Princess Party!

I mentioned yesterday that my church hosted a Princess Party for girls and their moms, aunts, grandmas, etc at our church on Sunday. This was a fun event for the girls to come dressed in their princess attire and to just spend an afternoon being reminded that we are all truly princesses because we are daughters of the King. I think it's so neat that since God is our Father and He is King of all Kings we are royalty, too!

Anyway, at the party, the girls got to walk across the stage in a pageant of sorts where they were introduced and had their pictures taken. The girls seemed to really enjoy being in a pageant and showing off their pretty princess attire! And I got to be the photographer they came to at the end of the "runway" to have their picture taken while sitting on the throne! It was so fun! And after the pageant, the girls were able to eat snacks, decorate picture frames to put their photos in, paint their nails, play games and eventually they opened up the dance floor and danced the rest of the afternoon away!

I want to share a few photos from the afternoon with you guys. I will preface however that I didn't take all these photos. Most of them I did take and but others were taken by other ladies who used my camera while I was busy doing the pageant photos.

The girls getting ready for the pageant. See me in the background with the tripod getting ready for the photos?

Waiting to decorate their picture frames.

Nail painting - they loved this!

Me, my mom, and my sister

Me and my sister

Pastor Lori came to the party but she didn't wear a dress. However, it worked out perfectly because the girls all got to make Pastor Lori into a pretty princess!



Pastor Lori and her lovely fashion design team. =)

My sister Kaity relaxing on the throne...



Dancing the afternoon away!

What a fun, fun afternoon we had! And I must say it was pretty awesome dressing up as a princess! I felt so beautiful! And it didn't hurt that after I got dressed and was getting ready to leave Collin looks at me and says "Wow... you look really beautiful!" =) The best part of the afternoon though is knowing that even without the fancy dress and the tiara, I am a princess!

I think everyone should have a Princess Party. It was so special to those girls to feel like royalty for an afternoon and to be reminded that they are. If you want to throw a Princess Party and want any ideas, don't hesitate to ask! I'd be happy to help out!

Cindy

No Blank Friday

No blanks here this Friday, sorry guys! It's been a busy Friday (thus why I'm just now posting at quarter to eleven at night!) and I just don't feel in the mood to fill in the blanks. BUT... I am in a great mood! Today is my dad's 50th birthday and we celebrated Irish style at the local pub with a bunch of family and friends. We had a great evening and it was so fun to put together a fun celebration for my awesome dad!

I am exhausted though. Not really from the party tonight but mainly because yesterday evening was a bit stressful and late. I'll explain more on Monday but let me just leave you with this. It started with wanting ice cream and ended with Collin getting 3 stitches in his finger. Let your imaginations go wild until you hear/read the rest of the story next week. Maybe I'll have Collin guest post to tell you about it since it is really his story to tell!

So I couldn't let today pass without submitting my "Fair" picture for the Live Every Moment challenge. Our fair takes place the 3rd weekend in September every year so we haven't had it yet but I took this picture a few years ago and LOVE it. And I thought it fit nicely with the theme so here you go!

I hope you all enjoy your weekends! Ours shall be fun-filled and I couldn't be more excited!!

Cindy

Birthday Fun!

So I'm a horrible blogger and didn't take ANY pictures this weekend. None. I guess I just get so into what's going on and being involved in everything that I don't want to stop and take pictures. Anyway, I suppose me not taking pictures just goes to show how truly awesome this past weekend was. It was a busy weekend but it was so much fun!!

Friday evening was my mom's big birthday party. After work I rushed around trying to get the finishing touches taken care of and then decorating the clubhouse. Uncle Scott made all the food so we didn't have to worry about that, and I'm so glad, especially since the food was GREAT! The clubhouse turned out beautiful and it looked so nice. Lots of people came and the best part was that mom had a great time! We had a photo booth section set up and lots of pictures were taken and everyone looked so snazzy! Since it was a cocktail party we all dressed in pretty cocktail attire and it was really fun being dressed up, I even got to wear a new dress I'd bought over a year ago and had yet to wear! So mom's party was a huge success!

