The Birthday Party

I finished Lydia's doll late on Friday night. Daddy assembled a swing set for 2 days in the upper 90's while being swarmed by mosquitoes. No pictures of the swing set on my camera, but I will takes some soon.

The color scheme was purple, brown, blue, and green. This was an easy way to decorate. It was supposed to have letters and say Happy 1st Birthday. Maybe next year!

These are the favor boxes we handed out to the guests. Each had a picture of Lydia and some chocolates inside.

I sewed a cute outfit with butterflies on it for Lydia to wear, but I changed her into her swimsuit for the cake eating, so that she could go right into the baby pool to get cleaned up. I managed not to get any pictures of the original outfit, but I am sure someone has some.

I had to bake the cupcakes myself because I wanted them to be dairy-free and safe for Lydia. Duncan Hines makes several mixes and frostings that are OK, but even with that I got really tired of them after the first 30.

I think there were 75 total. Jennifer kept tallying the guest list and making me nervous that we would run out. Each cupcake needed a chocolate butterfly. They were created using the chocolate transfer method I mentioned in an earlier post. Way easier than they look, but also annoying after about 30! In the end there were a few extra so we tossed them into the fruit plate too. Here is Lydia's smush cake before it got smushed.

We had a huge crowd on a very hot day, so most of the crowd stayed inside the house. It was open house style, so people trickled in and out over 4 hours. Huge thanks to Andrea and Jen for handling the food and cleaning while I dealt with Lydia's decision not to nap. PJ killed himself making the lawn look gorgeous AND building the amazing swing set/play area AND setting up baby pools to cool of in. I promise pictures soon, even if I have to re-create them. We had a craft table full of butterfly shapes to decorate, antenna to build and decorate, and butterfly temporary tattoos. We also had large quantities of rum, so lots of grown ups were willing to do silly things like wear antenna and tattoo their foreheads! The perfect day for our Liddybug's Butterfly Birthday!

Summer Fun

Lydia and I are back from Oregon. The flight home went very smoothly with Lydia falling easily to sleep at take off and sleeping for a good part of each flight. Now that we are home, summer vacation is in full effect. We went to a birthday party for my friend's baby who was born on the same day as Lydia. It was our first time getting Lydia into a baby swing, and she LOVED it. She has started sleeping longer at night, almost 11 hours, which I am LOVING! We are very busy right now with preparations for Lydia's birthday (2 days away) and for her party (4 days away) More on both of those soon.

The Oregon Coast

My mom took us to the coast on Monday. Its about 2 hours away from her house and a nice drive through the mountains to get there, but Lydia has now been to the Pacific Ocean. The air was crisp and there is always wind, but the sand was warm and Lydia STILL wanted to go straight for the cold water.

Oregon, Part 2

Today was my parent's 40th anniversary party. We also opened some gifts and had some cake for Lydia's 1st birthday last night. More pictures coming soon, but for now I am tired and it is late. Enjoy.

Oregon

Lydia and I flew to Oregon with Jen. Considering it was her first time on a plane she did really well. We lucked out and got an empty seat in our row on the long flight, making it much easier to handle her squirming. Today we met up with my cousins and uncles for lunch and did some shopping in Portland. We toured a winery in downtown and are now just relaxing at my mom's house. Lydia started her day at 3am (6am at home) but I think she is much closer to being on Pacific time today.

More Birthday Pictures

Here are a few more pictures for Lydia's birthday. The butterfly wand she is holding has become a BIG hit. She sat last night and this morning, just waving it and moving it around on the floor and watching it sparkle.

I LOVE JC Penneys portrait studios!

I should have checked my e-mail before posting to the blog an hour ago. We went into Penney's at 2pm today for Lydia's birthday pictures. Usually we get the proofs by e-mail in about 4 days and then the pictures come in about a week. Considering that other studios can print the pictures instantly, that stinks, but Penney's cost so little and they have been so good to us that I don't mind. Today when we finished the lady said the proofs should be e-mailed to me tomorrow. I thought she was mistaken, especially because this is a weekend, but by 4:30 on Saturday afternoon, we already had the e-mail. So, here are a few of the "Butterfly Birthday" pictures of Lydia.

Birthday Pictures Coming Soon!

This picture is a few weeks old. We took it right before we went to the beach and I think I got too busy to share it. Lydia was feeding herself table food. This was the first time that she ate the same thing we were eating for dinner. It's a habit I need to get more accustomed to. She won't get re-evaluated for her dairy allergy until February, so she will be eating more table food and we will need to make sure we can cook with out milk, cheese or dairy so that she can eat too. The milk part isn't too hard, I can use soy milk instead, but cheese and butter are tougher to replace. I did learn this week that some Duncan Hines cake mixes and frosting are dairy free. Its a little scary that even the Duncan Hines white chocolate frosting doesn't have any milk in it, but I won't complain. Now I can make REAL cupcakes and frost them without changing anything on the recipe and Lydia can have her birthday cake and eat it too! Speaking of which, we took her birthday pictures today at JC Penney's and they are CUTE! We should have some posted soon.

More party stuff

Here is the finished invitation to Lydia's party. If you're looking at this and haven't received an invite yet, feel free to come on over for the party!

This is the finished retirement party cake for our retiring Oak Ridge art teacher, using the chocolate transfer meathod that I learned about from the kind folks at the Whimsical Bakehouse
I sent them a picture of it with a note thanking them for providing the instructions on their blog and they asked for permission to put my cake on their website! I may be blogfamous soon!

Getting ready to party!

Lydia's first birthday is less than a month away. Considering that I have a week and a half of school left AND we are going to oregon for a week and a half, I need to get going on party preparations ASAP! Lydia is having a butterfly themed party, so I was playing around with a simple design for aneta that kids and adults can decorate and then wear. They are just 2 pipe cleaners and some sticky fun foam shapes. I think they will be a fun activity.

This is not Lydia's cake, but I did make it using the chocolate transfer technique that I plan to use to make butterflies for her cupcakes. This one will be a retirement cake for a fellow art teacher.