Fourth of July Party

Friends

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Food

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Fireworks

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Fun Fourth

Hope yours was a Fabulous one!

The Super Details

Dillon's birthday party was a lot of fun to plan. I started with a photo shoot where I took over eighty pictures (gotta love digital cameras). The invitations were super easy. I made two different collages using one of my favorite sites, picnik. The front of the invitation was all pictures and the back had all the info and some more pictures. Next I uploaded them to Costco's photo center and had them printed as 4x6 photos in a matte finish. I used double-sided tape to tape the front and back together. I mailed them in 5x7 manila envelopes that I ran thought the printer to address. I decided that it would look more "top secret" to have the addresses printed directly on the envelopes instead of hand addressing them or using labels. I picked a basic font for the envelopes (I think it was Courier).

After I had made and printed and assembled the invites Jason and I thought that since the party was at one pm people might eat before they came and we were planning to have food, so I hopped back on picnik and made a food will be served card. I had them printed as wallets and put one in each envelope along with the invitation.

I wanted to keep the decorations fun and easy and didn't want to use crape paper and balloons. While I was brainstorming ideas, I thought it would be fun to have, for lack of better words, word bubbles like in comic books with the words used on the Batman TV show. I googled "Batman Fight Words" and came up with a list of words that I liked. I made stencils using this font and traced the letters onto poster board. The letters were painted using acrylic paint and then the poster boards were cut into jagged circles. I used a staple gun to hang them along the fence. My "niece" Alyssa made a poster that we hung on the outside fence reading "Slagle Crime Fighting Superhero League"

I also made a banner that read Happy 3rd Birthday Dillon loosely using this idea from the awesome blog imperfect / pleated poppy. (Really cute stuff over there!). Since I knew that my banner was going to be long, I made my background signs with half sheets of letter sized paper. I used the same font from the word bubbles for the banner.

Since most of the kids at the party were in the 2-5 age range, I kept the activities to a minimum. I bought a pack of PlayDoh from Target (on sale!) and some plastic cookie cutters from Michael's and set up a PlayDoh table. I also put out several sticks of sidewalk chalk and let the kids color on the patio with it. I decided on playing one organized game - pin the mask on the superhero. My brother drew me a cute little superhero and I painted it. I made some masks out of a sheet of cardstock. And after all the hard work on the game... we didn't play it! But the little guy looked super cute hanging on the fence with the signs.

I know some people don't give out party favors, but I like to. I bought some little bath buckets from the dollar spot at Target and filled them with Batman & Spiderman fruit snacks, a couple of Spiderman temporary tattoos (also from the dollar spot), a small tub of PlayDoh, some twenty-five cent crayons and some superhero coloring pages. Each bucket also had some Super Dillon bubbles. I bought bubbles from the party section at Target and peeled off the labels. I printed a picture of Dillon on some letter sized labels (three per sheet) and then affixed those labels to the bubbles. I coated the new labels with Mod Podge for paper so that the bubble drips wouldn't cause the picture to bleed.

So there you have the details from my lil' superhero's birthday. I would also like to thank my super helpers for all their hard work pulling this all together. Thanks Kara, Tiffany and Alyssa - you guys are awesome!!

Thirty-One

Well, yesterday was my thirty-first birthday. Last year I dreaded turning thirty and all in all it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be... I mean, I didn't spontaneously combust or anything. And as much as I dreaded turning the big three zero last year, I couldn't wait for that zero to become a one. Strange, I know.

Because I asked for a totally expensive but necessary birthday gift (a new camera) Jason had decided that he wasn't going to do anything to celebrate my birthday - and that was fine with me. But other people had other plans... Derek asked us what we were doing for my birthday and when we told him nothing, he basically said that that was unacceptable and that we were going to do something. So, our birthday party of zero became birthday party of seven. Then my brother, David, asked what we were doing... now party of nine. A day or so later Jason invited our friend Brett as well - so now we are up to ten. A few days before the big day Jason's other brother called and asked what we were doing... and after that, well, it just snowballed. Our party of zero turned into a party of nineteen. All of Jason's family plus my brother and Kara. We all went out to dinner at Carnitas and then came back to our house to play some Guitar Hero. And my awesome husband ordered a cake for me - something that he has never done!

All in all, it was a great birthday!

Pirate Party

On Saturday, we had a Pirate themed barbecue to celebrate Dillon's second birthday. It was lots of fun and pretty much stress free! Dillon really enjoyed opening his presents - it's the first time that he has been into it. He was so cute - he even got excited when he opened clothes. The only bummer was that the weather wasn't so great. Friday was beautiful, but Saturday was the exact opposite - it was cold and windy.

Dillon blew out the candles on his first try:

Dillon checking out his new bike:

Dillon loved giving kisses to Addison (or as he calls her Addinu):