We Love Having Visitors!

We've had visitors at our house for the past few weeks and we have LOVED having them all!  We're so glad that our house can now hold 3 bedrooms worth of guests.  For Max's birthday weekend we had my brothers family, my sisters family and my Aunt Kathy come visit. 

My mom and her sister, Kathy were getting ready to go out shopping so I made Michelle take a photo before they headed out. Love the choice of scenery in the back yard.

Max wanted to take a photo with his great Aunt Kathy and he was making silly faces with his mouth. 

Come back any time! 

Last weekend we had my cousin Karen and her husband Bill come stay.  They live in Raleigh, NC with their daughter and husband.  Their other daughter, heather is teaching in South Korea so we got to skype her a few times.  We had a few squirmy kids and yes they were in PJ's again, so what they're cute and it was morning.

I'm so glad we get to see them down here because we used to always go to family gatherings in NY and we have definitely missed those.  Now we just need to convince them to head a bit further south to the ATL area so we can see them ALL the time! 

Elvis is in the building!  James had a weekend retreat where they went to Memphis, TN and had to alter a flight suit into Elvis attire.  My mom did a great job of adding some accents. 

I picked up the glasses and sideburns from party city.  Nice touch I think! 

Wordless Wednesday: Look What Came to our House

Wild Things Birthday Party- Birthday Boy Part 2

I wish I had taken more photos of party guests, but as soon as people started coming it was time to mingle, play with the kids and get food ready to serve.  We took some before people started arriving. 

Little Miss. Hadley had her wild shirt on too to go with the theme. 

Michelle snuck a photo in with buddy. 

My mom, my brother, Marla and Hadley hanging out pre-party.

This was the best family photo we got.  Max was figgity and David is just as bad. 

David got on the mic to tell people it was cake time and Max was ready to take over (guess it runs in the family).

Me and my boy.

We got him in his crown to sing Happy Birthday and he wanted none of that.

He was not sure of the candle (or maybe that big monster nose).

Why is everyone singing and looking at me?

I'm ready to dig in. Cheeeeeese.

Let's start by moving this big nose out of the way.

Much better... They gave me a spoon! (He seriously was trying to eat the cake for like 30 mins).

Messy family photo.  Max had fun playing with all the kids (you can see a few in the background). 

He started doing this cheese face when my brother would take his picture and say, "Say cheese."

Gina wanted her photo taken with Max, but I couldn't get it to where they were both looking at my camera!

My little wild thing!

Rarrrr

Us twins with our babies!  Michelle's baby looks way more like her than Max, but what can ya do.  He's a cutie, i'll keep him. 

Max wasn't having the present opening in front of guests so we opened when less people were around.  We are so thankful of everyone who came to celebrate.  Your generosity was truly appreciated although unnecessary.

Max really did get into helping me unwrap the gifts and cards. 

He loves all his ball poppers, trucks, drum, guitar, beach toys, clothes, books and puzzles.  He is a spoiled little boy.

I felt like it was my birthday opening all the fun gifts, I told David to act interested. 

How cute is this bucket that Erin got him filled with clothes and she even used her new cricut to print letters out with his name.  I love the personal touch.  As you can see, he is loving it already!

He got the cutest little Tom shoes from my brother and his wife.  He needs to start wearing shoes (as he really doesn't wear them at all).

Here he is trying them on.  So adorable.

He also loves to ride and push around his motorcycle. 

My sister got Max these awesome Where the Wild Things are sheets for when he is a big boy and gets a twin bed (sorry about Molly's behind).  They are from Pottery barn when they had this theme, but I went on there one day to see if they had them still and they were on sale! But when I tried to buy them it said sold out, so my sister went back the next day to try and it worked! She surprised me and we're excited to keep the theme going as we really haven't set his room back up since we moved.  We plan to keep it through his toddler days. 

Daddy and Max always have fun being silly together. 

Thank you for coming to my party!! I had a lot of fun.

Married Life Event- Valentines Day

This Valentines day was a few days before Max's birthday party and we were busy with family coming in and party prepping.  We decided to go to a church event (I know what you're thinking) with Davids sister, Gina and their friends.  The event was called Married Life and they have occasional events during the year and usually around the valentines day holiday.  They had desserts and coffee before it started and we enjoyed wonderful music from their band (they played songs you'd know- oldies and goodies that had were love type songs) and a fantastic speaker.

His name is Craig Groeschel and he is the founding and senior pastor of LifeChurch.tv—a church with fourteen locations in five states and an online campus.  He has 6 kids and is a great speaker.  He talked about spending time with your spouse and how to have a lasting relationship.  He was very funny and we really enjoyed listening to him speak.  The host of the evening was also entertaining and he played a few games with audience members to get things started.  We had a great time and look forward to the next one! My valentine also brought me YUMMY cake pops from a bakery in Midtown that I love.

