I bet you’ve been waiting anxiously to see my official 1 year of iPhone photos post. I know it’s the most exciting part of your weekend. Unfortunately, it’s hard to type when my hands are full of mini powdered donuts, so I had to eat ALL of the ones left over from yesterday’s party before I got to today’s blogging. Don’t worry, they’re all in a better place now. Let the photo posting begin!

Sunday:

NOM PIZZA NOM NOM

NOM CUPCAKE NOM NOM

Thank goodness it was a padded room

Monday:

Caroline's new favorite thing is forts and/or anything that sort of looks like a fort. FOOOOORT!!!

"Uh oh mama! Fall denoun!" "No sweetie, you threw them."

Picture frames for the party

Hungry baby eats her own hand

Bathtime rave

Tuesday:

It was so scenic at the park for Stroller Strides it made me kind of nauseous. SO SCENIC. BLAH.

Party prep - sugar cookies!

She's adorable, even with snot on her face.

Shopping with my Kate Spade and my Dunkin Donuts is so much more pleasant that two screaming kids.

Good dog doesn't eat the toys even when forced to lie on them.

Wednesday:

More party prep - tiny pumpkins!

Sharing siblings are the best kind of siblings.

So, do you come here often?

Nice quiet knitting + gossiping with friends = my favorite night of the week

Thursday:

Mama, can I borrow your shoes?

Weight Watchers suggests making mini cupcakes to satisfy sweet cravings. I think we have different definitions of "satisfy".

Time to break out the slippers for the cold winter floors.

Friday:

Because OF COURSE the day your houseguests come is the day you should clean the toybox

The top blankie is MY baby blankie. I still love it.

MESS. It never real got better. Sorry party guests!

Me & Erin. We met on the first day of college and now have toddlers only 3 months apart. Isn't that the best?

Saturday:

Having 12 toddlers in my house suddenly made having 1 toddler and 1 baby seem SUPER EASY.

Tiny cheesecakes from my friend Heather. I think she's trying to make me fatter.

Four people in this picture think they are playing Kinect on the XBox. Only two of them actually are.

There you go! 52 full weeks of iPhone photos, which means I’ve unintentionally and successfully completed one of those 365-photo-challenges I never start because I’m terrible at follow through. TAKE THAT SELF. I DID IT.

For the record, the chair from my first week in iPhone photos is still sitting on my front porch. Oops.

Did you take any camera phone photos this week? Link up with one or lots using the linky below and grab the code (so it shows on your blog too!) over at Amy’s . It’s really fun!

Have you noticed we’ve been in a celebratory mood around here? I don’t know what could have possibly given it away, besides maybe my endless posts about Evan’s 2nd birthday. I just really love any occasion that involves a good party. And who doesn’t? Dressing up and eating delicious food are two of the greatest joys of life.

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Even though I spend the majority of my pre-party planning on crafts and decorations, I spend 75% of my money and day-of preparations on food. I love food. Food is the reason I have parties at all.

Here’s an overview:

1. Mini-cupcakes
2. Marshmallow lollipop
3. Cucumber sandwiches
4. Mini quiches
5.Swedish meatballs
6. Mini doughnut cookies
7. Hand-made chocolate truffles made by and shipped from my friend Erin
8. Caprese salad sticks
9. Fruit salad
10. Veggie plate
11. Cheese and cracker plate
12. CAKE

Now here’s the deets:

Leftover cake batter (because I had to TRIPLE the recipe to have enough for the cake but only needed a little bit of that 3rd batch) turned into mini cupcakes in polka dot wrappers topped with peanut M&M’s on a cake stand from BJ’s.

I came up with these on Thursday morning when I found marshmallows on sale at Target. I stuck them on sticks and dipped them in colored melting chocolate and sprinkles. The little stands are Styrofoam balls cut in half and wrapped in tissue paper. They were SO EASY and delicious and popular with the kids.

The cucumber sandwiches were the only thing we ran out of. It’s just Wonder Bread with garden veggie flavored cheese spread and cucumbers, but they are SO DELICIOUS. And I even used the secretly whole wheat white bread to make them a little healthier. The mini quiches are store-bought and my absolute favorite party food in the world. They have been since I was about 12, when I decided eating mini quiches automatically made me look both older and classier.

My mom used her grandma’s recipe to make Swedish meatballs and I used my awesome crafting skills to glue felt circles to colored toothpicks to make them fancy. One of us worked a lot harder than the other.

My friend Kimberly sent me a link to these a couple weeks ago when I mentioned I was looking for round food and I fell in love with them. I actually baked and decorated them last weekend and stuck them in the freezer. They defrosted beautifully and were both adorable and delicious.

This idea came from Amy at Soup or Salad Blog – tomatoes, piece of basil and cheese. I just picked up the little mozzarella balls from the salad bar at the grocery store and made my aunt assemble them for me. The cute little stand was from last year’s birthday party!

Even all my fruit was round, thanks to my mom’s mad melon balling skillz. Cantaloupe. watermelon, red grapes, green grapes, blueberries and black berries. You can also see the corner of my round veggie tray – cucumber, carrots and radishes cut into circles.

