Flower Birthday

Well I will warn you that this post may make you faint from all of the adorable cuteness I am going to show you...ok that is just my not-so-humble biased opinion!  I will try and put the actual crafty stuff up front so if you really don't want to see the cuteness, you can skip it...but really, why would you when I am talking extreme cuteness!  

So two weekends ago (wow has it already been that long!) we celebrated my daughter's 1st birthday.  I have been admiring the Women of Life set from Papertrey Ink for awhile, so I decided to get it and make by daughter's birthday around it.   So first up is the invitation.  Pretty sure that I did not use a sketch challenge for this, but honestly I use them so much, I am not sure!  The color combo (Rose Red, So Saffron, Certainly Celery) was what I put together to get a spring feel to the invite.  I scalloped the bottom strip of Certainly Celery to give it a grass feel for the flowers.  I popped up one of the flowers (actually made it bigger than the others) and added a "1" to it.  I then printed the inside with all of the party details...btw, anyone have any recommendations of printers that will easily print on cardstock?  I have to print mine a half of a page at a time and even then I still get jams!  

The Engineering Details

Stamps - Women of Life (Papertrey Ink), Dot Alphabet (bought at WalMart); Paper - Rose Red, So Saffron, Certainly Celery, Basic White (Papertrey Ink); Ink - Rose Red, So Saffron, Certainly Celery, Basic Black; Accessories - Swiss Dots Cuttlebug Embossing Folder, Scallop Edge Punch, So Saffron 5/8" Grosgrain ribbon, dimensionals

I recently created the thank you card that I will eventually be sending out...I want to include my daughter's 1 year pictures which have yet to be 

taken (huge GASP from anyone that knows me...I cannot believe I am this late either...I am so the type that gets these pictures taken as close to the actual birthday as I can).  Stuck with the same color combo and elements, but just went with the one large flower with "Thank you" over it.  For this one I did use a Mojo Monday Sketch Challenge for the the layout:  MOJO88.  I created a little background paper with the extra leaf stamp in the Women of Life set on the Certainly Celery behind the flower.  

The Engineering Details

Stamps - Women of Life (Papertrey Ink), Noteworthy (retired); Paper - Rose Red, So Saffron, Certainly Celery, Basic White (Papertrey Ink); Ink - Rose Red, So Saffron, Certainly Celery, Basic Black; Accessories - Swiss Dots Cuttlebug Embossing Folder, Scallop Edge Punch,Certainly Celery 5/8" Poly-twill ribbon, Circle and Scallop Circle Nestabilities, Ticket Corner Punch, dimensionals

For the actual party, we had about 14 kids or so ranging in ages from 6 months to 13 years old.  So I tried to come up with a craft that all of them could potentially enjoy (well except for the babies...they just don't have that coordination thing down yet!).  

I had them paint small clay pots and then go through the activity of planting a flower in their pot.  I later tied a ribbon and a name tag to their pots.  My Mom helped me pre-paint the 4 babies pots since they were not going to be painting.

It turned out good and I think the kids all had fun with it...now I just hope that all of the flowers survive...mainly the two for my kids...I so do not have a green thumb!! 

O.k. so now on to the cake for the party...don't worry the extreme cuteness is yet to come!  I really do love to decorate my kids cakes and I love it even more when it coordinates with the invitation or theme of the party.  For Adi's cake, I tried to use the invitation as my inspiration.  It turned out pretty much like I envisioned it...the flowers on the side of the cake were a bit of a challenge and they could definitely be better.  I used a really large tip for them and I could get a really pretty flower if I was doing it vertically, but for some reason trying it horizontally just 

did not want to work real well.  Oh well, this is probably where practice makes perfect right?!  

The color red on the cake was the only other issue I had...I really wanted it to be the color Rose Red like the invite, but after a whole bottle of one color and some additions of other colors, I just could not figure out how to get there...felt like I needed a color degree or something to know what drop of color would get me Rose Red from the color I had.  It was definitely pinky-red, but just not quite the right shade...something only I noticed I am sure!  The side view of the cake shows the not-so-great flowers that went around the whole cake.

Now you can see the extreme cuteness that is my adorable daughter...again in my not-so-humble biased opinion.  So the first picture shows her with her cake...I love the look on her face...kind of a look of concern (like what is happening) and kind of a look of disbelief (you are setting that in front of me?!).  She didn't blow the candle out and I did not leave the whole cake in front of her in case you were curious!  We cut off a piece of the cake and let her go to town.  

She quickly went to this (frosting anyone?):

And this:

And this (yes she actually did touch my camera...she was quicker than I thought she would be!):

Ok pick yourself up off of the floor after fainting from the extreme cuteness so I can leave you with some extreme sweetness.  Happy Birthday once again to my sweet Adilane Rose!  Thanks for stopping by my engineering world!