Wild Kratts Party !!!

The party
Saturday was Ella's 7th birthday party.  I cannot believe she is so big!  I wish I could freeze her.  There are so many precious moments each day that she amazes me and I am so proud every second of every day that she is mine.  I really don't deserve the abundant blessings that both of my children are, but I am thankful. 

Ella chose to have a Wild Kratts birthday party.  She is crazy about Wild Kratts.  If you don't know what that is, it is a show on PBS where two brothers teach you about animals.  She loves animals of all sorts!  Then these brothers turn into cartoons and go on a creature adventure.  She blows me away every day with some new animal fact that I know I have never heard of before.  She really has learned so much.

On with the party...there are NO Wild Kratt party supplies out there.  None.  So Momma had to get creative.  I did eventually find a place on Ebay that I could order invitations from.  They sent a digital file and I had to get the invites developed like pix.  So I joined one of those online pix places that give you 50 free prints so I got them for free (except for what I had to pay ebay).  Gotta love that!

The invitation

The front door decoration

 The decorations
I found animal plates for the kids as well as animal print plates for the adults at Wal-Mart.  They also had animal print napkins and cups.  I found these zebra print tins at Hobby Lobby and put the silverware in them.

The decorations

 I found these precious candles online.  Had to have them :)

Cute candles, huh?

 Also found these animal print slap bracelts in Oriental Trading magazine.  They have cute party stuff, usually sold by the dozen, and usually for cheap prices.  It's a good resource if you've never used it.

Slap Bracelets

The games
Ella wanted to play a couple of games.  She made this one up herself.  The kids loved it and I was so excited that they had so much fun and it came straight from her imaginative brain.  She wanted me to make them all different types of animal tails.  Right.  Instead, I found these animal print bandanas in the Oriental Trading catalog and we tucked them inside the back waistband of their pants....a tail.  Then they spread out over the yard and on "Go!" they chased each other around trying to steal as many animal tails as possible.  Once everyones tail was gone, whoever had the most won.  They played that a couple of times because they loved it so much.  I don't have any pix because I was the referee but Charles videoed it and it was hilarious!  The other game, they pulled out an animal pix that I had printed out on the computer out of a bag and had to act out the animal....like animal charades.

The winners won these "trophies" I found at the Dollar Tree.  I thought they were perfect for this themed party and I found gold star stickers to put on them to make them feel like more of an award.

Bandanas...um, I mean tails

Trophies...a giraffe and a rhino

 The cake
Ella wanted cupcakes.  But we needed a cake too...I don't know why, I guess I just had to.  So I made a six inch chocolate cake with the Wild Kratts logo on it. 

The logo cake

Of course, I used animal print cupcake papers for the cupcakes.   For the cupcake toppers, I cut and pasted some pix of the Wild Kratts from Google Images onto a word document.  Then I took them to Office Depot and had them laminated.  I then taped them to a lollipop stick to put down in the cupcake.  A little time consuming but super easy and cheap!  One of the designs was just Chris and Martin, one was of the support staff (Aviva, Koki, and Jimmy), and the other was Chris, Martin, Aviva, and some creatures.  The other design I used (which didn't photograph to well) was of some stickers that Ella had gotten for Christmas that had animal designs on them that changed when you changed direction of the sticker.

 We had neopolitian ice cream (strawberry, vanilla, and chocolate) so that is the icing I used for the cupcakes.  The strawberry cupcakes had half with strawberry icing and half with cream cheese icing.  The chocolate cupcakes had chocolate icing.  I am just now really getting interested in cupcakes so this was a chance to experiment with the icing design.  They didn't photograph as cute as they really were.

Ribbon Swirl

Ice Cream Swirl

Classic Cupcake Swirl

The cupcake tower

The total cake package :)

Snack table....grapes, cheese, chips, dip, sodas, and cake...and note the animal print balloons :)

 And finally....

The fake blowing out of candles...I missed the first shot so we did a re-do!

Needless to say, if you didn't leave feeling like you had been on a creature adventure....it was your own fault!  Ella had a blast as did her friends, and that made me happy :)

Ice Skating

My cuties :)

Trying to hold Leah up without falling myself!