I didn’t get a close up of the truffles Erin made, but there were extremely yummy and also adorable – she somehow put colored polka dots into the coating. She did vanilla and strawberry for the kids and then orange liquor and Kahlua for the grown-ups. I ate the leftovers for lunch. And dinner.

And finally, my cake:

It is not as pretty as I had imagined. It also doesn’t have the precise color coordinated stripes of dots I had planned on before I realized the “20-25 minutes” it took to bake this batter as cupcakes was more like 50-60 minutes in large cake pans in my crappy oven. Then I ran out of batter and when I tried to make more I was a cup of sugar short. Luckily, my run to the grocery store didn’t end up ruining anything besides my plans to make the frosting perfectly smooth and delicately place all my jelly beans in exact lines.

You know who cared about the uneven frosting and the random dots? NO ONE. Not a single person, including me, cared that the cake didn’t look like it was from a professional baker.

The main reason is because it was DELICIOUS.

I ended up making it all from scratch, using recipes from I Am Baker for everything. The cake is white cake with buttercream frosting and lemon curd filling (the recipes are in those posts, but you’ll have to scroll for them – which shouldn’t be too much of a hardship because her cakes are GORGEOUS). When I test drove the cake as cupcakes last weekend they were perfect. When I tried to make it as cake it stuck to the pan and came out a little dry, but honestly, it was such an easy recipe I’m sure that was baker-error and I can do better next time. I kept apologizing for the dryness, but I may have been the only person who was bothered by it.

The frosting is like store-bought cake frosting, which I love but no one else does. It is very sweet, but the lemon curd filling tempered the sweetness. The filling was DELICIOUS. I should have cut each cake layer in half and done three layers of filling in each tier, just to get more lemon curd into each slice. I may have put lemon curd on toast for breakfast today. And lunch. And dinner.

2 year olds can blow out their own candles

The number of sweets in my house (all the baked goods combined with all the candy from the decorations) is EPIC. I need to have another party just to get rid of the food from my first party. But I heard from all the guests that despite the sugar overload their kids all slept REALLY well on Saturday night and spent all day Sunday talking about the “balloons!” and “ball pit!” at “Baby Evan’s party!” I call that a success. An extremely delicious success.

p.s. I need to add that NONE of the food would have gotten finished if not for my amazing family’s help. My mom and my dad and my aunt never batted an eyelash when I insisted they cut every slice of cheese into a circle or told them to ONLY use certain colors of jelly beans on the cake. They cut and slices and cooked and arranged so I could focus on my cake. Even E helped with the food when he wasn’t wrangling toddlers and babies. Thank you all SO MUCH for the help!

After Evan’s big fancy over-done 1st birthday last year I swore I wouldn’t be doing a major party again until he was well into elementary school. But as this year’s birthday approached it occurred to me that throwing the party had very little to do with him and everything to do with ME. I wanted to celebrate the day I gave birth to my baby, I wanted to hang out with all my friends, I wanted to make my house pretty, I wanted to eat a disgusting amount of cake.

So I threw another party.

(Edited to remove my address & phone number so you can’t crazy stalk me. I know you were planning on it.)

I made the invitations on my computer with an old graphics program I stole borrowed from my office job. Then I ordered them as matte photo prints from Snapfish using a coupon code. Total cost: $4.05

The biggest difference between throwing a first birthday party and throwing a second birthday party is that 2 year olds need to be entertained a lot more than 1 year olds. So I went with a play time theme featuring the three things Little Evan loves most in the world: bubbles, balls and balloons. Then I categorized all those things as “round” and ran with it. I ran like I was in the Boston Marathon being chased by rabid badgers on roller skates carrying flame throwers.

Dining Room

As usual, all the “tablecloths” are just yards of fabric from Joann’s. The ones on the main table are really 3 piece of fabric just laying there. I am too lazy to sew.

Entryway - please ignore one wonky circle in the banner. It's glitter paper and my sticker didn't stick

Living Room - I made the banners with scrapbook paper, my printer and salad bowls for circle tracing

Living Room

The ball pit is actually Little Evan’s birthday present from LAST year. We left it up in the living room for a few months but I eventually wanted my house back and put it away. He was REALLY excited to see it again and I’m sort of amazed it didn’t get popped considering how much fun was had in it.

I love this picture the most because you can see decorations in both rooms, the gorgeous colors, and the children having a great time

Blurry photos of other people's kids to protect privacy

A few decorating details:

I bought the bottles of bubbles at Michael’s ($3 for 6), cut scrapbook paper into strips and then printed the circle stickers I designed on sheets of label paper. I used a big hole puncher to cut them, stuck them on the paper and hot glued the paper around the bottles. Boom, party favors!

I bought a 50 balloon helium tank at BJ’s for $21 and my dad blew them all up for us. Some of the strings were long enough for the taller kids to grab, but Little Evan kept losing his so we made sure he always had them with him:

That's the shirt I made! The same fabric is on my headband and on the entry table.

