Feeling a bit guilty over the non-party last year, I decided to make it up for her by going way overboard this year.  I started by finding these absolutely adorable superhero invitations after searching the internet for literally hours.

These were from sarah + abraham.com.  It was a very easy site & I loved all the ways you could customize the invitations.  I was really impressed with how quickly they had the invites in the mail — just a day after I ordered them.  And the site has great promotions on their facebook page!

I really don’t like all the little goodies from birthday parties that generally end up (in our house at least) broken and headed for the landfill within a day so I thought superhero capes might be the way to go instead.  I looked into buying them on etsy but the price was too high for as many as I needed so instead I sewed them all!  Mind you, I haven’t sewn anything besides paper in probably a decade!  Most of my spring break at my parents’ was taken up with a sewing machine, cute prints and pompom fringe!  Here’s one of the little girls from the party modeling her cape.

I made them all with a different pattern on the inside so they are reversible.

Here’s our supergirl doing her best to be the director.

Here’s all the superheros together (have to tell you no dirty deeds were going down at our house with all those superheros on patrol!).

I can’t decide which one is my favorite cape…

The unusually HOT weather made it so 12 children didn’t need to destroy my house and we could have the party outside.  But I had set up everything in the house.  Here’s the display that greeted guests when they walked in the house.

And here is the kitchen & all the yummy treats.

Alice wanted to show off her treats.

(Please ignore how the banner fell down in the center of the table)

Those are cake pops I made in the polkadot pail.

The kids got to decorate the masks that I made for each of them.  Most chose not to wear them & Alice’s became a headband.

Scott came up with about 6 different games to play like a beanbag toss (through Alice’s middle).

Pin the emblem on Alice

We thought the games would take up about an hour — more like 20 minutes!  But I think the kids had fun.

They enjoyed the strawberry & red velvet triple layer cake

But strangely I think the pirate booty & the lollipops were the biggest hit of the day.

Jack had fun helping out and playing DJ until the allure of basketball across the street took over him - about 30 minutes into the party.

And Charlie helped us out by sleeping through most of the party.  Of course, we found out a little later in the day, that was because he was coming down with a fever and croup!

Once he woke up he enjoyed showing off his newly acquired walking skills with a little assistance.  He was also showing off his favorite face to make at the moment.

All in all the party was a success and I think our little super girl felt like she had conquered the world!

I liked it but there were a few too many comments about how much did we like tomato soup so I’ve been trying to figure out an alternative for the cabinet instead.

Then the other day as I was walking through the kitchen section of Target, I realized just what this cabinet needed — glass canisters!

What I love about the canisters is that in addition to making the glass cabinet look tidy and organized, it freed up some room in my much too small pantry (the cabinets to the left).  It also enabled me to remove the canisters on the opposite counter top (I like to keep my counters as open as possible!).

Overall, I’m pretty darn happy with the transition from soup to beans!

In this house the front foyer has become our go to place for a little bit of holiday decorations.  I’ve come to really like that as it makes the house festive for us and for guests but also keeps the decorations manageable and out of reach of little hands.

Here’s how I decorated for Valentine’s Day:

I purchased the console and the glass door from a cute little local store, Cozy Cottage.  As soon as I saw them I knew they would be the perfect thing for our entry.  The ceilings are so high in there that I really wanted something that would take up a lot of space, not cost too much and draw the eye upward.  All of the wire baskets and pots are from Crate and Barrel — one of my favorite stores for accents that are nicely priced.

I wanted to fill the canisters with some bulk candy but decided to save the money and my waistline by filling them with Target tissue paper instead.  On the outside canisters I have little wooden postcards I found at Cozy Cottage.  The flowers under the cloches are also from there.  The sequin red heart is from Michael’s.  All of the canisters and cloches are from Hobby Lobby.

I made the wreath.

I think this project looks more involved than it actually was.  I purchased a styrofoam wreath form and covered it in strips of red felt that I hot glued on.  I then punched out over 100 larged scalloped circles from an old book.  I folded the circles in half, in half again and once again.  I then opened up the circles, pushed a decorative pin through the middle and simply pinned them onto the wreath.  I love how it turned out!

After I finished the wreath I thought the wire wall baskets also needed something decorative so I created these little heart garlands.

Word to the wise — Henry Miller’s Tropic of Carpricorn was probably not the best book to use for this.  Fortunately the garlands are high enough up that little eyes can’t read the naughty words that made the cut!  Again, this was a very simple project.  I punched out both large and small scalloped hearts and overlapped and glued them together.  I punched two holes in the larger hearts and threaded them onto a hot pink length of bakery twine.  And voila!  Those were my decorations for this Valentine’s!

I hope you had a lovely Valentine’s Day with your sweeties!

What a sweet idea for a card!  Might have to think about this next year…

Jack needs to make his own cards this year for his class so we will be making these tonight!  She offers a free download of the mason jar on her site.

