I for-byd youuu..

Beth and Jason aka Bill and Sook-ay.

Boo! Zoe is TWO!

I couldn't resist the Halloween birthday party. Last year I wanted to make sure that her 1st birthday was a seperate occasion from Halloween. First birthdays are big deal, and being a Nov. 1st baby will mean she will have a lot of celebrations that bleed into each other. Last year was one thing - but this year I just wanted to have FUN.

Personally, I love Halloween. I love the decorations. I love dressing up. I could not wait and started collecting decorations months before. Being a paper addict, I tapped Jess at Polka dots and Pirates to do the invites, banners and cupcake toppers again this year. Jess is amazingly talented and if you can plan far enough in advance - try and get on her 2010 wait list. Yes, she has a wait list - she is THAT good. 

The stamps are from the Martha Stewart line at Michaels and the skull stickers are from my happy place, The Paper Source. 

As always, I went a little overboard with the decorations. Using the "candy theme" that was popular this past year, and inspirations from various magazines and blogs, I chose basic Halloween colors and the Candy Corn as my main starting points. 

I like using cupcake toppers on more than just cupcakes. I use them all over as various decorations. Instead of renting the cupcake stands, I bought black cardboard ones from the Halloween section at Michael's. Since this was a 2 year old girls party, and I was trying to keep the macabre out of it, I added bows the skeleton's heads. I also did the same with Miss Party Bones in the corner...

Cupcakes came from Cupcake Love in Solana Beach. I'm such a sucker for cupcakes.. I always go a little overboard with them!

I made some foaming lemonade concoction for the kids that  I found online (it didn't really work out all that well!) but instead of boring cups, I served it to the kids in "adult" plastic martini glasses. Since they are used to only Mommies and Daddies getting the fancy glasses, they were very excited about them. 

For activities, I rented a bounce-house, had a decorate your own pumpkin craft, read a halloween story, and we played musical chairs to the monster mash. Hint for musical chairs - kids don't want to be out, so I offered a lollipop to each child as they were out, which then prompted the older kids to try and get out since all they wanted a sucker!

Book is "Shake dem Halloween Bones!"

the birthday girl, herself!

Lucas Kai-walker.. ;-)

It really was a wonderful day. 2 things I did differently this time is that I had someone else take pictures (one less thing to worry about during the party!) and I hired one of my babysitters to help. She was great at helping to organize things and also clean up. At the end of the party, all the trash was thrown out, dishes washed, kitchen wiped down.. and my sanity still in-tact! 

*Thank you Patty from Petula Pea Photography for some amazing shots!!

Orange Belt

Parenting is really hard at times, but that's expected. What really gets you is the unexpected first.. like dealing with your child's first possible failure. It's gut wrentching.

As usual, Jason wrote the fabulous post about it over at DadCentric, so instead of rehasing emotions over here, I will just direct you there, but tide you over with some shots of the little guy trying his hardest to achieve his little goals.

  ** He did, indeed, get his orange belt..

Too Cool

Lucas has been wanting to wear sunglasses to camp. I think some of the other kids, or maybe his "man crush" Cameron (his counselor and current center of his day camp universe) wear them so he's been insisting. No problem, we are a pretty "accessorized" family anyway, so the obsession makes sense. The only problem is the circa-90's Oakleyesque, Spiderman licensed Target pair that he currently has. Now if you are wondering how they even got bought in the first place my response is just "have you been to Target with a 5 year old lately?!" He wants everything from band-aids to plastic guns to ANOTHER huge bouncy ball to a new bike, and you will do anything to just shut them up so you can figure out which deodorant to buy (which seems to be a hard decision recently.. there are soo many.. egh..). Anyway, the Spiderman sunglasses were a moment of "fine, if you will stop asking for anything else" weakness. And, to my fashion-diva-wanna-be horror, he's been wearing them daily.

So the other day while in the kids department I decided to pick him up a pair that I deemed a bit cooler..

But they reminded us of something.. then we started laughing..

Look familiar?

Product Whore, I Am

I die for that "just out of the ocean" hair. When I was a teenager and got to spend 3 weeks on Catalina Island SCUBA diving to my hearts content at Sea Camp my hair always thrived.. so of course i was INTRIGUED and started obsessing when I saw this "surf spray" from Bumble and Bumble. I finally broke down and bought it yesterday but haven't really tried it. I'm actually kinda scared of it. Scared my hair will look dirty and sticky and I will have to reshower. Who has time for 2 showers a day?!

I did spray a little on my (dirty) dry hair this morning for fun..and one advantage is that I feel like I just came back from the beach, with a slight sandy/salty smell and taste in my mouth. But just got back from the beach in desperate need of a shower feel also.

Maybe I just need a shower?