My mom had the brilliant idea to anchor some of the balloons with the adorable polka dot chalk we found at Michael’s ($1 for 5 pieces) and send them home with the kids.

Adorable, right?

There are also lots of round candies, so I filled a bunch of glass containers with them at stuck them on the mantel – jelly beans, peanut M & M’s, gum balls and DumDums. I ordered the giant rainbow lollipops from Oriental Trading Company and used more of my label paper, graphics program, and giant hole punch to make the stickers. Then I raided my milk glass collection for vases.

Other stuff I got from Oriental Trading:

Party Lanterns (And they fold up, so they're reusable!)

Beach balls and mini beach balls - perfect sized for small hands and helped fill up the pit nicely. I *think* some of the kids took them home (which was the plan) but we still have tons. They were cheap.

And to round it all out (BA DUM CHING) I picked up flowers in the colors that matched my theme: yellow, orange, blue and green. I was very excited to find blue flowers – and NATURAL blue flowers at that!

You know what DIDN’T work out great? The bubble machine. It got sort of sticky during our pre-party trial run and didn’t make the huge number of bubbles it used to. I put it on the porch to avoid slippery floors but it made the floor out there slippery so I turned it off until the kids found it. I had imagined gorgeous photos of children and bubbles but didn’t get any at all. But when it WAS working (for about 10 minutes) the kids really liked it!

Actually, the kids liked all of it. Especially the birthday boy.

How can I help but give this kid the best parties I can?

I had intended to just do one post for the whole party but this is getting ridiculously long, so I’ll save food for tomorrow. Or maybe later today. It really is the best part – I went a little crazy on the theme. I also ended up making the cake, frosting and filling from scratch (recipes and links coming soon!) so I need to give it the attention it deserves. And if you come to my house I have some left over for you to try. Please, please come eat this cake.

I linked up at Tip Junkie – she’s got some amazing parties on her site!

PREPARE FOR THE ATTACK OF THE 2ND BIRTHDAY PARTY!!!

Sunday:

BJ's run for party supplies

I glued these to toothpicks, to make sharp pointy things the kids wanted to play with. Genius.

I tried out my cake recipe and disovered piping adorable swirls of frosting onto cupcakes is a lot harder than it looks

Monday:

My kitchen counters became ground zero for all the junk I needed to put away

I went to Joann's and did NOT buy the fancy bedazzler. It took a lot of will power.

Balloons for Little Evan's birthday photos

Tuesday:

I made a quick birthday shirt for Little Evan to wear to Stroller Strides

Celebrating his birthday by crawling under his dog instead of letting me take his picture

And then Little Evan refused to sit in his stroller for a picture. At least Caroline is still forced to pose for me.

Wednesday:

When you're 2, Mommy lets you play on her iPad. Sometimes. With a lot of supervision.

We went to Target & got Starbucks - Evan gets a cup of whipped cream so he doesn't feel left out

Caroline reminds me she lives here too by being adorable

Playing with his new Color Wonder finger paints. NON-TOXIC finger paints. Because yeah, he ate some.

Thursday:

The baking aisle is fascinating

His new favorite word is "Messsssss!" so he makes them just to say it

My parents came into town for the party & took us out to dinner. Little Evan was super well behaved.

Friday:

I tried to find a polka dot shirt/dress for the party and discovered I am WAY too old for Forever 21. Apparently 29 is when you stop being 21 forever.

He's blurry because he didn't stand still the ENTIRE DAY. No nap either.

We finally got the crib up in Caroline's nursery so she can actually sleep there (someday)

Saturday (Part 1):

It's a good think I started baking at 8 am because I frosted the cake at 1:45 - the party started at 2.

The remains of my cake, after the party. It was delicious.

Birthday spoils. We have such amazing and generous friends and family!

Saturday (Part 2):

My folks watched the kids so E and I could have a date night, so we went to Mohegan Sun Casino (5 minutes from our house)

This is The Atrium, the martini bar in the middle of the casino. The whole place is so gorgeous. (This pic is SOOC and by C I mean iPhone)

My 2 favorite kinds of food - fancy and Mexican - from Sol Toro

Our winnings! Ok, not really. We broke exactly even after an hour and a half of blackjack. That totally counts as a win though.

The casino also has Krispy Kreme. Best place ever? I THINK SO. I had a lemon-filled.

The week was totally crazy but Saturday was SO much fun it was all worth it. Celebrating 2 years of being a mommy (because, really, that’s what a huge birthday is when your kid is 2) followed by grown up fun (for the first time since I became a mommy) made for the best day ever. Even if E and I were both totally exhausted and came home at 10:30 to crash. I am so grateful to my parents & my Aunt Susan who came up to help. But now the crazy time is over and I cannot even describe to you how much sitting down and laziness will be occurring around here today. SO MUCH SITTING DOWN.

Did you take any camera phone photos this week? Link up with one or lots using the linky below and grab the code (so it shows on your blog too!) over at Amy’s . It’s really fun!