A Button Party

Well, yes, we did have two birthday parties this year. Delaney wanted to have a party for the girls in her preschool class so we had a Button Party. We got this great idea from a friend of ours who did this when her daughter was young. She got the idea from the September pages of "A Time to Keep" by Tasha Tudor, which was my favorite book when I was little.

We spent a weekend at the cabin making invitations and headbands for the party. We got a package of invitations from Walmart for under $5 and glued buttons on the front to follow our theme.



We bought packs of all colored stretchy headbands from Ross and sewed buttons on them for party favors. During the party, I stretched them around a big vase for decoration and then let each girl choose their favorite one at the end.


I decorated with a flag banner that I got from Target. I sewed buttons to the middle of each one. Then I enlarged pictures from each one of Delaney's past birthday parties and hung them on a clothesline with clothespins.


I love this picture of Delaney zooming around on her scooter waiting for all her friends to arrive.



The highlight of our party was the Button Store. Each girl received a little jar filled with buttons that they could spend in the button store. I filled the store with things from the dollar store and put signs on each item telling how many buttons it cost. I made each girl a shopping bag with their Initial on it made of felt buttons that I got from Oriental Trading.


While the girls took turns shopping in the button store, the rest of us made button necklaces with beads and buttons and hot pink plastic cord.


CamiCakes made our cupcakes and Delaney glued buttons onto flat wooden picks to decorate the tops.




Delaney was a lucky girl to celebrate with her friends and both of her grandmothers.

It was such a fun party. I love seeing the joy and celebration in the eyes of little kids and I have always thought birthdays should be the biggest and best day of the year. But now we are off to take a really long nap!!

It's A Pirate Life For Me

It's birthday season around here. We have more holidays and birthdays in May than we can count in our family. My kids have birthdays 5 days apart and this year we celebrated with a Pirate themed bash. Our first mission was the invitations. I dressed the kids in their pirate gear and took them to my favorite wall. It is a hot turquoise brick wall with yellow trim and pipes that is a building salvage supply store on Howell Mill. Here are some shots from our shoot:

Here are our invitations. I made them on Photoshop and then had them printed at Costco as 5X7 photos in matte finish. They are a real deal at 39 cents a piece.


We decorated our place and anxiously awaited our big day. I made a pirate map for the wall, served Pirate Booty in small single serving bags, ordered cupcakes from Publix and dressed them up with Pirate flags I made with wooden skewers and pirate themed scrapbook paper.



I finally found a good use for those red and white striped paper straws, made Bloody Pirate Punch (a half and half mixture of Berry Juicy Juice and Ginger Ale), decorated with wooden pop guns I found at World Market, scattered Playskool pirate figures all around, and made a Goldfish Pirate Ship with more of the scrapbook paper and wooden skewers.


It's a good thing we did not give out a prize for best costume because we would have never been able to decide. We are thankful for all our friends and family for outdoing themselves on their costumes and coming to celebrate our kids.


The guests were entertained coloring skulls and pirate boys that I found at Michaels in the paper cutout shapes. We all made compass necklaces with wooden beads and compasses I found at Hobby Lobby. And we played Pop Up Pirate which is a fun game of luck and surprise for little ones. It was a perfect party, full of chaos and joy, just like a kid's party should be!