If I had been on it this year with gifts, maybe I would have used some of these ideas…

I bought Alice the cutest little cards on clearance a couple of years ago (with the basement project on-going last year, there was no way I was able to scout out where they were stored!) but I think this idea might be in store for her class next year.

This would also be so cute over a mantle.  Next year I’ll need to leave out a string of Christmas lights.

I love this little idea — transition from Christmas to Valentine’s Day to Easter!

How sweet are these little signs?

I love the cute little Valentine’s Day cookies!  So sweet!

I think I’ll make these for the kids as a special treat tomorrow…

And if you are looking for loads of Valentine’s Day inspiration — this is a great combo!

Click on any of the photos to go to the original post (except for the garland and the gift wrapping which did not have a link on Pinterest).

If you’d like to view more of my Pins — you can see them here.  I’ll be back tomorrow with my own Valentine’s Day decorations.  Have a great Valentine’s!

Disappointed, we turned our attention to other houses in the neighborhood and even put an offer in on one.  We thought that house was overpriced and when the owner wouldn’t come down sufficiently on the price, we ended up backing away.  (Turns out we were right as the house didn’t sell for another 6 much and for much less than what we had offered.)

About this time we got a call from our realtor about our house — someone with the builder had forgotten to order the cabinets and the builder was now open to us redesigning the kitchen!  That’s all we needed to hear to get us to sign on the dotted line!

I knew that I wanted something with white cabinets, black honed granite countertops. a huge island with a butcher block top and a professional cooktop.  I would have also loved a big farm sink but with the sink in the corner, the dimensions just would not accommodate a bigger sink.

Here’s how our kitchen turned out:

I love the huge island — it’s approximately 8′ x 6′.  It’s funny how we’ve gotten so used to it now that it just doesn’t seem large enough some days!

I was very happy with how this wall of cabinets turned out.  Originally we had designed the small nook as a coffee-making station but instead it makes a great place for the phone and storing fruit.

I love the hidden cubby for the two stools and the extra detailing on the island like the turned posts on the end.

The clock is from Pottery Barn and I’m still looking for the perfect display items for the glass cabinets flanking the hood.  I love the clean look of subway tiles — I think I might have a small addiction with them…

I still need to get curtains made for the windows above the sink.  I’ll post that once I get those done (that’s a project for February).

I love all the extra storage space that doing cabinets to the ceiling provided.  The builder and my husband both tried to talk me out of them and I’m so glad I wasn’t willing to budge!

Anyway, that’s our kitchen in a nutshell.  I’m still so happy with how everything turned out in our kitchen!  Stay tuned for another chapter in the house tour — I think the next room I’ll do will be the baby’s nursery.

We all had the most delicious breakfasts, perfect coffees & a wonderful family morning.  The atmosphere was perfect especially when the accordion player came in.  Charlie was mesmerized watching him play (it was a bit chilly in the restaurant thus I left the hat on).

And best of all, the accordion player came over and invited Alice to play!

She was so thrilled.  What a perfect way to spend a Sunday morning!

In fact, I was so inspired by this room that I started working on Alice’s room that afternoon!  It took several hours to get all the papers cut, configured and hung but in the end I was very happy with the results.  The only problem — I had used scrapbook adhesive to hang all the papers and in the middle of the night it all came tumbing down and woke up Alice.  Uh-oh…

So the next day I tried it again using even more adhesive on each piece of paper.  Again, there was an incredible lack of staying power.   I hadn’t wanted to do anything too permanent as I am living in fear of ever stripping wallpaper again in my life.  But I allowed my desire to make the papers stick outweigh my wallpaper stripping fear.  With my next trial I dove right in with wallpaper glue and it worked perfectly!

Here’s the end result:

(I was having a hard time taking good photos into the light…)

You can see the individual papers a bit better in the next shot.

Home Depot and Lowe’s sell big tubs of wallpaper glue.  The technique I used was to coat the back of each sheet of paper using a foam brush (a slightly larger foam brush would have been better) generously with wallpaper glue.

I than placed the glue-backed paper into position on the wall and pressed firmly.  I found that the papers stuck better if after hanging it, I then applied a bit more glue around the edges of the paper.

Thinner papers had the tendency to wrinkle up.  I found that if I put a coat of glue over the top of them like decoupage, they smoothed out.

If you try this and notice that there is some slight bubbling — don’t worry — the smaller bubbles and creases disappear at the papers dry.

In the end I was very excited with how well this project turned out and how easy it was (IF I had started with wallpaper glue, that is!).

Here’s a picture of the rest of Alice’s room.

Instead we had it this past Sunday and I ended up very happy with my stress avoidance decision.  Everything turned out beautifully if I do say so myself.

I ordered the invitations from tinyprints and as always, they were perfect!

As you can see we went with a circus/carnival theme and I loved how it all turned out!

I filled all my apothecary jars with peanuts, m&m’s, twix, kit-kats and gummy bears & let the kids scoop them out into little red & white waxed cups.

