Happy 11th Birthday, Sophia!

Sophia celebrated her birthday (again) on the 26th with the honorary cinnamon rolls in the morning for breakfast.  Of course, I love a nice theme, so I carried through with another safari/jungle animal candle stuck inside.

Making a wish!

All of her gifts from us were wrapped in coordinating paper and bags (Sophia appreciates this just as much as I do) and she had a hard time deciding exactly which one she wanted to open first.  So many choices!

Her favorite gift?  A stuffed sloth pillow for her bed!

Later that day, we took the kids (including Ainsley from next door) to Relli's for pizza and breadsticks.  The birthday girl got to choose and everyone was definitely happy with that choice!

Sophia and Jimmy's Combined Family Jungle Party

The very next day, we celebrated our 6-year old and 11-year old with family.  I left a lot of the decorations up -- making a few modifications -- and added a special birthday cake onto the dessert table.  The menu consisted of burgers/hot dogs, mac & cheese, fruit, veggies and punch.  It was a definite success!

Sophia now has the painted "11" in her room:

And Jimmy has the "6" displayed in his room:

To be honest, I had a general idea in my mind on what I was going to design the cake to look like ... but I wasn't 100% decided.  In the end, I really like how it turned out.  The birthday kids chose the specific animals to put on it/around it and I embellished with homemade fondant leaves and grass to give it a jungle vibe.  The animal candles completed the look.

I know that one day these kiddos will ask to celebrate their birthdays separately, but I love how willing they are to share them now.  Happy birthday to my February, blue-eyed babies!

Sophia's Jungle/Safari Party with Friends

We celebrated our 'February birthday kids' (Sophia and James) with a combined jungle/safari theme at our house this year.  Scheduling is becoming a tad more complicated as the kids get older because we are finding that we need to work around not only our schedules but also the schedules of any friends that we would like to invite.  For that reason, we settled on a friend party for three of Sophia's closest friends on a Friday night -- bonus that it was on Presidents' Day Weekend and the kids were off school that Friday -- and then had a family party on Saturday.

All four of the Lapinski kids joined in on the fun of putting together the balloon arch.  Blowing up the balloons with the air compressor from the garage, assembling them together, taping others in ... they did it all.  I think that its safe to safe that we have perfect this particular technique now in our household.  

I love how this table turned out.  The leaves are dried (fake) and the pot was on clearance at the store.  It had a small dent in it and some chipped paint, but I added more gold paint and no one was the wiser.  In fact, Sam loved the centerpiece so much that she "stole" it for her bedroom afterwards.  The elephant was a cheap paper machete find that I painted grey and the zebra was actually a 'horse' that I painted to look like an African zebra.

I covered our usual painting in the dining room to match the theme, pulled in a fake plant from elsewhere in my house, painted some cheap "1s" in giraffe print for Sophia's friend party and put together party favors in animal print gift bags.

The party favors were the softest cheetah socks ever, a cheetah face mask (what girl doesn't love a nice face mask these days?!) and a leopard-print key chain with the first letter of each of the girl's names for their backpacks.

But the real highlight of Sophia's party was the chocolate fountain! The plastic leaf bowls were left over from Sam's 9th birthday party and I filled them with items that would be great with melted chocolate (rice krispie treats, marshmallows, Nilla wafers, pretzels, strawberries, bananas, apples and pretzels).  It was a hit!

The birthday girl and her closest 5th grade friends:

I had a craft set up in the dining room where the girls (including Sam) painted a sunset picture and then we added a safari silhouette to the paper and framed them.

 

They turned out even better than I had imagined!  Look how different they ended up being too.  The girls then got to take them home to (hopefully) hang up in their bedrooms to remember the party by.

A funny picture on the couch:

And a frame-worthy one:

The girls enjoyed pizza and breadsticks and then afterwards -- instead of cake or cupcakes -- I served 'zebra cakes' and mini cups of ice cream.

Happy 11th birthday, Sophia Marie!

Jimmy's 6th Birthday

Jimmy's birthday fell on a Friday this year and we made sure to make his day as special as possible.  We began the day with our traditional cinnamons rolls with a candle and all of us singing "happy birthday" to the special guy.  As you can see, he was all smiles -- even though it was early in the morning.

Making a wish!

He headed to school with a skip in his step and boxes of cosmic brownies to share with all of his classmates.  We are still not allowed to send in homemade treats but the store-bought and packaged brownies were certainly an easy request.  Spoiler alert: Sophia chose the exact same treat to take into school for her birthday later in the month.

After school, I had the table set with a bunch of gifts from us and he asked to open them immediately.

He ended up with a lot of different things and loved the pizza wrapping paper.

While I wish that time would stand still and I could bottle his personality at this age and keep it forever, I love seeing the little person that he is becoming.

For dinner, we had homemade mac and cheese and hotdogs -- the birthday boy's request.  Then we finished our meal with homemade brownies and more candles!

Later that night, Jimmy tested out his new smelling markers -- a gift from Jack -- and made the nicest picture for his teacher, Mrs. Wilson.  He even wrote both her name and his name on it.