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birthday, Blog, Primrose

Ah, Honey Honey


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Hi! It’s me! Remember me? It’s been almost 7 months since I’ve updated my blog. I wasn’t sure if/when I would ever get back to it. But I miss documenting everything and sharing more than the snippets I share on Instagram. I’ve stated multiple times that I have a hard time finding motivation to blog. But I’m hoping that once I get back to it, I’ll start enjoying it again.

Anyway, I have missed sharing numerous things over the past 6+ months so I’ll probably attempt to do some quick “catch up” posts- starting with Primrose’s birthday party…that happened 3 months ago. So if you were hoping to hear more details about the party, I’ll try to quickly share how we threw it all together so that it’s not an overly wordy post.

I’m sure it’s a repeat story for a lot of you, but for anyone who hasn’t been around for the past year, I’ll just briefly share a little backstory. My best friend, Maggi, and I both had our baby girls on the same day, February 20th, 2018. Our due dates were 2 days apart and we had spent 9 months dreaming of our babies sharing a birthday. We were both about a week overdue when Maggi went into labor. She had her sweet daughter, Sylvia, at the beginning of the 20th. My labor began around 3:45 that day and Primrose was born around 9:00 that night (in the same hospital!) If you want to hear the full birth story, like how I labored in Maggi’s room until I was about 9cm, then you can read that HERE.

Anyway, on to the party! When our girls were tiny, I mentioned that it would be fun to do a joint first birthday party. Thankfully Maggi agreed to it! So we started tossing ideas around when the girls were only about 6 months old. She suggested a honey theme and I absolutely love how “sweet” the party turned out. I feel like there are so many different directions you can go with a honey theme.

 

Food

So let’s talk food! I’ll link recipes as I’m able. We kept it budget friendly and decided to skip the meal and only serve dessert. Taking inspiration from The Baked Bear (one of my favorite places for dessert in St. Louis,) we made homemade ice cream sandwiches. Maggi and I each made 2 types of cookies. We had Chocolate chip cookies, Chocolate chocolate chip cookies, gooey butter cake cookies, and funfetti cookies.

Then we just had a tub of chocolate ice cream and vanilla ice cream. Everyone was able to pick their cookies and ice cream to create their own ice cream sandwiches. We kept it really simple but it would also be fun to include options for toppings- like sprinkles, chocolate syrup, crushed oreos, whipped cream, etc. Just be sure to have bowls and spoons on hand because it can get messy!

 

We also had a donut hole “hive” with the sugar bees (we got them from Hobby Lobby but here is something similar from Amazon,) gingerbread honey bears, honeycomb marshmallow treats, and this surprisingly addictive honeycomb churro crunch.

 

 

Decorations

Now moving right along to the decorations. The honey bears were collected from friends and family in the months before the party. Maggi spray painted them gold and then we just used them as vases for some small sprigs of baby’s breath and eucalyptus leaves.

The balloon arch was quickly put together about 1.5 hours before the party started! I bought this balloon arch “tape” back in August for Liam’s birthday and it has been well worth the $7! I usually just pick up some packs of balloons from Walmart or Hobby Lobby. I blow up a bunch of balloons in a few different colors and then start pulling them through the holes on the strip. I use command hooks and string to hang it to the wall. Then I tie off the end of the roll and hide it within the balloon arch. I’m able to reuse it over and over this way.

It’s an easy and inexpensive decoration that is so fun! The arch stays looking nice for a while, so you can put it together the day before the party (I don’t recommend doing it an hour and a half before the party starts, like we did haha.) And to prevent light headedness, I recommend a balloon pump or finding a few friends to help you blow up balloons.


The lettering on the wall and on the highchairs was just created with printed stencils and gold glitter poster board.

The letter board is from Letterfolk. We really only decorated this one area and I think I explained everything. But if you have any questions about anything, feel free to ask!

 


Maggi’s mom made the most adorable bee hive smash cakes. A little helpful hint, if you add bees to your cake, remove the bees before giving the cake to your child. Both girls went straight for the bees haha. So they were promptly removed to prevent choking.

