Birthday Party Reveal

Currently, I am on holidays. We are having a great but boy does it throw you off your regular schedule. I apologize for posting this entry a little bit late.

As promised, I am sharing some pictures from my experience hosting my first kids birthday party.
We had such a great day for a birthday party outdoors and everyone had a great time.

The party was inspired by the Cars movie. I used some decorations that had the Cars characters on it and made some food {e.g. white walled tires aka powdered sugar doughnuts dipped in chocolate. dip sticks aka chocolate dipped pretzel rods}.

Happy Birthday Banner that greeted every one when they came in. 

Cars Banner I bought on Etsy at SerendipityPlanning , printed at home and assembled. 

A game of  good old Pin The Tail On The Donkey. 

The Snack Zone

Interesting Fact:

     

 Some kids have no idea what Pin the Tail on the Donkey is. I was informed that it has been replaced with games such as Put the Crown on the Princess and Put the 95 on Lightening McQueen. Boy, did I feel old and out of the loop but it was fun to show them the games that I played at birthday parties.

Tips & Lessons Learned: 

Tip #1 - Have a drink station set up with cuts you can write on with marker. Every one put their names on their cups so we know whose cup is whose.

      Lesson Learned - Works for older kids but no so much for those kids that can not read yet.

Tip #2 - Put all the drinks in a cooler that way no one  is running back and forth to the fridge. 

Tip #3 - Buy decorations from Etsy. There are some really cool & different designs on there that you can                    have sent to you by mail or an electronic file in an email you can print yourself.

      Lesson Learned - Next time I would have it printed at a professional print shop instead of on my                                               home printer. The colour would have been much more saturated and truer at the                                           printers. 

 

The party was a success. Can't wait to get started planning next years!

Wood Fired Pizza Truck

Today is the beginning of our summer holidays, we wanted to begin to slow down and enjoy the slowness of small town living again. So we decided to stay local and enjoy our morning at the playground, library, and local farmers market.

Near our parking spot we noticed this pizza truck with an oven on a trailer and in my inner foodie became inspired. I told my husband that we need to check this out. Could it be real wood fired pizza right here in our small town?? I love our local pizza shop but this is REAL PIZZA. I will be the first to admit that I some very particular preferences.  For me, great pizza needs to have a thin, crispy crust, tender in the center, with naked, crushed tomatoes, fresh mozzarella, and fresh basil leaves. It was a little too early for lunch just yet so I had to wait. {Insert sad face here}.

So while my husband and son played at the playground, I did some shopping. We signed out some books at the library and then if was finally time to eat lunch. {Yeah! Insert happy dance here}.

For a while now, food trucks have been all the craze. Some great places to check out these food trucks on TV shows and apps. You usually see them mostly in large urban areas so to see one {other than a fries truck } in an area with a population of 16, 000 is rare.  The name of this pizza truck that I just had to check out is the Vintage Pizza Pie Co. 

We ordered the classic Margarita Pizza and it was AMAZING!!! There are other kinds of pizza you can order but Margarita is my favourite. It is a good test to how well the pizza is made and the quality of the ingredients.

We all loved the pizza and the crew at Vintage Pizza Pie Co. did an incredible job! You really have to eat here!!!

Vintage Pizza Pie Co. Wood Fired Pizza Truck drew a crowd to check out the new restaurant on wheels.

This oven cooks the pizza at 800 degrees in about 60-90 seconds. Another lady was interested in the cool wood fired oven too.

Can't keep the little hands away. He was so excited to try this pizza.

Birthday Party Prep

So tomorrow is my son's birthday party and I am speedily trying to get ready. Since my last post on the birthday party preparations, I have had to change the theme from Toy Story to the Disney Cars movie. When I went out sourcing decorations I couldn't find any Toy Story ones locally. I even checked online but with a restricted budget I did not want to waste $25 dollars on shipping. So since the dollar store near me had  Disney's Cars decorations {My son also loves this movie. I think we have watched it every day this week. Don't judge! It has been crazy hot & humid here for days and my son is on this medication that makes him photosensitive. Thank goodness he only has to take the medication for a week. Little boys love to be outside.}

As my plan of attack,  I am trying to check off my to do list each day so the day of I am not running around like a chicken with my head cut off.  Almost every day this week, I have running around picking up things we need for the party. So on Tuesday, I got the decorations from a dollar store. I got the usual items like table cloth, paper plates, napkins, and loot bags. Super excited to make the loot bags and play lucky napkin & lucky plate. I was shocked to find out my husband had never played it at any parties growing up. On Wednesday, I picked up so more prizes for the lucky games and pin the tail on the donkey. Thursday was a day to pick up snacks and ingredients we need to make the cookies, cupcakes, and dip sticks {you'll see what I mean in the pictures}. Friday, this morning, has been about making the cookies, dip sticks, cupcakes and icing, and then this afternoon will be cleaning and tiding up. Then, tomorrow will be all about assembling and styling our yard for the big event, making the loot makes, and frosting the cupcakes.

