A 'Lila' Loopsy 3rd birthday party

So Lila turned 3 a few days ago. My sweet little baby girl. No longer a baby and barely a toddler. She is heading in to 'preschooler' territory. 

And for this past year, she has been obsessed with the idea of having a 'la la loopsy party'. It is all she has talked about-for a whole year! The funny thing is, she had never even seen a la la loopsy episode. We dont have pay tv. She just happened to see the toys at a friends house one day and has not stopped talking about them ever since. 

DIY La La Loopsy invitations

our sweet little 'crumbs sugar cookie'

complete with 'only-for-the-birthday-girl' headband

and just because Lila was dressing up, Marley had to as well. 

Really getting in to character...

viola! I cant tell if it's creepy or cute. Either way, would of made a great Halloween costume had it not been her birthday party

Pink, orange and yellow were the colours of the party. Complete with lots of clashing patterns!

DIY 'Crumbs Sugar Cookie' cake 

Vanilla cupcakes with buttercream icing and sugar buttons

cloud  sugar cookies with blue 'stitching' detail

pink and yellow striped paper straws in DIY washi taped jar

thank you bags

self serve drink station with colourful dotty paper cups

 We had the party at home and it was so nice to have our friends and family here for one last soiree in the little house........wait, whaaaaaat!?!! 

Yes, you read that right..... More on that to come!

I wont bore you with all the itty bitty decorating details but if you have any questions about what, why or how I did something, or where I sourced something, please feel free to add your questions in to the comments section. 

 Lisa xx

Teddy Bears Picnic Party

Before Marley's 1st birthday party, I had already decided on the theme for his second birthday. 

This was back in the day when I was convinced I was destined to be a mother of only boys. I just knew our next child was going to be another boy and a third was completely out of the question. 

So I figured my only chance to throw a teddy bears picnic, was going to be for Marley's 2nd birthday, while he was still little and cute and loved his teddy bear and was too young to care about batman or Ben 10. 

I went into a lot of effort for the party, like a crazy amount of DIY was happening all over the place. I partly blame it on the pregnancy hormones but the reality is, im just crazy like that. 

Party table

A couple of months before the party, I set about making and gathering decorations. The first thing I did was make this tree back-drop out of brown and green card. Took me back to my primary school days! And you can't beat cheap-as-chips for budget decorations like this red-gingham table cloth. I think it was about $2. seriously! 

Teddy Bears Picnic party cake with matching cupcakes

The cake took FOREVER! All those little fondant decorations, and that picnic blanket was certainly no picnic to make. And you wouldn't believe how bad my hands cramped up piping all that grass BUT the cake turned out alright in the end and the buttercream grass tasted so yummy and not like grass at all. 

teddy bears lolly bags

The lolly bags were brown paper bags, filled with lollies of course. Red and blue personalised labels with a teddy bear cut out and red gingham bows to finish.

Teddy Bear racers

Beehive pinata

My first and only attempt so far at a DIY pinata. This thing took waaaay longer than I expected! I buy them pre-made these days....

the teddy bears picnic

Picnic for the teddy bears....they must be running late!

Pin the bow-tie on the teddy bear game

DIY pin the bow-tie on the teddy bear. This was a bit cute!

My beautiful blonde boy (left) back when he still had a hint of curls

So that was Marley's 2nd birthday. Now, he is a big 4 year old! And the batman and transformers and lego talk has been going on awhile now. We've done Under the Sea, a Teddy Bears Picnic, a train party and a beach party. I have managed to avoid a character themed party so far, but im sure ive got one coming for the big 5 party this year.


 Lisa xx

Surf's Up-shared birthday beach party

Last weekend, {yep, I began typing this post mid-December...} we finally celebrated the kids birthday's with their joint beach party. I say finally, because I had to postpone the original date due to me being completely and totally utterly swamped with assignments. 

The weather wasn't perfect. It was windy. It was cold. It was rather crap really. But we all survived and had a good time. Wind burn and all. 

It was casual and laid-back. I was even in bed before midnight the night before the party! For those that know me well, that is just unheard of! 

It helped that I used buttercream instead of fondant icing to decorate the cake with and the simple fondant sufboard toppers took me all of 5 minutes to make-if that! My cakes are usually very elaborate and take days to complete and im quite often seen doing last-minute touches to them, well at the very last-minute. Not this cake!

 Easiest. Cake. Ever!

Blue ombre 'surf's up' cake. 

I kept the decorations really simple. 

The 'tablecloths' were a couple of metres of gorgeous, summery fabric I picked up at Spotlight which I plan on making into cushions, or a hanging tent for the kids, or adding some squares to the kids rag quilts that I WILL FINISH BEFORE WINTER. Or the fabric may just get added to the stash for a while...

I have been hanging to decorate with burlap so the burlap came out in full-force for this occasion. 

The netting and anchor are left-over decorations from Marley's original nursery which was  'nautical' themed.  

The burlap bunting I ordered from etsy. 

The invites I DIYed. I love graphic design and am seriously considering studying it along-side my interior design diploma. But then I slap myself for even considering adding more to my work load. But then I think how awesome it would be. This internal monologue continues.....

