Liam's home birthday party

Originally I had planned on doing a crab shack themed party because I just thought it was adorable, but when it came time to finally do his birthday party at home it ended up that the date I chose was international talk like a pirate day. Ryan's family always gets together for this to have a nice pirate themed dinner so we combined the two and hosted the pirate dinner at our house. We got a great picture of all of us in our pirate attire on my mother in law, and sister in law's camera's but I have yet to get ahold of one of those.

Anyway, here is the original invite, before turned pirate...



Here's a picture of Ryan, Bella and Liam at least all dressed up!



This is the table, pre food. I really wanted a picture once all the food was on but once it was out, we were all starving and digging in. So this is the decorated table. All the decor came from Target marked down from 70-75% off! It was a steal! And I don't know if you can see on the right but there is a shark mobile that went quite nicely with this decor. I ordered it on clearance from Pottery Barn Kids thinking it would be awesome in Liam's room as a mobile above his bed....WRONG! It is huge! and hello!! sharks hanging above your bed might be a bit terrifying. I will for sure hang it at some point though.



These cupcakes are my favorite part of the crab shack ensemble. I found a similar party theme on a blog and they had a cake with these crabs on them and I adapted them to be on cupcakes that have "sand" on them for the top part and then did Shark fin's and a life preserver in "water" on the bottom ones. They turned out darling, and I couldn't have done it without my sister in law Sydnie. She is awesome at this kind of stuff, (baking, sewing, decorating, etc.) and she had a fabulous marshmallow fondant recipe she helped me make. I would have never made it on my own. It is quite meticulous and she had awesome tips for me, such as adding the coloring BEFORE the powdered sugar so it is easy to smoothly mix in! She also got the ball rolling on making the crabs as I was struggling to get started, AND she made the adorable life preserver! So I owe her big time...although I'm not sure what favor I could lend to her...she will have to make me aware of one someday! :)







So the blue canister had gummy sharks in it, which melted before anyone got there because it was so hot outside. So it was all a big huge gummy shark grave. SUCH a waste!





In case you can't tell in this picture, those are swedish fish peeking out of the "water" which is jello. It was supposed to be gummy lobsters, but I couldn't find any anywhere.



My Sister in Law Angie's family made these adorable pirate ship fruit bowls! Cute and yummy!







Liam kept clapping! He was having fun because everyone was paying attention to him... :) And I think he loved the crab on his cupcake!

Liam Turned One! And Trip to Washington!

This year we got to go to Washington for Liam's birthday! It turned out so awesome. My entire family was able to be there at the same time, so we scheduled a trip to the beach and rented a beach house for a few nights. It was so nice to all be together and to be forced to stay at home with each other! We were able to get a very good visit in those few days! The first two days we were there were pretty cold, but the last day was beautiful and warm and awesome! Perfect beach weather! And on the way home we stopped by the Tillamook cheese factory, as we always have with our old friends the Staples, which we missed this time around, however we were lucky to be able to have Kristina and her son Tanner along with us!

Also the day we drove up was Liams birthday! So Shauna and I whipped together a cake when we got there and we celebrated a few hours after arriving! (I shouldn't fail to mention that Shauna was actually the one to make the cake and cupcakes the day before we left. I simply helped decorate it...Thanks Shauna!)







Liam was very slow to dig in, but Grandpa CC tried to help things along a bit...







Liam's present this year was a new bookshelf for his room and a my first anywhere chair from PBK. That was way too hard to haul all the way to Washington, so instead we wrapped a bunch of books and let him open them up there on his birthday. He loves books! I will post a picture of his bookshelf and chair in a different post.









We got to see this beautiful sunset every night from the window of our Beach house! So pretty!











We attempted a family picture out on the beach one evening...didn't happen. It was so cold and SO windy that Anthony looked like a werewolf!



Bella loved the sand...Liam didn't. I didn't get many pictures of him on the beach :( which made me sad since I was hoping for some like the ones I got of Bella at that age for the kids bathroom. Oh well! :) He cried every time I tried, so I gave up!



The last day was so nice and we were able to go over to the dune and the tide pools.





Jeff caught two crabs with his bare hands but they were both females so he had to throw them back. He was bummed cause he wanted to cook one up and eat it. Next time we go we will have to rent a boat and go crabbing. We did that one year...it was very interesting with little kids. Andrew Staples ended up getting bit on his finger and flinging the crab into his daughters face, which poked her and thoroughly terrified her I'm sure! lol!



Anthony thought he looked pretty slick in Bella's specs!



Kimberly was a trooper and took Bella up the sand dune. She even carried her half the way up! Thanks Kimberly!



Ryan carried Liam most of the way up the dune and got so sick Jeff had to go get Liam off of him and he had to lay down in the sand so he wouldn't throw up! Which would have been disgusting considering there were so many people sliding down that hill. They may have blindly slid into his pile of puke...even if it were buried! lol! But it was WAY hot and going up the dune was apparently even more so than down below. I obviously didn't attempt it. I did that as a kid. It was time for me to just hang back and take pictures! :)



Wish I had more pictures with me, my mom, Jeff, and Kristina in them...I think Jeff got a bunch but I don't have those. All in all it was a great trip and we were so glad we were able to make it and do the things we got to do while we were there!

Playing catch up!

So I'm finally going to try and play catch up. Starting off with my gallery wall which has been up for a few months now and I love. Just in time for the last post...which will be posted last... :) Anyway enjoy the update!

Some of the kids for the Gallery wall!

So I had a few open frames on my gallery wall that needed some pictures of the kids in them. I really only needed one of each of them, but they turned out really cute. Also this was the easiest, most efficient photo shoot I've ever had with them! It was a half hour for both of them! And only at one place! I was very happy! And Ryan didn't even get cranky! :)

The Daddy Daughter Kings Grand Ball!

So Ryan got the chance to go on a daddy daughter date to this ball in Lindon a few days after her birthday. I really tried hard to get Ryan to have his brother, who also went to this with our niece, take a picture of he and Bella dancing. But check out the sweet outfit he wore...



He was not thrilled about pictures! :) Doesn't he look awesome!? His mom made this prince Charming costume a few years back for his brother Riley when he worked at a preschool, and it seemed perfect for this occasion. Bella was thrilled!




How cute are these girls!? I love it! They had SO much fun!



I still haven't gotten the pictures from the Princess Festival from my sister in law's camera yet, and who knows when or if I ever will. So if I post some, they will have to be totally out of sequence! :)

The Pink Pony Cake...

For the family birthday. This cake was so easy to make and it was a hit for sure! I couldn't find pink rip rolls for the hair (which would have been way cuter cause it's "sparkly") so I used bubble tape which worked just as nicely!