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!

Gotta Have It

Coke is cool. There is just no doubt about it. Their advertising sets the bar so high that no one can ever measure up. They are always reinventing themselves, keeping up with the times and yet making people crave the classics and the memories that Coke evokes.
I've been watching the Coca Cola building this week as it was shrouded in what appeared to be white drapes wondering what they were doing and what kind of renovations they were making. Tonight I got my answer. Suddenly outside our windows a slide show lit up the Atlanta skyline with image after image of wonderful Cokeness. I rushed up to the roof of our building to watch in amazement as the largest single building projection show in the world took place. It is a giant "thank you" card for 125 years of Coke from Coca Cola to its fans. I took a few photos but mostly just enjoyed every minute of the perks of living in the city where Coke was invented.

A Cinco De Mayo Birthday

I'm a big fan of Cinco de Mayo. It has a lot to do with the fact that Mexican Food is my very favorite and I could eat it every night of my life and not get tired of it. It has even more to do with the fact that I love Margaritas. And believe it or not, both of my kids were due on Cinco de Mayo one year apart. Neither of them decided to show up on their due date so I missed two Cinco de Mayos in a row without a Margarita. This resulted in the best push present any body could ever receive which was a mack daddy Jimmy Buffet Margarita Machine from my husband and several amazing bottles of Tequila from my brother.


My dad's birthday also falls on Cinco de Mayo, so with the machine in hand we headed to the burbs for a Mexican fiesta. My mom can set a table like no other. She mixes patterns, and styles, and colors effortlessly and I am always amazed at the beauty she creates.


I gave her these plates a few years ago from CB2 and have coveted them every since. I followed them up the next year with a gift of these delightful bird napkin rings from Z Gallery.


The tablecloth and salt and pepper shakers are flea market finds and the glass cups are from Homegoods. My mom served a delicious Mexican corn bread casserole topped with fresh salsa and crabmeat. We enjoyed it with chips and cheese dip and of course, a perfect key lime margarita cupcake from Jilly's in Alpharetta for dessert.