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Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Birthday Bash

I admit, this has been long overdue considering that this all actually took place about a month and a half ago, but I've been busy making Christmas gifts since then, going on vacation (and then recovering from it), and trying to go through my entire computer so that I can actually upload all of the pictures and make it run at a tolerable speed.  I'm still working on that...


In the middle of October, we celebrated my little munchkins' birthday!  I admit, I'm pretty jealous when I look at all of the cool birthday parties out there like Ruby's rainbow party from Homemade by Jill or anything that Kojodesigns has on their Parties and Showers section.  Someday, I hope to be as amazing of a hostess as that.  Overboard?  Most people in my life would probably say yes.  But I think parties and get together should be memorable (especially since you only get to celebrate your birthday once a year!).


I especially wanted to do something special to celebrate the fact that our family survived our first year with our twins, Aubrey and Emma.  I've been told that the first year is the hardest, and my husband and I are totally banking on that being true.  A one-year milestone felt especially important for us.  While there were some really difficult days (months?), it's amazing to look back and see how God has provided for us and surrounded us with such an amazing support group.  Who couldn't be thankful for these two cuties?


Our niece has her birthday two days after the girls, so we decided to do a join birthday party this year at my parents' house.  I ran out of time to do a lot of decorating prep because I was too busy trying to make Molly Monkeys for their birthday gifts.  I love this pattern from Larissa at mmmcrafts and will probably make a bunch more Mollys and Mikeys in the near future for my nieces and nephews.  The girls are a little too young to really enjoy their Mollys yet (they pretty much only like taking off the shoes and holding it up so that I'll make myself look like an idiot making monkey noises), but my niece loves hers.  It's always such a relief to know that something you spent hours on was worth the time and is well loved. 


I even made her Molly with a felt book (my niece loves books) and a super hero cape and mask.  (Sorry, no picture for those.  I finished them too late at night and meant to get a snapshot at the birthday party, but... well, you know how that goes.)


Isn't my brother just the best helping his little girl dress up her monkey?  What a great dad!


Once I finished with the Mollys, I managed to squeeze in some time to make matching birthday dresses for the girls using the Warhol Dress Pattern from MADE.  I had to do some adjustments for my girls' dresses as they are slightly bigger than the small size with the pattern, but it mostly worked out well (minus that I should have gathered the neckline more).  Now I know for next summer!  It didn't turn out very well in any of the pictures we took, but they have numbers appliqued on the front of their dresses for the birthday they're turning.  I should have gotten better snapshots of the girls together in their dresses.  That was poor planning on my part.



My mom made the cake, a purple squid that I got the recipe for from Parenting Magazine's website.  We also made cupcakes for the girls with an eggless batter recipe, and my niece decorated them for us. 


The last little project I managed to get done was some simple garland that I got inspiration for from Kojodesigns.  I simply hole-punched a TON of of circles and then sewed them all in a long, continuous line two at a time.  After I finished sewing them all in a line, I folded them open.  Easy peasy.  



It's been a wonderful first year, and I'm already enjoying the start of this next one.