I was convinced that Primrose would hate the mess but she actually ended up loving it and going in for it, face first. It was the perfect messy cake smash that I was hoping for! 


 

 

I’m so thankful for these two girls and adore the sweet memories that have been created. Such a sweet first birthday party for the sweetest “twin” bffs! If you have any more questions about the party, ask in the comments and I’ll try to respond ASAP! Thank you for reading and I hope to be back soon!!

Felt flower headbands: Fancy Free Finery

Tutu Dresses: Old Navy

Party Crowns: Little Blue Olive

Ruffle dresses: Vintage

Photos by me and my friend (and also Maggi’s sister,) Mayci Loving

Blog, Fall, halloween, holidays

Hi-Ho-Halloween


Happy Halloween!! I’m so excited to share our Halloween costumes with you!! When we were thinking up family costume ideas for this year, I couldn’t resist dressing up as Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. With 7 children, it just seemed so perfect. After Evangeline got over the fact that she was going to be an old man with a beard instead of a princess, she was excited as well 😉

Every year on Halloween, we go to a fall festival at a church nearby. The kids love playing the games and winning candy. And I love that it’s indoors so we don’t have to worry about the cold weather! They also have a costume contest that we’ve won many times! Unfortunately, this year the fall festival was canceled. And we didn’t find out until after I had already bought half the stuff for our costumes.

I ended up purchasing the rest of the stuff we needed and quickly DIYed our costumes (minus my dress that I happened to find at Goodwill!) Then on a warm day, I had my friend, Maggi, take a few pictures of us all dressed up!

Now don’t go comparing us with the actual movie characters because I didn’t really make the costumes exact. Even so, my kids still decided who was going to play the part of each dwarf.

Liam was Doc and Kai was Sleepy. Kai is our late sleeper so it was very fitting.

Kingston was really set on being Grumpy and he played the part perfectly. I don’t think Evangeline ever decided which one she was going to be so we’ll just go with Happy.

The boys decided that Desmond was Sneezy and Clementine was Bashful.

And then, of course, we have Dopey. Held by Prince Charming.

The most magical shot–ruined by a dress that I was too lazy to iron haha.

We had so much fun with these costumes but decided not to use them on Halloween. The main reason is because without a costume contest, I’m not motivated to put this Snow White dress on again. And I knew the Dwarf costumes wouldn’t be nearly as exciting without a Snow White. So for Halloween tonight, the kids will be digging through our costume box and dressing up with whatever they decide to be (Evangeline is super excited about not having to wear a beard haha.) And for the first time in many years, we’re going to be Trick-or-Treating. It’s going to be chilly and possibly rainy so I sure hope we end the night with a good amount of candy!

In addition to the Snow White theme, we also had a few more opportunities to dress up this month. The cat ears from Target’s dollar spot are always too cute to resist so I had to dress up these 3 sweet girls.

What I learned from this experience–putting whiskers on a baby is definitely not the easiest thing I’ve ever done. Evangeline and Clementine absolutely loved it though. I mean, look at Clementine’s smile in the picture above!!

 

And thanks to another Target dollar spot find, a witch’s hat, I got this totally adorable napping photo of Primrose! Looking at it now, it reminds me of the cartoon in the intro of the old TV show, “Bewitched.”

And finally, a couple of pictures of these 3 party animals. Life really is a zoo with them. I think they all plan to wear these costumes tonight as long as we all make it out of the house! Desmond is an entertainer at all times. Can you tell?

And I’m ending this post with this cheesy photo. You’re welcome! One of my favorite parts about Halloween is seeing everyone’s creative costumes! What did you guys dress up as this year?

If you want to see some of costumes from the past years, you can see them all in the links below! (Notice my lack of creativity for a couple years as we repeated the same costumes…twice haha.)

Wizard of Oz, 2017

Star Wars, 2016

Peter Pan, 2015

Star Wars, 2014 and THIS ONE too!

Peter Pan, 2013