I purchased the banners and the cupcake toppers from Dream Party Paperie on etsy.

The cake banner I made approximately 2 minutes before the guests arrived!  Nothing like waiting until the last minute…

The Bolz pressed tin carnival toys I borrowed from a friend.  She purchased them at Tuesday Morning.  I’ve gone in several times to look for them but of course Tuesday Morning isn’t the kind of place you can go with an agenda.

I also hung circus posters in the windows that I purchased from BellaMercato on etsy.

And the birthday hat (that Charlie did NOT want to wear was from Bows and Holders on etsy as well.

On his birthday we gave him a red velvet cupcake to dig into.  This was the closest he came to eating it. He was decidedly uninterested in putting it anywhere near his mouth.

And on his birthday, it seemed like we were going to have the same outcome.

And then what do you know, Charlie figured out chocolate is yummy!  He is now a fan!

We also created a photo booth & all our friends took a picture with Charlie.  I love how they turned out!  I just wish I had been thinking clearly enough to take a photo of our family with the photo booth!

This is my attempt at doing my own iced cookies.  Rather amateurish (although exceedingly time consuming!) but they were fun to do.  The day after the party Charlie and I walked through the neighborhood handing out thank you notes and cookies to all our friends that came to the party.

Alice’s birthday is in March and I’m already brewing up some ideas for a special party for her!

Although I was dreading the surgery (and also looking forward to it as hopefully this means I can brave something other than a maxi-dress next summer) it all went smoothly and I’m amazed at how well I’m getting around today.  My leg is completely covered with some rather impressive bruises and is very sore but the process has become so much less invasive than in years past.  I’ll get the right leg done in a few weeks and hopefully put this chapter of my life to rest. 

Alice has enough clothes in her closet to clothe a village (the result of a slightly older good friend and older cousins whose mommy’s both have excellent taste) but nevertheless there are a few things I’d love to get her for winter like these sailor pants from Garnet Hill

And she would look so cute in these boots

And I’m sure she’d be very excited about these in grey (I’d love Morgan & Milo clothes and shoes even if my nephews weren’t named Morgan and Milo!).

And from J. Crew’s Crewcuts  I think she “needs” this sweater

And these sweet shoes

I love the old school look of these

And essentially I would take anything from Olive Juice for Alice.  I am in LOVE with that site for her.  I especially love them when theyare having a really good sale! 

 And on a side note, here’s a photo Ali just sent from our trip out there.  I think Charlie is admiring his beautifully chunky thighs…

It’s a wonderful thing to have good friends with whom it feels as if no time at all has past between visits (they came here for Spring Break).  It’s also especially nice when those good friends have an absolutely lovely, comfy home and treat their guests like royalty!  And Charlie loved their baby grand…

I had the sensation when driving down I-5 that I had just driven it yesterday rather than 13 months ago.  It was all still so familiar and still felt like home.  Although, it was a home where I could return to my house!  All the same it felt great to be back in my old stomping grounds.  Thursday evening Charlie and I hung out with one friend and her kids.  Nothing like pizza from American Dream (THE best!) and a couple of beers outside on a beautiful evening.  Friday we headed down to Eugene and had lunch with Ali at Marche.  Marche was always our spot and fortunately Charlie behaves himself well enough that we could still dine there without creating a scene.  It was so good to see Ali.  She is a steady, true friend and even though our busy lives make it hard to find time to talk frequently, our friendship is still flourishing.  Ali is experiencing a some turbulence in her life right now.  I was very glad that the timing of my trip was such that I could provide whatever sort of mental support for her that I could.  Strangely enough, a year ago today we arrived on Mykonos in Greece.  It’s amazing the changes one year can wrought.

Saturday Charlie and I headed out to the coast with Lyn and her daughter Jaide.  It was a 100 degrees inland and a chilly 60 on the coast which is much more my speed.  We had a great little lunch at the Saffron Salmon in Newport followed by a quick and windy walk on the beach before heading back.  A perfect way to spend an afternoon.

That night it was out again with Lyn, her husband Steve and some other friends.  Yep, I tend to navigate my way through life based on food — I had to hit all my favorite restaurants!

Sunday Lyn was so sweet and threw a little party so that our friends in the area could meet Charlie.  Lyn does nothing halfway so the party, although small, was perfectly done.  The flowers were exquisite…

The food was delicious…

It was the perfect little party!

Monday was a haircut, a quick trip to a favorite store, lunch with Lyn and a couple other friends ( I LOVE the Broken Yolk’s shrimp caesar wrap!!) and then Charlie and I were on our way home.  This was his worst flight out of the 4 trips he’s made but even so, he was only cranky for about 10 minutes.  He’s such a good little guy…  We walked in the door about 1:30am and as of Tuesday morning it’s back to life as usual.

I can’t believe another week is gone.  Hope you have fun plans for the weekend!