Candy Land 1st Birthday Party

Last year for Zoey's first birthday party, we had a Candy Land theme.  I had a lot of fun with it.  Zoey was too small to have any interest in most of the decorations, so mommy got to pick them out and have fun!

We bought glass vases at Hobby Lobby and filled them with pink, blue and violet colored candies and multi-colored lollipops to create the Candy Land look.  The best variety of these colorful candies was available through Oriental Trading Post.  They also had the large lollipops that we used as both decorations and party favors for guests.  They made great decorations, but unfortunately they did not taste as good as they looked.  We found this to be the case with most of the pretty, colorful candies we ordered.  We ordered the pink containers pictured above that look sort of like Chinese food take-out boxes for the kids and the kids at heart to use to tear down the candy display and take treats home as party favors.  I love being cost efficient, so I thought having the decorations double as party favors was a fun and thrifty idea!

 We made the cupcakes and cake for the party.  The 1 cake is covered and decorated with fondant.  My husband and I gave ourselves a crash course provided by googling how to make fondant the week before the party.  We were pretty pleased with how it turned out.  It was intended to be the smash cake and the cupcakes were for the party guests, but the birthday girl had other plans.  When we gave her the smash cake she just barely took a pinch off of it.  I think the fondant was a little too thick with her to deal with.  In retrospect, a buttercream frosting would have probably been a better idea.  So we improvised and gave her a cupcake.  She was more than happy to smash that!  She had a ball with it!

She had so much fun at her party and I loved making these memories!  It was a little exhausting, but so worth it!  

The Elmo Party!

Zoey just turned 2!  It's hard for me to believe that she's already 2.  Like lots of two year olds, she thinks the world revolves around Elmo.  So picking a theme for her birthday party was pretty easy, even though she doesn't know what the word theme means.  I spent a lot of time searching for the perfect decorations to make her Elmo party a little more girly.  I ordered most of our decorations from www.partycity.com/Elmo.  My favorite decoration was the large Sesame Street scene that we used to take pictures of all the adorable party guests and their furry friends!

I had a lot of fun creating Elmo, Oscar the Grouch and Cookie Monster themed fruit and veggie trays.  I found this idea on Pinterest and wasn't really sure if I would be able to pull it off myself.  I am not the most crafty mommy around!  But with a little bit of patience and looking at Cookie Monster and Oscar the Grouch pictures several times on my phone, I succeeded!  It was almost a shame to eat them!

I used about 2 quarts of strawberries (halved), three packages of blueberries, two packages of blackberries, three bundles of broccoli, and one small bag of carrots to create these three characters.  The eyes are small white cups filled with fruit dip or veggie dip in Oscar's case.  These were a definite hit at the party.  Lots of our party guests were pulling out their phones to take pictures!

We also had cake, cupcakes, and cookies.  I mean it's a Sesame Street party, Cookie Monster wouldn't approve if we didn't have cookies!

The Sparkly Mom - Intro

I am really excited to start this blog as part of a start on a new journey in my life.  I am the mom of a precious, adorable, spunky two year old.  She is amazing!  She is also exhausting.  Motherhood has took a real toll on me over the past two years.  I had a difficult pregnancy, which included a month of bed rest and then a NICU premie, but thankfully she is healthy and amazing now!  I still don't think my body and mind have quite bounced back from the fatigue and stress of a difficult pregnancy and the strains of motherhood.  But I have decided that it is time I do something about that and start actively focusing on recovering me!  I spend so much time focusing on my child and my job (I'm an accountant - now doesn't that sound exciting) that I don't devote very much energy to myself.

I had mild postpartum depression and started seeing a therapist during that time.  I have continued seeing the therapist and she gave me a project a few months ago.  I had to design a pie chart showing how my time was currently spent and then one showing how I'd like for it to be spent.  I learned a few really important things from this exercise.  First, I learned that I spend a lot of time at work!  Second, when I started trying to create the how I want my time to be spent pie chart I had a hard time coming up with concrete examples.  I started with things like I want to spend more time with friends.  Well which friends?  The ones that I was super close to 7 years ago, but now live 3 hours away from?  Yea, probably not gonna happen.  The ones who are single and still think I should be able to stay out until 3 a.m.?  Ummm, yea also probably not gonna work.  The ones who also have infants and toddlers and barely have time to get any sleep as it is?  Well maybe, after all we do have a lot in common, but finding the time with everyone's busy schedules can be difficult.  Being a mommy can be very lonely.  I miss my core friend group from college and my core friend group from my first job in my early twenties and my core friend group from my partying days in my mid-twenties.  I've had so many great friends along this path called life, how did they suddenly all disappear?  Oh yea, I moved several hours away from some and then I had a baby and stopped having time to go out every weekend, or pretty much any weekend.  So anyway, that is my very long winded way of saying I realized that it is time to invest in myself and find my core friend group for my early thirties as a new mommy.  I am not yet sure what this is going to look like for me.  Maybe it will be some of the friends from the previous groups I mentioned that I can make more of an effort to connect with again or maybe it will be completely new friends who share my new interests and challenges.  I don't have all the solutions yet, but at least I have now identified the problem and am going to spend some time on me!

I am not sure where to start on this making friends journey.  It sounds so simple.  I have done it all my life!  But it is harder in your thirties!  Everyone is so busy.  I have decided to start with some activities that I will enjoy and if I make some new friends along the way then that's awesome and if not, at least I got some exercise or learned a new skill.  The first two things that I have decided to try are yoga and cake decorating.  I found a Groupon for a cheap deal on Yoga classes and I have always wanted to be able to decorate those gorgeous 3 tier cakes.