Lola's Art Party

October is always a super busy month for our family. Between Halloween and all its preparations, visiting a pumpkin patch, school festivals and harvest festivals it's already a pretty crazy month. Throw in Lola's birthday right in the middle of the month and crazy takes on a whole different meaning!

This year we celebrated Lola's 7th birthday with an art themed party. As usual, she came up with the theme and was eager to help plan all of the fun. It was such a great party theme with endless options for creative fun. Let's take a look...

For the party invitations I had a ton of different ideas going through my head (as did Lola) but none of them seemed quite right. Then an image of Lola as an artist popped into my head and I knew that it was perfect. So she dressed up in a striped shirt, placed a beret on her head and added one last touch - a paint brush balanced perfectly on Lola's duck face pout! If you know Lola, you'll know that she is the self described queen of duck face (take that Kylie Jenner!) so it seemed only fitting that her favorite selfie pose be included on the invitation. Plus it totally worked with the whole French artist look!

Dinosaur Party Invites

Last week my little baby turned 3 years old! Can you believe it? This weekend we'll be celebrating Mathilde's birthday with a dinosaur themed party.

As you probably know, organizing parties for my kids is one of my favorite things in the whole world. I love the chance to get creative with fun themes and a dinosaur theme certainly is fun. This past week I've been so busy creating all sorts of dino fun including a t-rex piñata, a dinosaur dress up activity, a dinosaur bone dig, dinosaur footprint cookies and lots more. 

As always, the first thing I created was the invitations. A few years back Ava had a reptile themed birthday party and I made invitations featuring plastic reptiles wearing little party hats that I made out of paper. You can see those invites here. The party hats made the otherwise "scary" animals look cute and friendly. Those invitations ended up being a huge hit and I get asked about them all the time. I'm working on getting an invitation shop up and running, I promise! Anyway, I decided to go with the same idea for the invites for Mathilde's dinosaur party, so I got three of her favorite Schleich dinosaurs and dressed them up ready to party.    

I put them all together with a little text and voila!

I printed matching address labels and sent the invites off in nice t-rex green envelopes.

Aren't they fun invitations? The top photo of Mathilde in her Mitz Accessories dinosaur dress roaring at her t-rex would've made a fantastic invitation too. I snapped that shot after the invitations were posted out, but you will be seeing it at her party - along with that amazing dress!

 

Stay tuned for lots of dino themed fun coming up!

A Peanuts Party Invitation

Can you believe it? 

Tomorrow my oldest baby turns Nine! Nine! I still can't wrap my head around it. She's not a little girl anymore. She's a big girl. A tween even - maybe. How old is a tween? I have no idea. All I know is that she's growing up too quickly.

To celebrate Ava's ninth birthday we'll be having a Peanuts themed party with her friends on Saturday. Ava chose the theme and she is really excited about it. I actually half expected her to chose a Minecraft theme as she's really into Minecraft at the moment (aren't all almost nine year olds?) so I was pleasantly surprised when she told me she wanted a Peanuts party.

I am working on all sorts of fun Peanuts themed DIYs for the party and I can't wait to share them with you next week, but for now let's have a look at the party invitations.

Circus Party Invitations

A few weeks back we celebrated Mathilde's first birthday with a circus themed party. (You can see it here.) I still have a few posts to share with you about her party so let's get back into party mode.

Today let's have a look at the party invitations...

There are so many circus themed invitations available out there. It's such a popular party theme for kids (and even adults) that you can always find something ready made. But if you know me you'll know that I'm not a fan of ready made. I like to make my own invitations - even if it means late nights and being driven crazy by a printer that chooses the worst times to play up! I was originally going to go with a more traditional circus theme for Mathilde's invitations (big top, carnival tickets, circus font...) but decided to go with something a little different. Something that looked more like my style. I was really happy with the reptile invitations that I made for Ava's 7th birthday party last year (you can see them here) so I decided to stick with that format albeit with circus animals this time around. A few Schleich animals, some felt and feathers, a hot glue gun, a white background and I was done.

Another Ice Cream Party

This week Ava turned eight years old. I still can't believe how fast my kids are growing up - and I don't even want to think about how fast this means I'm getting old!

To celebrate Ava's birthday we'll be having a party with some of her school friends at Fenton's Creamery in Oakland this Sunday. Fenton's is an absolute East Bay institution but we're yet to make it there. Sometimes not owning a car has its downsides!

