This might have been one of the most fun weeks ever. Or maybe my memory is skewed by the super fun day we had on Saturday. Also, HOLY COW, I’ve been doing this for one hundred weeks. 700 days. That’s a lot of iPhoning.

Sunday:

Caroline thinks perhaps this is not a good idea.

Proud to be a big brother, especially when his sister’s napping and he doesn’t have to deal with her.

She thinks the fake doll juice is HILARIOUS.

Monday:

Adorable child is adorable.

When do they turn into drooling messes instead of tiny angels when they sleep?

Preschool open house reveals Mommy definitely picked a fancier family photo than any of the other moms.

Tuesday:

If the iPad app is educational, I don’t have to feel bad about sleeping in for 30 minutes, right?

I believe that is called “nom nom nomming”

My 3 year old is a monster.

Wednesday:

My children are so attractive.

Gymnastics prodigy

She’s NOT. EVEN. TWO. YET.

Thursday:

I think this is love, not attempted murder.

Big boy haircut was a mistake. (I WANT MY BAYBEEEE BACK)

No, SERIOUSLY, when do I start worrying my kids might murder someone?

Friday:

Picking up brother from school-face.

Shut up, the Tinkerbell movies are awesome.

Daddy cuddles in a tiny bed

Saturday:

Grand Central Station is Grand.

Chilling out at Playdate In The City

Hiding from the paparazzi at Whole Foods.

It turns out taking 2 kids into NYC is a little bit exhausting, so I spent all of Sunday recovering. Also, someone smashed in my car window to steal my crappy $120 GPS from the train parking lot in New Haven, so I had a teeny tiny little breakdown trying to figure out how to handle it (answer: fill out paperwork for lot attendant, brush glass off seat, drive home with the heat blasting). I’m hoping it doesn’t rain until I can get it fixed. But BESIDES that, the week was all super awesome, so it’s easy to feel very glass-half-full. They didn’t steal the car! Or the car seats! Or any of the other stuff! My kids are adorable and everyone agrees! I really love my life.

I decided Caroline should be Tinkerbell for Halloween because, hello, the child practically IS a magical pixie.

Shut up.

And in typical Suzanne-fashion I also decided I should MAKE her a Tinkerbell costume. Because this one with the light up wings from the Disney store is too gaudy (it’s not) and this one in the baby-size isn’t pretty enough (it is) and this one is too yellow and the wings on this one aren’t cute enough and GOSH, if I’m going to end up spending $30 on a costume I might as well just sew it myself! That will be cheaper, easier AND cuter! I’ll just check Pinterest for a pattern.

Go ahead and punch me in the face now, since anyone with half a brain can tell you “I’ll just do that thing I saw on Pinterest” NEVER ENDS WELL.

I started with this pattern from Make It Love It and…improvised. I might rock a party or a bake sale or a set of knitting needles but I am TERRIFIED of my sewing machine. Luckily, I’ve never let being terrible at something stop me from trying again. I’m slightly oblivious and stupid that way.

So instead of writing the blog post I was planning to write yesterday or working on the sponsored post I have due Wednesday or making a healthy family dinner for my kids or doing the breakfast dishes or any of the other things that actually need to get done I dragged Evan and Caroline to the craft store where I spent $65 on supplies and then wasted 4 hours attempting to sewing a green leotard I probably could have ordered from China for $12.

Well, that’s not strictly true. I spent like $40 on fabric (it was on sale!) and $15 on the CUTEST Tinkerbell-green wings and headband and wand they were selling in the pre-made costume section and another $10 on random craft supplies because that’s what happens when you go to Joann’s with a bunch of coupons.

The good news is Caroline is SUPER excited about her costume. I had her try on Attempt #2 and she refused to take it off. After I put the kids to bed I got Attempt #3 sewed and hemmed (note to self: YOU ARE TERRIBLE AT SEWING. Next time pick something easier to work with that lycra) and the ruffled sleeves done. Then my machine started jamming and I almost went blind with rage so I’m giving myself a break before I attempt the 3 layer petal skirt. Maybe I’ll make the sparkly green tutu tonight (at least I know the tutu doesn’t involve any sewing!!) and try the skirt again tomorrow.

