A Little Boy's Birthday.....Ezra Turns Seven

Ezra turned seven the other day and all the kids expect their table to be decorated when they come in from school on their birthdays. Ezra is all boy with a passion for frogs, bearded dragons, bugs and balls. So I filled the tables with bugs and frogs.

I needed something to hang from the ceiling to add some pizzaz and I found these shiny green strip things at the Dollar Store. I hung bugs at the end of them and told the kids they were fly strips. They looked pretty cool in person. They don't show up very good on film though.




This is a mini back pack on the back of the chair. Ezra had it off of there in no time and filled it with all the bugs he could find.



This is Ezra and green jell-o with candy frogs in it. I stuck his number 7 candle in it and served it as his cake.


I bought this vase a few years back at an artsy store downtown. I thought it was really cool and knew it would come in handy some day. It sits outside on my patio table during the summer.


This is dirt pudding. I could have easily eaten the whole bucket. It's just chocolate pudding mixed with whip creme and crushed Oreos. There were gummy worms in it too but I steered around those. It was heaven. My kind of supper.








I didn't work too hard on the candy bar as you can tell. There was only so much time and I had to scrape the cupcakes off of each other after I got to my niece's house. I forgot to drive slow and take the corners easy on the way over and lost half the cupcakes.

Give a kid a can of silly string and they are happy for a few minutes until it's gone.

Ezra's wondering how he's going to carry all of his loot home.

Angie & Erik

This photo of Angie and Erik was #1 on bobbi & mike's 2009 annual top 100: engagement pics. Do I sound like a proud mama? The colors are pretty awesome in this.

More of Eva's Birthday

Meet Eva. She's 5 now.







Since I couldn't get Angie to make me some labels for these crayola juice bottles (her printer is out of ink) I wrapped them with some mailing labels and glued some jewels on them to bling them out. Had I had more time and patience the whole label would have been bedazzled.





This was some kind of candelabra thing I bought a while back at the Home Goods store because I thought it was neat and it might come in handy for table decor. I actually purchased two of them. I had a beaded curtain so I cut some of the beads from it and strung them all around it along with some Christmas garland. It looked a lot better in person.



I tried making cut out sugar cookies. Of course I was in a hurry and tried using the rolls of sugar cookies you buy at the store. Only four of them turned out decent so I glued them together with icing and made a glass slipper and stood them up on a cake stand.







Eva has the cheese smile down pat. Today was Ezra's birthday. I'll try to get those pictures up soon. It won't be so sparkly though.

Eva is 5 today!

Here are a couple of pictures of Eva's 5th birthday celebration with her part-time babysitter (me). She was thrilled to be treated like a little princess. My daughter Natalie snapped these with her Blackberry. Hopefully someone will upload me some from the other cameras we used and get them to me soon. The table really looked more awesome in person if I do say so myself. I had fun decorating it at my niece's house. My niece helped me too, especially by providing some cobalt blue anchor hocking dessert dishes that she had stored away and had never used. I thought it really made the table pop and don't know how it would have looked if she hadn't brought those out. I didn't want to spend a lot of money and was trying to get by with what I already had at home to decorate with. These chair covers (which need ironed by the way) are really tablecloths that we just threw over the chairs and wrapped a bow around. I will show more details soon. Next week is Eva's brother Ezra's 7th birthday. I am planning on using the lizards, frogs & insects theme, since those are a few of his favorite things. I don't really know what I am going to use on the chairs though. I don't think he would go for the girly chair covers. I don't really know what I am using on the table either but I do know I am going to be making some dirt pudding with gummy worms in a bucket for him. Hopefully I will have pictures soon. I am wanting to go into the children's party business. I may have to look into a government grant though to get started unless someone out there wants to give me a loan. :)

I love This Dress

When I saw this dress on this bridesmaid model I immediately thought "That's the dress I want to wear at Angie's wedding." I found out after some investigation that it belonged to Melissa Haggerty's grandmother and she found it in an old trunk just days before she was to produce this Coco Chanel inspired spread in Wedluxe Magazine. So it's just another "I can't win" moment for me.

photos by ikonica.

Melissa has her own blog 'She Said Spectacular' on which I found these "spectacular" chartreuse vases and candelabras from Contemporary Furniture Rentals. I would love to use these for Angie's wedding but somehow I already know that it won't be possible before even investigating it. Pretty sure there is no Contemporary Furniture Rental in Indy and the cost of shipping these from wherever would be too much of an expense but I will go ahead and look into it anyway soon. But then again my mother, the 'Spray Paint Queen' always said "If you can't find something in the color you want a can of spray paint is usually a perfect solution."
Look at me. I finally figured out how to add the inclosure links to things. Guess I'd better go back and add some to the rest of the blog, huh?

Nickel City Studios

Just when I make a resolution to stay off of the computer or at least spend less time on it and get myself organized around here, I stumble upon a photography blog that has me spending hours scrolling through. Just when I decide to quit naming a photography blog of the week, I start finding more amazing photographers. These pictures are off the Nickel City Studios blog. They were captured by another husband-wife team who really know how to snap the special moments and emotions of the wedding day. These pictures here might not be the best examples of the moments and emotions but if you go check out their work you'll see for yourself. I tend to like looking at the decor of the weddings so I grabbed these off of their blog. I love the way their blog rolls so smoothly. Some blogs take forever to load on my computer but with this one I never had to wait. Alyssa and Rich Mattingly have a very interesting and entertaining way of talking you through the photos by taking turns commenting on each other's work amongst other things. I spent so much time just looking that I didn't really get a whole lot of information on these two. I gather they are based in Buffalo, New York. Or perhaps Nickel City? I'm sure I will be returning many times in the future to this blog and I am fighting the urge to go now and look and read some more but there are Christmas decorations here screaming to be put away. Have a Happy New Year of Blog-Stalking!