Saturday evening was my work holiday party. They always have the party at the end of January to make it so more people can come because everyone is so busy around the actual holidays. This party was held at the Officer's Club on base and it's the same place Collin and I had our wedding reception. It was fun to be back there in a different type of setting. The party was a blast and we had so much fun with my coworkers at the table. We laughed the entire evening just about! And of course the dancing was so much fun! We danced our booties off and had a blast! I love dancing and I wish I had more opportunities to do so! The party was a Mardi Gras theme so there were beads and coins and feathers everywhere. The decor looked really nice and we had a fun time trying to play "quarters" with the little plastic coins and empty coffee cups on the tables. They gave away door prizes throughout the evening and I actually won! They had a GREAT selection of prizes and I really wanted the iPad but alas someone else won it. =( Anyway, I won a $25 gift certificate to a gourmet sandwich shop and a bottle of wine. However, we don't drink wine. At the end of the evening one of my coworkers had won a Nerf gun and neither Collin or I thought she would want/use it. I jokingly told Collin to go see if she would trade with us and to my surprise he actually did! But to my even greater surprise she wanted to trade with us! So I ended up with a Nerf N-Strike Clear Raider CS-35 Clear Series gun. =)

I played with it a little bit on Sunday morning and was shooting Stank with it. He wasn't amused at all. He cowered behind the kitchen table. =P

Yesterday was my birthday and it was a GREAT day! Collin actually cuddled with me in bed for a good while before the alarm went off. And then once we got up, we got ready for church and he bought me a Boston White-Cream donut for breakfast! I hadn't had one of those in a long time. Church was really great and afterwards I got a free burger from Ruby Tuesday because it was my birthday! Then mom took me shopping at Old Navy for my birthday and they were having a great sale so I got lots of new clothes to wear! I'm really quite excited about it and am actually wearing a new tank and sweater today. After shopping we met some friends at the bowling alley and we spent the afternoon bowling. And mom made me funfetti cupcakes! I love the funfetti cakes! And I have some leftovers to eat, too! After bowling and present opening we went to Olive Garden for dinner and I tried a new dish, Asiago Ravioli with Chicken. It was DELICIOUS. And I had soup, salad, and breadsticks with it, too. I made only a small dent in my actual meal. I love leftovers though! And the best part was, the waiter knew it was my birthday so he was treating our table so well. I told him that I wanted to take some of my soup home and he brought out a brand new bowl in a to-go container for me! And then when we were boxing up our entree leftovers he brought us out a to-go bag stuffed with fresh breadsticks! This guy was awesome! And then he brought me a yummy, yummy Black Tie Mousse Cake and they sang happy birthday to me. And when he brought out the Andie's mints, my dad jokingly said "that's it? we just get one each?" and then our waiter brought a huge handfull of them and gave them all to my dad! Definitely great service!! After we were so stuffed from dinner we all went home and Collin and I watched two episodes of Desperate Housewives from season 3 before bed. I had a great, great birthday and weekend!!

I hope each of you lovelies had as great a weekend as I did! What did you do? Did you do anything exciting and fun? Or was your weekend low-key and relaxing (which are usually my favorites!)

Cindy

DIY: Party Poms

My mom's 50th birthday is on Monday and she wanted to have a party but she didn't want to plan it. My sister and I, with the help of our aunt, have been planning a big birthday celebration for this Friday evening. I'll definitely post more details after the event, but for now I just wanted to post about one of the decorations we're going to have.

Ever since I was wedding planning and then even more so when planning my sister's bridal shower, I've been in love with party poms. Now I know they're more so "out" and bunting is "in" at this moment, but I still wanted to do it and Kaity liked the idea, too. So we found this great tutorial over at Martha Stewart and we got to work. We bought a variety of different tissue paper in the colors for the party and I found some flower wire covered in white fabric. We set out a spot on my kitchen table and began making the poms. It's really quite simple to make. And I regret that I forgot to take pictures of the making process. However, if you click on the link above it will take you to a step by step tutorial guide for how we made them. Regardless of whether you want the poms to be big or small use 8 sheets of tissue paper like it calls for. If you want them to be smaller just use smaller pieces of tissue paper, we ended up buying a pack of 50 sheets of tissue. It had 5 colors so there were 10 of each color. We made one of each color as large poms and then we cut the remaining two sheets of tissue paper first in half along the long edge and then stacked it and then cut it in half again now along the new long edge to make it so we had 8 pieces stacked on top of each other. We tried to make a pom with only three pieces of tissue stacked and it looked so pathetic. The more layers you have the pouffier and better it will look!

Here's two pictures of the poms awaiting Friday afternoon in my spare room upstairs. I'm definitely going to take pictures at the party and I'll show you the finished result of them hanging up in the clubhouse.

Have you ever made poms like this before? If so, how did yours turn out? What other fun party decorations are out there that I should be aware of? I'm finding that I really like planning parties and the like!

Cindy