Second-worst case scenario is I throw the whole mess in a box and mail it to my mom to fix. Truly worst-case scenario is I throw the whole thing in the trash and just order that dress from the Disney Store. Although those shoes are super cute.

————————————UPDATE————————————

BOOM.

The kids call my mom “Mormor”, which is Swedish for Grandma. It’s hard to find stuff that actually SAYS Mormor on it (I can only get her so many mugs from the Scandinavian store) so we have to get creative. Take one craft apron, a cute saying, some fabric markers and a couple of willing coloring assistants and you’ve got a special birthday present for Mormor!

I set up the text on the computer and printed it on regular paper.

Then I used my window as a make-shift light box to trace the letters with a fabric pen. If you had better handwriting than me you could just write on the apron and/or make it look neater when you traced.

A couple of simple heart cut-outs worked as stencils.

My assistants needed a little help coloring around the edges so they didn’t go under the paper and to make sure the shape was clearly visible but they loved using ALL the colors.

And voila! A simple, one-of-a-kind present for Mormor’s birthday. I wrote “Happy Birthday” and “July 2012” on the sides near the ties so she’d always remember the date and occasion. It would be an a great gift for Mother’s Day too – maybe with these potholders as a set? (Those are what I DID give the grandmas for Mother’s Day!)

I can’t take credit for this super-cute robot birthday party. My friend Erin did 99% of the work, but she had some great ideas I wanted to share. Her 3 year old is totally obsessed with robots, especially Wall-E and the Iron Giant, so this really was a perfect theme for him (and basically every other 3 year old). Who doesn’t like robots?! It was simple and very DIY, but still full of fun.

 Erin had the party at her mom’s, because she has this gorgeous patio and a big yard for the robots kids to run around.

My contribution to the party: A Happy Birthday banner. I downloaded free robot fonts from dafont.com and printed the letters on scrapbooking paper (it comes in that size).

For activities, Erin had a Robot Work Station with balls, tubs and those grabby robot arms from Target:

Fun fact: those robots across the bottom actually say “Reid” in one of the fonts I downloaded

The grabbers were a HUGE hit with the kids.

She also had a bean bag toss to “feed” the robots energy:

But my favorite activity was the make your own robot station:

Those are just paper bags spray painted silver with a paper plate glued to the front (for a “dial”) and holes cut for head and arms. The kids decorated with peel and stick foam shapes and robot shaped crayons.

And here are the robots in action:

Besides the very active robots, we had some robots guarding everything from the front door to the food:

Erin says she got these at Michael’s

Erin didn’t really have a theme for the food besides “stuff kids and grown ups will eat”, but I made her a few signs to tie it together with the party:

That’s beef, chicken and beans & rice for a burrito assembly line

All the toppings

That’s Reid’s “say cheese!” face

And all the kids went home with goodie bags that contained robot crayons, robot painting pages, robot stickers and a robot eraser.

Thank you Erin, Mitch and Reid for sharing your special day with us!

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I asked Evan want kind of party he wanted for his 3rd birthday and he said “Dinosaurs”. I told him he could have anything he wanted – trucks, trains, pirates, diggers, ANYTHING – and he said “Dinosaurs”. So we went with a dinosaur birthday. It ended up being an excellent and fun birthday theme.

It seems that no matter how much I try to stick to a color scheme I always end up with ALL THE COLORS. But since according to Dino Dan the dinosaurs WERE all the colors I figured I was safe as long as I toned it down with some natural accents. I got lots of moss, fake leaves, and branches from places like the craft store and the dollar store. All the tablecloths are cut from one big roll of burlap I bought in the garden department at Lowes. I made a zillion dinosaur “terrariums” (an idea I got from Mandy) with a bag of garden rocks (also from Lowes – $5 and I barely used 1/10th of them!) moss and tiny dinos left over from the favor boxes. The backdrop to the food table is two rolls of cork I bought at JoAnn’s. I cut every triangle pennant by hand with pinking sheers and printed the banners on my little printer.

