Let me backtrack a bit - Stella's 2nd birthday!

I received an email yesterday from a South African party store asking if they could use Stella's 2nd birthday photos in their publication.  Of course I said yes...we have so much fun planning and hosting these birthday parties and I'd love to share so others can get ideas!

As soon as it's published, I'll be sure to add it to the blog!

In the meantime, I'll point you to a link from a talented designer named Jenn that designed the monkey printables, who has also featured Stella's party on her blog!

Stellas monkey party featured on Parties by Hardie

Well, I guess I should post a few photos as well...

Party Details

Monkey printables: Parties by Hardie
Fondant monkies: Designed by: The Frosted Cake n Cookie  Made by: Me!
Cake: The ever fabulous Todd Olson

Monkey-friendly food recipes/ideas:
  Monkey mix - dried banana, coconut, peanuts, cashews, raisins
  Monkey pancakes - mold found at Williams Sonoma  Instead of sticky syrup, whipped cream to top
  100% Banana juice - found at Whole Foods
  100% Banana ice cream - freeze peeled bananas, then mash!
  Monkey sandwiches: modeled them after the fondant monkeys.  PB and Banana sandwiches.  Brown M&Ms for eyes and a cashew to make a little smirk!  Used peanut butter as 'glue' to hold things together.
 Other things on the menu: hummus + pretzels, fruit platter

Activities
Since the majority of guests were 2 years old, we kept the activities pretty simple.
Pin the nose on the monkey: monkey face and noses came in the monkey printable pack (see above)
Banana hunt: similar to an easter egg hunt, we hid mini bananas (found at Whole Foods) for the little monkeys to find.  Great snack too ;)
Monkey story time: Grandma read "Five Little Monkeys" to the group.

Goodie 'bags'
Target's dollar section often has plastic popcorn tubs.  Since red was in the color scheme, I used these and put a little bag of 'monkey mix' in there along with a monkey maraca found at Cost Plus World Market.  I also had little rubber monkeys that were 'supposed' to be in the goodie bags, but they ended up hiding all over the house and the car and weren't recovered in time for the party!  There were purchased from Party City.

Wow

I sure haven't posted in a long time! Things have been busy, but I'm going to try to be better about posting. One good thing which should help with this is an assignment that I am working on called a 52 week project. I chose the theme - family. This means I have to take a photo of some portion of the family weekly. Even better, since I have to post each assignment, I really have no excuse to get them blogged too!

Ok, well, here's week 1 and week 2:

and I couldn't resist trying this one in black and white too...

Urban Stelly

I took Stella downtown one morning in hopes of getting one good shot where she wasn't yelling no and/or running in the other direction. I think this one's my favorite :)

Halloween (Better late than never)

My favorite time of year...

I love Halloween and wish I could throw a party every weekend in October to celebrate, but this year we decided to do a little party for Eva's class.

Invitations to the party:

Pictures of the party will be posted next week, until then:

We visited the annual neighborhood halloween party this past weekend. We had to wake Stella up to get there in time. Poor baby was trying to sleep and we get her up and stuff her into a puppy costume.

This baby definitely has the biggest lips I have EVER seen. She is pretty darn cute though, and loves this puppy costume. She took first place tonight in the 0-4 costume contest and the University Club. Q-T-Pie!

Eva insisted on being a bat. Ever since we had bats in our house, she has been a big fan. Todd and I made this costume based off of a family fun magazine article. She's a happy little bat!

By the way, this is how bats curl up when they sleep...

This little mouse...
I noticed it out of the corner of my eye and knew Mickey was trying to scare me. I was in the kitchen cooking and the mouse was near the entrance to the dining room. I didn't say anything until the boy pulled it with a string that I couldn't see. Even though I KNEW it wasn't real, it definitely made me jump ;)

Eva and Mickey carved Jack-O-Lanterns

The babies had fun getting their faces painted at the festival:

Lastly, one of my favorites parts of Halloween - food! I have made a few things so far and will gather pictures eventually, but here's one that happened to be handy (and tasty!). The kids loved it!

I think after all the Halloween candy, my babies might need braces.

A little food fun...

I am backing up files on my computer to free up some space and I came upon this picture. Eva's teacher asked me to bring a snack for her class and said, you know, goldfish or something. Goldfish are so boring...so I brought these:

Dried apricots, pretzels, a dab of cream cheese and a mini - chocolate chip eye ;)

Spidergetti - since Eva isn't a huge fan of spaghetti, I thought I'd keep it fun and make it interesting. She loved it!

Spaghetti and Meatball Monster face - for Stella...just for fun.

I think the look on her face says it all :)