Ella getting used to the ice

There was alot of wall hugging ;)

The previous pix and this one are both dark...clearly I need to figure out zoom and flash

Me and the babes!

Just wanted to share a few pictures of the girls (and me) ice skating.  I always do what I can to get out of it, but the girls just won't have it!  I must admit, though, that after I get out there I do have fun....I think I could have a blast if they would just close the mall and let me have the rink to myself :)  Ella did pretty good and I must say, Leah did much better than expected.  Truth be told, we should probably go more often.

Zebra Cake

This is a cake I did for Ella's friend Eva.  She is VERY into zebra print stuff and her mom just wanted a sheet cake so this is the result.  Pretty simple!

16th Birthday Cake

This is a cake I made for a sweet girl's 16th birthday.  She knew she wanted colors of black, white, and turquoise.  I ended up finding this cupcake wrapper at the store and she loved it so I used it as the inspiration for her cake.  I also used these cake wires with fondant balls as the cake topper.  She was super excited about the cake and said the flowers were her favorite part.  Yea :)

Christmas Fun

Just wanted to share a few pix of Christmas.  The weekend before, we went to Point Clear for the night to see the Christmas lights at The Grand.  We love staying there in the summer and have been told that it is quite beautiful at Christmas so we finally decided to see for ourselves.  It was great.  They have three fireplaces in the lodge lobby and they were all three blazing.  There was this beautiful Christmas tree also.  After they fired the cannon (which they do each day at 4pm...the hotel was a hospital during the Civil War and has lots of history) we got to eat cookies and drink hot tea (for me) and hot chocolate (for Charles and the girls).  They had the grounds very lit up and it was magical.  Ella and Leah climbed some of the trees.  They have these amazing Live Oaks and they are the perfect trees to climb (and they always do).  The next day, after we left, we took a detour to the beach.  (I can't be that close and not put my feet in the sand.)  It was an absolutely beautiful day!  I could have stayed all day.  The girls got their love of the beach from me because they were all too sad to have to leave.  It was a quick trip, but lots of fun. 
I've included a couple of pix from Christmas day just because I thought they were super cute!

Christmas tree in the lodge lobby at The Grand

Ella climbing her "favorite tree"

Leah has the same monkey gene

It was a gorgeous day at the beach

Missy with her present

Hilarious!  It was the end of the day and Leah had on her new bike helmet with her feety pajamas sitting at the kitchen table working on her new camera.  What a sight!

Christmas Cooking

Peanut Butter Brownie Bites

These are sooo yummy.  A lady brought them to our Sunday School Christmas Party and we were hooked.  They are brownie bites from Costco.  (I had never bought them before because I thought they would be hard and chewy.  Boy was I wrong!  They are super soft and perfectly yummy.)  Anyway, they couldn't be easier.  Just spread some chunky peanut butter on top and sprinkle with chocolate chips.  Who knew something so easy would be so delicious!

Sweet Pepper Bruschetta 

So, my friend Shelia said this looked like cat food.  Gotta love friends that will tell you the truth :)  Actually, I love Publix grocery store for more than one reason.  If you've ever gone there, you know they cook and samples and recipes when you go in.  One day when we were there they were cooking this bruschetta.  It was sooo good.  So of course I got the recipe and all the ingredients.  It ended up being time consuming and expensive to make, but it was good to have something different.  Don't think I will make it again, but we all like new stuff every now and then.

Cinnamon Rolls 

These are cinnamon rolls from the pioneer woman.  I found them by accident last year and have been waiting to try them.  Oh my!!  Can you say amazing?  The best cinnamon rolls I have ever had.  Actually, her website has become one of my favs.  She has lots of really good recipes and she blogs about homeschooling, photography, etc.  Check it out when you free time and nothing to do....ha!

  It is www.thepioneerwoman.com .

Turkey 

Charles put his first turkey breast on the rotisserie on the grill.  Boy was it yummy.  I had to share because he was so proud of it and it was so good.

We are so blessed to have such abundance.  I do not take it for granted.  I am so thankful for God's blessings for our family.