Low-key First Birthday Party

Adorable baby #4 sometimes gets the most attention....

and sometimes the least.

I forgot the "1st birthday" onesie and had my mom bring it to me. Then this was the best picture I could get. Oh well.

When it came to his first birthday party, we were already going to be at our vacation house, and it was during the Jewish holiday of Passover, so no normal cake/cupcakes to be had. Also, he's a *baby*, so he doesn't actually have friends. So we decided to celebrate while we were away. We threw the easiest birthday ever. The big kids voted, and they settle don pottery painting. Each kid made a mug, and together we made a platter as a family with each of our handprints on it.

For the treat, we had ice cream, and then we were done.

Big kids called it "the best birthday party ever", and our three-year old, of the Frozen birthday party fame, declared that she *might* be willing to give u her Mary Poppins birthday party (still month away) for a more intimate family party. Yes, yes please.


And now that school is out and I'm going to be totally out of routine, I feel like I've caught you all up on our celebrations. I might check in over the summer, otherwise I'll see you in the fall!

Jessica

Pirate Birthday Party

Our son turned 6 in May, and he is finally through with the endless rotation of Firetruck Birthday and Construction Birthday!

With 4 kids now, I'm all about low-key, easy, and anything that is either ordered from Amazon or can be made the day-of. I ordered a "pirate party pack" off Amazon, (how could I live without Amazon Prime?), 24 wooden treasure chests and jewels from Oriental Trading, then topped a few store-bought cupcakes with chocolate "pirate jewels" and the flags from the pirate pack.



The cupcakes were my favorite thing ever!

Super easy to make, and thankfully, the cupcake selection at the grocery store was blue that day, so they even looked kind of like water. When we ran out of pirate flags I just stuck a few stray coins in... Then we put them on the pirate ship and added some pirate booty and called the snacks done.




I hired an awesome entertainer to be a pirate but it turns out that two dozen 6 year olds do NOT want to sit and listen to a pirate story:( So they pretty much went wild while I freaked out and tried really hard not to show how upset I was. After a mad-cap pirate dance party they settled down a bit, then she made pirate swords (cue crazy-going), and then I actually kicked them out. Not literally, since that would involve actual kicking, but I opened the front door and said, "thank you all so much for coming, buh-bye".

In the moment I nixed the piñata since I thought giving the kids a wooden bat was a bad idea, so after everyone left I let my three big ones do it on their own, pirate tattoos and candy for all!!!

Thanks Matey!

Jessica

I'm still here!

Oh my goodness, it's been forever. You know, "real" life got in the way, and then I just got out of the blogging habit. Recently a few in-person friends asked me about it, so I thought I'd do a quick post to show you what's new.

Sooooo, nothing much new on the home side. We got some new sheets for our master bedroom (I swear I have a serious issue finding sheets that we both like, these are from West Elm), so right now it looks like this:

We also hung up some art that I got at Minted, in a set of mirrored frames from West Elm.

The baby is 1!

The kids are growing like crazy and right this very minute I'm writing a post about the 1st birthday for baby #4 (think low expectations), and the pirate party we did for my 6 year old. Here's a peek.

Miss you all!

Jessica