For food, I had three sections: carnivores, herbivores and dessertivores. I thought I was pretty cute and clever, until I started looking at dino party supplies on Etsy and saw I was DEFINITELY not the first person to come up with “dessertivores”. It was still cute.

Menu:

Dinosaur shaped sandwiches (PB&J and cucumber)
Dinosaur shaped chicken nuggets
Mini hot dogs
Mozzarella sticks
Fruit
Individual hummus and veggie cups

Ice Age punch (blue punch with tiny dinos frozen into ice cubes floating in it)
Juice for the kiddos

Dessert Menu:

Brownies
Fossil cookies (I made mine with almonds)
Cereal bar “bones”
No-bake nest cookies (I did peanut butter & chocolate)
Dirt pudding cups (chocolate pudding & crushes Oreos)
Dinosaur shortbread cookies with royal icing
White wedding cupcakes with cream cheese cake batter frosting
Dino fruit snacks and candy eggs

And an AMAZING cake made by my friend Heather (I HIGHLY recommend her if you’re in the Eastern CT area and would be happy to put you in touch with her)

Since Evan and his friends are all old enough now for games and activities but the thought of trying to wrangle 25 kids into organized activities makes me break out in hives I planned lots of free-play fun.

We filled our old kiddie pool with sand for a fossil dig and hid tons of green eggs filled with stickers and candy for a dinosaur egg hunt. I also ordered a couple of inexpensive dinosaur coloring books from Amazon and dinosaur shaped crayons for a quiet, inside activity.

A few more details:

I saw dino party hats on Pinterest but didn’t really have enough ambition to make them from scratch. Just a few days before the party Evan said he NEEDED party hats so I dragged last year’s 2nd birthday party hats from Target out of my paper goods storage box and turned them into dino hats. It was really easy – they’re folded together with a tab, not glue or tape, so I just opened them flat, cut a piece of colored paper into a “spine”, cut a slot in the spine for the tab and reassembled with a little tape to reinforce it. I did a terrible job of explaining that, but trust me – if you take a look at a store-bought party hat you will definitely see how easy this is.

Between the hats and the masks we had quite a few tiny dinosaurs terrorizing the party.

My friend Amanda mailed me these leggings 2 seconds after I said we were doing a dinosaur party. So perfect!

Brilliant idea I stole from my friend Cheri – Take’n’toss cups for all the kids. No worries about juice or punch spills on my floors and they’re cheap enough to toss out if they get ruined.

Adorable invitations designed by the very talented Denae at New Mom Survival Adventure and printed (as rounded-corner post cards) by Overnight Prints – an idea I got from Tam.

I think that’s everything! Scroll to the bottom of this post for links to where I got stuff and as always let me know if you have any questions. I’m more than happy to share and info!

OK, just a few more pictures (the not awesome ones were taken by me)…

Resources and Sources:

Pinterest party board for inspiration
Template for straw flags
Custom stamp from Tickled Pink Paper + Ink
Paper straws & favor supplies from In The Clear
Evan’s dino shirt – Gymboree
Photography by Open Shutter (Website)

Dinosaur stickers – Amazon
Dinosaur cookie cutters – Amazon
Dinosaur sandwich cutter – Amazon
Dinosaur coloring books – Amazon
Melissa & Doug dinosaur stamps – Amazon
Dinosaur cupcake wrappers & toppers – Amazon
Dinosaur banner (I disassembled half to put on my cork backdrop) – Amazon
Dinosaur skeletons for fossil dig – Amazon and Oriental Trading (cheaper from Amazon)
Dinosaur masks – Oriental Trading Company
Dinosaur crayons – Oriental Trading Company
Dinosaur candies – Oriental Trading Company
Inflatable dinosaurs – Oriental Trading Company
Giant inflatable T-Rex – Amazon
Brown paper bags – Oriental Trading Company

Let me know if you see anything I missed or forgot to link!

(Oh and in case you are confused compared to previous party set-ups, we rearranged the house a few weeks ago and flipped the dining/family rooms. I was worried it wouldn’t be a good for the party but it was great! With the new set-up – and the patio – I have tons of space to invite even more people next time.)

Thank you to everyone who came and made our day so special!