Last Day of First Grade

She made it! Here is the last day of first grade.

By way of comparison, here is the last day of kindergarten. Thankfully, Hannah's bus driver is a patient man.
:-)

Happy Birthday Sweet Girl!

A very happy birthday to our wonderful girl! You make our lives better each and every single day just by being you!

What a way to wake up - ice cream cake in bed. Yum!
:-)

A Mertastic Birthday Party

Last weekend we celebrated Hannah's 7th (gasp) birthday. First here are some details from the party, and my next post will talk more about the fun & frivolity that was had by all.

The above image is the invitation that served as the inspiration for the color palette of the cake, decorations and goodie bags. I purchased these printable invitations from YourInvites on Etsy. This was my first time using printable invitations and I couldn't have been more pleased with how they turned out. Once I found out that I could customize the color and length of the mermaid's hair, I was smitten.

The kids craft was a "make your own sand art bottle". It was a big hit and very easy to put together. We bought the sand, bottles and funnels on S&S. The plastic boxes came from Walmart and the small cocktail spoons from Party City.

For snacks, we ordered custom mermaid cookies from TSCookies on Etsy. We made a blue jello in a big glass bowl and inserted swedish fish so it looked like a fish bowl. Thank you Martha Stewart! My Mom carved a watermelon in the shape of a shark. Thanks to youtube, it was really easy!

That's my Mom pretending to be bitten by her ferocious creation. Isn't she cute? Thank you Mom, the "sharkermelon" was a huge hit.

Isn't the cake adorable? We used our cake lady again this year. She is really open to my ideas and is patient with my crazy diagrams. Oh yes, there are diagrams. I present to you exhibit A, otherwise known as "Franken Cake":

Thank goodness our cake lady can make sense of this "Type A Gone Wild". And no cake of ours would complete without a delightful custom cake topper made by Knottingwood on etsy. Do you see a pattern here? Yes, my name is Kim and I am addicted to etsy.

And here are the goodie bags. The bag (which is a recyclable produce bag) and the starfish crayons came from etsy. The coral post-its came from Target. We also included some Life Savers and a piece of rock candy. Last but not least we added a "Grow Your Own Mermaid", dolphin eraser and a custom made shell hair barrette (ahem... made by moi).

Hope you enjoy this glimpse into my Type A personality when it comes to Hannah's birthday party. And just think, this year I showed restraint. Ha ha!
:-)

Independence Day Parade... early!

Here are some photos from this year's parade.

Does the Statue of Liberty costume look familiar? Savannah borrowed it from Hannah for her ride in the parade. Doesn't she make a cute Lady Liberty?

Happy Independence Day!
:-)