Where the Wild Things Are 1st Birthday Decorations

We had a great birthday celebration for Max this past weekend.  I had been party prepping for a few weeks and was hoping not to leave things till the last minute, but with setting up it usually happens.  I want to shout out to all my helpers (Aunt Kathy, Marla, Mom, Michelle, Chris, James and David).  They helped by cooking cakes, cupcakes, food for the party and cutting all the banners, just to name a few things.  Yay team work! 

I made an easy monthly photo display of Max by using little clothes pins that I spray painted green to match the theme and used twine/hemp as my line.  I ordered pictures for the party (and my wall frames) from mpix.com.  Professional photographers have always told me that's the best quality photo prints and it REALLY is. Especially if you have professional photos that have been edited, they come out so crisp and have an overall look that is impeccable.  The pricing is so similar to snapfish, shutterfly and all them that you really need to try it.

These are 2 of my favorite details from the party.  Max's Where the Wild Things Are T-shirt came from a talented company on etsy, Jake and Lucy.  I found them from someone else posting about a Wild Things B-day party and her son was wearing a shirt like this.  She does mostly request only type jobs right now and it was pricier than I wanted to spend, but it was worth it.  It's seriously the most adorable shirt I've ever seen.  We're going to maybe frame it and put it in his room to match his room theme.

I also love the treat bags.  I got the idea and tutorial from this site.  I have a little Epson printer which really did a great job for me (no paper jams or anything).  I found a black and white image that I wanted to use via google (just make sure it's large enough so it's not blurry), I brought it into a word doc and formatted my doc to be the size of the brown bag, added the text and ran in through the printer.  It does take patience trying to set it up and figure out what side goes where and to finagle it, but it was worth it.  Lacey found a font that worked perfectly for the Wild Things Theme.  It's called Hectic and you can find it at 1001fonts.com and download it.

Now it was time to hang the banners and the tissue paper poms.  Lacey designed all the paper products you see (invitation, banners, menu cards and cupcake toppers) and they are fantastic.  It also helps that my dining room was painted a jungle green (was here when we moved in).

Don't you just love the little Max character?  Marla had the idea to dangle them from all sorts of places, great touch.

We made 30 tissue paper poms (10 in each color-lime green, dark green and regular green). I bought Tissue paper in bulk from amazon (100 sheets, so 10 sheets per pom) and followed this tutorial.  They really aren't hard, just time consuming.

Poms everywhere, I didn't picture them in the entry way, but they were a great filler since we had a lot of spaces that needed decorations. 

We set up a dessert table and unfortunately the sun wouldn't cooperate to get a better picture.  We used balloons and streamers to give a nice backdrop for the cupcakes and smash cake.

It doesn't look like it, but there were almost 5 dozen cupcakes over there! 

Usually I try to take the credit, but I am going to embarrass my husband and tell you that he frosted the smash cake.  Although he is very handy with tools and all that he can also frost a cake with the best of them. He used this tutorial for his inspiration and fondant (purchased from Michaels) for the facial features.  I forgot to get a picture with the horns on, but you'll see it when I show you Max eating the cake.

He also wanted to make little monsters for the cupcakes.  

We did some with the toppers and the rest just used frosting for the faces. 

Have you ever seen posts from pinterest where you try something that sounds so easy on pinterest and then it doesn't come out exactly the way you want. Check out this link.  That's what we thought of when we attempted to frost the cupcakes... Our inspiration was on the left and we ran out of time and patience so what we got was on the right.  They are still cute, but I thought it was funny.

Hanging over the food display.

I made a very tasty white wine sangria with lots of fruit.  Here is the basic recipe (I multiplied it by 4 or 5 to fit in the beverage container):

• 1 Bottle of white wine (Riesling, Pinot Gris, Chardonnay,or Sauvignon Blanc)
• 2/3 cup white sugar (just add a little at first and keep trying it, you don't need a ton)
• 3 oranges (sliced) 
• 1 lemon (sliced)
• 1 lime (sliced)
• 1/2 liter of ginger ale 

•  More fruit (I added frozen mixture of peaches, raspberries and then fresh strawberries, apple pieces and pineapple in addition to the above), really any fruit works, just have a lot

For the menu I made pulled pork from a nice pork shoulder and butt. We used sweet baby rays bbq in one pan and Stubbs in the other (it was a tie for the tastiest one) and I added a little ginger ale and fresh onion to each.

Yummy, yummy Pasta salad

Fruit salad

Deli meat tray as well.  We had about 25-30 adults and 12 kids so I wanted to be sure to have enough food. 

We finished off the decor with Max's high chair banner. 

David found this birthday crown at Party City to go with the party theme.  Stay tuned to the next post for pictures of the birthday boy!