Here's a little more detail of today's prep.

For the Rice Krispie Cookies,

I followed the classic recipe from Kellogg's Rice Krispies website.  

I wanted them to be thin so I could use a cookie cutter to cut them into shapes so I put them into a greased cookie sheet with sides. Flatten them out and put them into the fridge to set.

After a couple of hours, I flipped out my sheet of rice krispies out onto a cutting board and greased up my elephant cookie cutter and began to cut them out. {You may be wondering why an elephant at a cars party because I do not own a car cookie cutter and was trying to stay on a small budget.}

TIP: The secret to working with such a sticky cookie is to use butter or margarine so that everything comes out easily. They turned out great.

While I was searching for inspiration for the Cars party, I saw on pinterest someone had made dip sticks, which were chocolate dipped pretzels made to look like an oil dip stick from a car. I thought it was super cute and thought that I should make them for my son's party. It was super easy. I bought pretzel rods. I couldn't find the tall ones so I used short ones that were honey flavoured.  I thought would work even better because most of guests at the party are little kids they would be the perfect size.

To make Dip Sticks,

I melted half a bag each of milk chocolate chips and dark chocolate chips in a glass bowl in the         microwave. {This made them my favourite sweetness level but it's up to you whether you do them all dark or all milk.} I dipped one end of the pretzel into the chocolate, let the excess drip off and put some sprinkles on. I laid them down on a Silpat lined (wax paper works well too) baking sheet and put them in the fridge to set. Ta-da you now have dip sticks.

As for the cupcakes, they are next on my list to make. I figured I would give you a sneak peek before the end of the day. 

Can't wait to show you the rest of the party!

Don't Cry Over Spilled Water

This week I have a funny {at the time, not funny for me } story to tell you.

The other day we went to that playground for a play date with some friends and decided to go to the local pizza shop for lunch. I was a little apprehensive about eating lunch in a restaurant with so many little ones. The pizzeria wasn't very busy so figured we would give it a shot. It was a normal lunch out with five kids, under age, 5 and three moms. I have learned that waiting with a two year old takes much patience. While we were anticipating the arrival of our lunch, I was trying to keep my son entertained with a glass of ice water and a straw. He thought it is cool to drink like big kids, like most kids do at his age. The children were well behaved just a little wiggly.When our pizza arrived, the table got quiet as everyone started to dig in. {Playing in the park makes you hungry.}
We almost finished without an incident until my son knocked over the glass of ice, cold water on to my shorts. I looked like I had peed my pants...mortified thinking how was I going to walk around downtown with wet shorts. Then suddenly it dawned on me that I could run across the street to the cute clothing store and buy something. So after we paid for our lunch,  I dragged the whole crowd across the street into the store.
Franticly, I searched the racks looking for something to purchase and change into. After looking around the store, the I light came on in my head,  I have been on the fence about buying a maxi dress for a few months so I figured this would be the perfect time to try one on. The reason for my hesitation on buying a maxi dress is that I am only 5'3" high and wasn't sure if it would work. Well, I found two that I liked and headed for the fitting room. I then looked down and realized I was wear running shoes and they won't work with a maxi dress so I found some cute sandals. The first dress I tried on worked like magic. It fit perfectly and was super cute. I didn't even bother to try on any more.
So I got the sales lady to cut the tags off and paid for my new finds. I bundled up my wet clothes and threw them in the stroller along with my sneakers. In a matter of fifteen minutes, I found my maxi dress and some new sandals. Wow I wish every shopping trip went like that! My husband ,on the other hand, would say that he is glad that shopping doesn't always go that way because we would be broke.
Any ways, the lesson learned from this incident is don't cry over spilled water just go shopping!!

Here are my finds.

Dress: Kensie Stripe Maxi Dress
Earrings: Anthropologie (last summer)
Sandals: Billabong Sunny Dayz Sandals