I didn't bother with games. We were at the beach! There was sand, there was water, there was kids. 

I did put up a volley ball net and bring some sand toys for the littlies. 

Here's a few more pics of the party food

And that was it. Done and dusted!

Im so glad I combined their birthdays into one party last year. It made my life so much easier! And Lila wasn't really into anything when I was planning it. 
But now that she is getting older and im discovering how incredibly girly she is, I can not wait to plan a super girly party for her 3rd birthday! I have been waiting soooo long for that! 

As for Marley, he starts kindy.....next week! eeek! And with that will come new friends and new interests so I cant wait to see what he chooses for his party theme this year. 

Check back in over the coming weeks to see some sneek peaks of the kids new bedroom...s. Yep, I changed them back in to their own bedrooms! It was awesome at first. Both kids in the one room. But bedtimes were a big challenge and would usually result in Marley staying up far too late whilst we waited for Lila to fall asleep. I also realised that more than them having a shared playroom (and me an office) they really needed their own space to retreat to. 

They both seem to really like having their own rooms again with their own stuff! As for my office, it has been temporarily relocated to our bedroom! Not a fan of this at all but until I can decide what to do in the living room, here it will stay.

 Oh the joys of living in a little house.

Lisa xx

Lila's 1st Birthday-Wizard of Oz

Our little girl turned one in December last year. Now, I'm a lady that likes my themes. When I say like, I mean LOVE and I tend to go a little overboard. Lila's 1st birthday was no exception! 

I am however, a lady on a budget and really cant justify paying money to someone to do something for me that I could easily make/bake/create/decorate myself!

I love DIY. I love getting creative. I don't love the hours and hours and constant stream of late nights leading up to these parties but I just.cant.help.myself!

So, for Lila's first birthday I went all out...within a budget.

The invitation really set the theme

Wizard of Oz 1st Birthday Invitation

From there, I had to cull the millions of ideas I had running around inside my head into just a few. That was hard. VERY hard!

I knew I wanted Lila to be dressed as Dorothy so I set to work designing and making her costume. 

The birthday girl in her DIY Dorothy costume

I'm only a beginner sewer so the quality is probably terrible, but she looked cute on the day and that was the main thing!

Dorothy Costume from the back

For Lila's costume I made her a little apron out of some gingham fabric I bought at Spotlight.
I loosely followed this tutorial from The Dating Divas I then added a little white trim to the edges and a red sequinned letter 'L' to the front. 
I also made her a little blue tutu to go under the apron from this tutorial I found at 
The Idea Room.
 Her 'ruby red slippers' were from Pumpkin Patch and the little red hair bow I think from Big W? 

Unfortunately on the day she wasn't feeling very well so we didn't get many pictures of her smiling. Poor little poppet. 

PARTY DETAILS

THEME

Wizard of Oz

INVITATIONS

little house inspired.

as pictured above.

VENUE

Our house

DECORATIONS

'Somewhere over the rainbow' balloon backdrop with DIY birthday bunting made from doilies, blue card and red cut-out letters

DIY witches legs decoration-red shoes from op shop, and children's striped tights stuffed
with newspaper and placed under the the kids cubby house

We also had a 'follow the yellow brick road'. We made this from yellow A3 card which we taped to the floor in our house leading guests from the front door through to the back deck where the party was. BUT we forgot to take a photo of it. 

PARTY FOOD

CAKE

Wizard of Oz Birthday Cake

Handmade fondant Wizard of Oz characters

CUPCAKES

Red velvet 'Ruby Slipper' cupcakes

Rainbow cupcakes with DIY cupcake toppers to match the bunting

COOKIES

Sparkly ruby red number 1 sugar cookies

Toto sugar cookies

OTHER SWEET TREATS

Tin Man's heart chocolates

Sparkly red cake pops

I am yet to find a nice looking way to display my cake pops without them having to lay down or knock each other over.....

PARTY GAMES/ACTIVITIES

DIY Pin-the-heart on the tin man game.

Somewhere over the rainbow...number 1 pinata

We also had a face painter for all the kids. However, instead of ending up with 'lions and tigers and bears oh my' we ended up with 'skeletons, and spider-mans and fairies oh my'!?! Still, very cute and lots of fun though.

LOLLY BAGS

lolly bags with DIY thank you tags, string and sparkly
 red bows for the girls bags and gingham bows for the boys.

So, that was Lila's first birthday. As I mentioned in my previous post on Marleys 3rd birthday train party , this year we are having a joint birthday party for the kids. I figure this is probably the only year we will get away with doing it. They are still young enough to let me choose the theme, although Marley required quite alot of persuasion and compromise this year, Lila really has no idea. She loves playing with her dolls but that is all she is really into. She doesnt really watch TV so I have so far escaped anything 'Dora' or 'Disney Princess' themed. I am going to enjoy that while it lasts!

Until then, my plan is to keep updating this blog with a few more parties we have already had including Marley's Under the Sea 1st birthday party, his Teddy Bear's Picnic 2nd birthday party and my husbands Wild West 30th. 

Lisa xx