make it my own. I got the idea from Divine Party Concepts who got it from Hostess with the Mostess. I searched for 2 weeks to find the perfect striped paper to use and this in turn decided my color theme with was basically the colors of the rainbow and pink (as you can see in my rainbow of invitations picture above heehee). As I continued my online searches I kept coming across candy buffett's, banners, cupcake toppers, water bottle lables etc... I of course wanted to have all of these things for Samantha's party so I went ahead and purchased a download version of Photoshop elements to help me with some of these things and of course my trusty Cricut came in VERY handy as well.

Let's start with the candy buffet. How do you even choose which candy to use I ask? It was very difficult and I still ended up with close to 16 different things I think but it was so cute and totally worth it. First I needed jars. Well I wasn't about to spend $10-15 per jar so I went in search of them at Goodwill and Salvation army stores. This worked out GREAT b/c I didnt spend more then $2.99 on a single one of the jars I used. Pretty good huh? Well now they were going to need labels. So I got right to work on my cricut. Because i had a rainbow theme every label was a different color and then I had the bright idea to do the candy names in multi-color too. This took forever but I am so glad I did it b/c it looked so adorable (if I do say so myself).

The candy buffet slowly coming together

Close up of some of the tags

Yes, I cut out every single letter out of paper and ran them through my xyron sticker maker and stuck them on there by hand. Hello my name is Emily and sometimes I get a bit CRAZY haha :)

The bags that I got for people to put candy in were so cute b/c they literally were candy shop bags. I think I ordered them from Bake it Pretty but of course I cant find them on the site at the moment. I made the scalloped circle on my cricut for the the tags but the sticker that is on the scalloped circle I got from Sweet Petite Designs. She also did my Thank you notes and my return address labels.

A close up of the super cute tags.

Thank you's!

Well now that I had this great Candy buffet coming together I had to have a banner letting all my guests know what it was. I titled it Samantha's Candy Shop and went to work on a banner for her along with a highchair banner and a regular Happy Birthday Banner. I see these adorable banners on etsy all the time and they dont come cheap so I know I saved money by doing it myself. I was very pleased with the way it turned out. You will get to see the other banners in the birthday party post I will do soon :)

Some of the other little details that I ended up making myself were cupcake toppers, water bottle labels, some (though not all) thank you tags for the favors, a door sign and station signs. You will understand the station signs better when I post the pictures of the actual birthday party but here are some pictures of the other items I made.

The cupcake toppers. This is where photoshop elements came in handy. Sorry the picture is the wrong direction but I have no clue how to rotate it.

Water bottle labels. I even self laminated them and it did sort of work but I think it wasn't 100% successful b/c I cut them to close to the paper and they didnt have enough room to seal properly. oh well :) I got the idea to make these myself from Glorious Treats.

A close up of the label

Door hanger

Extra Thank you tags that I attached to the favors for the kids.

Now that I was all set up with the little inside details it was time to move to the outside. Bring on the big decorations :) Most of these decoration ideas came from seeing them online as well. They really were all so adorable and most of them didn't take long at all. I had lollipops lining my walkway to the door, giant candies hanging from our pergola in the back yard, flat candies just placed randomly in the house, giant plastic ice cream cones courtesy of a friend of mine and the most work intensive of them all was the lollipop topiaries.

Giant lollipops. I got off easy with these b/c my sister let me borrow her wooden christmas colored lollipop that I covered in colored tissue paper and then covered in colored cellophane.

Giant candies that hung from the pergola in the back yard. These are a Martha Stewart idea I think and were very easy to make. Its a paper lantern covered in cellophane and tied on the ends to look like a giant candy. I hung them with fishing line.

Giant plastic ice cream cones! How adorable are these? All I had to do was add the ribbon to them and TADA! I was fortunate enough to get these from a very sweet friend of mine who is a store manager. They did a swet side of summer promotion and hung these in the windows. She was going to throw them out before remembering the theme of my birthday party. How awesome is she I ask? Thanks so much to my friend!!

And last but not least are my lollipop topiaries. SO CUTE!! and such a pain in the patookie to make haha. I was so lucky to find the tin holders that I put them in at Hobby Lobby. They were in the gardening section on clearance and there were 4 of them, a pink, blue, purple and green. It was like they were just waiting for me to come and buy them :) It took 2 large bags from SAMS and 1 regular sized bag of dum dums to make the 4 topiaries. I had two 6" and two 4". They were completely cute though and totally worth the effort of making them. I would do it again in a heart beat.

4" on the left and 6" on the right

The last thing I made for this party was a bow for the birthday girl. I had ordered two types of lollipop ribbon early on so that I would have options when it came to matching her dress. Here is the ribbon I went with

And here is the dress she wore with it

Well there it is :) all the components that make up a CandyLand Wonderland. I did make additional centerpieces but (and this makes me want to cry) I didnt get a single picture of them. I was so busy running around on party day that even though the thought to take the pictures crossed my mind it just never happened. SO SAD but what can ya do?

Stay tuned for the actual party pictures to see all these party components in action :)

The Big ONE

Well I cant believe that it has actually been a year but SAMANTHA RYAN LEROUAX is ONE! It still feels like yesterday that Derrek and I were walking into the hospital to be prepped for the delivery of our baby girl. Its amazing that it has only been a year and I can barely remember my life without her in it. Being a parent is truly amazing and I am so grateful that god gave Derrek and I this beautiful little miracle. Here is a look back at her first year.

Leaving for the hospital

Our baby girl is here and looking a lot like her brother

Our little flower is 1 month old

two months old

Three months old

Four months old

Five months old

Six months old

Seven months old

Eight months old

nine months old

Ten months old

Eleven months

Twelve months old

As the parent you dont realize how much your child changes in a year until you look back at pictures. Everyone kept telling me how much hair she was getting and I didnt even realize it half the time. This year just flew by in a blink of an eye.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY MY GORGEOUS GIRL!!! We love you very much!!

P.S.- stay tuned for party prep and party pics coming soon :)

The Curlhawk

Some kids make a statement with their mowhawks well my daughter has decided to make a statement with her curlhawk. haha!!

Sorry for the slight nakedness but it is always the best after a bath :)

She could give Mr. T a run for his money with this curlhawk of hers :)

not everyone could pull this look off and look cute but I think she does it pretty well.

Have a great week everyone!

Big boy bike

We had a garage sale a few weeks ago and sold Mason's tricycle. Sounds mean of us I know but he was way to big for it. Poor kid could barely get moving on it b/c his knees were hitting the handle bars. Anyways, since school was about to start at the time we were going to get him a new one we told him that if he did good the first week and didnt cry and was a big boy (since he was starting at a new school) that we would get him a big boy bike. Well since he did great we kept our word. We headed to Walmart to get him a new ride. We put him on the 12" one and it worked great but we were worried he looked to close to growing out of it so we put him on teh 16" one. He has to point his toes a little bit but this was definitely the one for him. He wanted to ride it all over the store but we got him home as soon as we could so that he could show off his skills on his new big boy bike with training wheels.

getting ready to go

on the move

look at him go

All smiles on his new bike

Daddy getting in on the action to help him turn around

Now daddy is getting a workout :)

This was about the time he was yelling " Move over mommy I'm coming through" haha

He is definitely loving his new bike and we are looking forward to the cooler weather so that he can be out on it much much more.

Happy Fall everyone!!

Stickers

Who doesn't love it when their child who is suppose to be napping comes out of their room looking like this

Gotta love you some stickers! :)