As Ava's party will be at an ice cream parlor it seemed only fitting to go with an ice cream theme for the invitations. Lola celebrated her fourth birthday with an ice cream party only three and a half months ago so it did feel a little odd rehashing the same theme but I made sure to keep things very different. Lola's party invitations featured popsicles (you can see them here) so for Ava's I drew ice cream in a cone topped with chocolate sauce and a cherry. It goes perfectly with the make your own sundae bar the kids will be treated to at the party.

Ice Cream Party Invites

I can not believe that my little Lola is going to be four tomorrow!

We'll be celebrating her birthday this coming weekend with an ice cream party. Lola chose the theme for this year's party quite some time ago. In fact, I believe it may have been right after her last birthday party finished!

Lola has been super excited about having an ice cream party, and I've got to say that it's a pretty fun theme to get creative with. I've got all sorts of ice cream and popsicle themed activities and accessories lined up for the party and I can't wait to share them all with you.

So let's start by having a look at the invitations...

An ice cream party needs tasty invitations, right? These little chocolate covered popsicle invitations do the trick. I made them three dimensional complete with popsicle sticks, a bite taken out the top and a wrapper. Don't they look delicious?

Calling All Party Animals...

The holidays may be over but in our house the preparations for upcoming celebrations are getting into full swing again... Australia Day this weekend, Valentine's Day less than a month away and, most importantly, Ava's birthday coming up in a few weeks.

Each year Ava's birthday sneaks up on me. I mean, obviously I know when my daughter's birthday is, but each year I think I'm going to have a nice break between the Christmas season and preparing for Ava's birthday when in actual fact it all just merges into one big mass of crafts and party planning! I always fall into the trap of thinking I've got a two month buffer between the two (Christmas in December, Ava's birthday in February) but really there's only one full month in between, and it's always a busy one.

This year for Ava's birthday (the scarily big sounding 7) we're going for a reptile theme. She originally had her heart set on celebrating with friends at the new American Girl store in Palo Alto (possibly the complete opposite to a reptile party!) but after pet sitting her class gecko over the Winter break she's got reptile fever!

A reptile party is certainly going to be fun, especially with the special visit that I've lined up from some scaly friends from East Bay Vivarium, however I still wanted to keep it a little cute. Not super girly, mind you, just a touch of cuteness when it comes to the cake, party bags and invites.

So just how does one make reptiles cute? Well, it's a birthday party right? What could be cuter than colourful party hats? Tiny little party hats on tiny little lizards, tortoises, crocodiles and frogs. Cute and fun - perfect!

I rounded up a selection of Schleich reptile and amphibian figurines and made little party hats and ribbon-tied parcels for them. From scaly and scary to instant cute!

Party hats make everything cute

Lola is turning 3!

My baby will be turning 3 next week. I can't believe she's such a big girl already.

To celebrate her birthday we'll be throwing a Bubbles & Balloons party for Lola this weekend.

Lola chose the theme of her party and has been super excited about it for weeks. Ok, maybe months!

I've been working hard on party preparations the last few weeks and thought I'd share the invitations with you today. I'm really happy with how they turned out and I think they look great, if I do say so myself!

Sticking with the Bubbles & Balloons theme I decided to make a little cut out Lola holding onto an oversized balloon. Here's little Lola and her balloon hanging on our fridge.

Lola's party invitation

Another birthday coming up...

Ava's 6th birthday is just around the corner. In fact, it's only a few weeks away. Time to get cracking on the party preparations.

Inspired by her best friend's birthday party last year, Ava has decided that rainbows and colours will be the theme of the day. Unfortunately Ava was not able to make it to her best friend's birthday party last year as we live on opposite sides of the world. She has, however, seen lots of photos and is desperate to recreate almost every moment!

While we will be "stealing" some ideas from her best friend's party I figured that I should really come up with a few of my own.

First up are the invitations. I've been working on them tonight so Ava can hand them out at school tomorrow. Here's a little sneak peek...

A snippet of Ava's party invitations

More birthday party projects will be coming soon as we work on them. In the meantime you might want to check out Ava's first five birthday parties...

Lola is almost 2...

Can you believe it? My little baby is almost 2 years old. In just 10 days it will be her birthday. I guess she's not a baby anymore.

To celebrate Lola's 2nd birthday we will be having a little party with some of her friends.
The theme of Lola's party? Her new obsession: Mickey Mouse.

Here's a look at the invitation for Lola's birthday party...

One happy little Mouseketeer

Lola's invitation 

Thanks to big sister Ava for the beautiful drawing of Lola the Mouseketeer!

Ava's 4th Birthday Party

Ava's 4th birthday party was last weekend so I thought I'd post a few pictures from the festivities.

First off let's start with the invitation...