Christmas 2014

I'm determined to catch up, but it's taking me far longer than I ever thought possible. Here we are with Christmas 2014 ugh. I'm pretty much going to let pictures speak for themselves in an effort to catch up. Happy New Year 2015!

Ava's Third Birthday

Ava's third birthday was a fairy tale theme. We dressed up our Little Red as none other than Little Red Riding Hood to use as pictures for her invite. I think Dave really nailed the invitation to look vintage, storybook style.

 

 

For food, the star was the incredible Red Riding Hood cake made by the parent of one of my former kindergarten students as well as her beautifully delicious cookies.

 

 

There were Three Little Pigs sticks and bricks (shoestring potato chips, pretzels and pieces of chocolate bars) as well as Jack's magic beans (jelly beans). Sometimes having a Christmas birthday does work in your favor as we had a gingerbread house for Hansel and Gretel's candy house and trail mix to go with it. We threw in a gingerbread tree for good measure.The above picture shows the gingerbread cookies.

On the other side of the table were Goldilocks and the Three Blueberry Muffins that I put in a picnic basket as well as Princess and the Pea edamame. Of course, we had to have Snow White's poison Apples. The picture is missing the caramel dip that went in the middle. For decorations, the table was decorated with old books we already had plus some fairy tale dolls Ava had from her room.

When Ava's guests arrived, they could choose from a variety of fairy tale coloring sheets and then they made their own door hangers with fairy tale stickers.

I read the kids the story of the gingerbread man and then it was their turn to track down the different colored gingerbread men in the house. As a last game, we played a simple game of Princess and the Pea. I had the kids close their eyes and then I hid a wad of green paper (the pea) in a stack of pillows. Then I let the kids see who could be the first one to find the pea. We played this game several times as the kids really loved it.

For party favors, each kid received a pop up fairy tale book I found at the dollar spot at Target.

And lastly, I set up a photo booth complete with Red Riding hood capes, wolf gloves, wolf snout and signs. We may have had a little too much fun with this. While the theme wasn't something that I could readily pick up at the store, it was so much fun creating the elements and as usual challenging myself to create and use what we had on hand. The theme perfectly lent itself to a younger audience.

Happy Third Birthday Ava Grace!

Deck the Halls 2014

Christmas decorating is one of our favorite family traditions. There is always nostalgia with the unpacking of each box.