My daughter's 12th birthday party

The theme we did for my daughters 12th birthday party yesterday was a painting party. I was thinking about having an artist come and do a guided painting class but my daughter thought it would be better if everyone could paint what they wanted instead.

We set up a table with two canvases the kids could each paint. One smaller and one larger size. In the middle we put the paints and paint brushes. Then I passed out Styrofoam plates for them to put the paint on and gave them cups off water to wash their brushes in.

After the kids finished both of their paintings we had a table set up with cupcakes and frosting and sprinkles. They each got to decorate two cupcakes and eat them.

I found a cute cupcake pinata that I thought would be good to do after they finished decorating the cupcakes.

The party was from 2-5 so I figured the children would eat lunch before they came and could go home in time for dinner. I made little paintbrushes out of rice krispie treats and paint palate cookies with m&ms.

I was worried with a 3 hour party that the kids would be bored but after everything was finished inside they all went out and ran around outside playing cops and robbers. I had to laugh that at 12 years old that is the game they all wanted to play. Even when it rained they still stayed out there having fun. My daughter had a great little party with her closest friends. Everyone showed up that was invited except for one girl. Besides my two children we had 7 kids at the party. Her friends know her well 4 out of the 5 kids that brought gifts they gave her diaries to write stories in.

Everything went exactly as planned. The only thing we forgot was the ice cream we had bought to go along with the cupcake decorating. Every time I have a party I forget something.

My sister's baby shower

Sunday May 15, 2016 was my sisters baby shower. She is having her fourth child a baby girl. She did not have any theme picked out so I went with my own theme : ballet.

I made her a diaper cake. It took me three days to finish this. I ran out of pink tulle so I had to mix white in around the bottom edge. In between the diaper layers you could see in to the toilet paper tubes so I had to make a layer of tulle there as well. It turned out pretty this way though. Getting the shoes to stay on the top and tilt forward so they could be seen was a task as well.

I made her a personalized sign to hang on the wall of the babies room. I started out using pink yarn to wrap around the S. It didn't look good though so I ripped it all off and decided to use the left over ribbon from the diaper cake. I started at the bottom and worked my way to the top. About where the S is on the Sammy letters I ran out of light pink ribbon so I had to tear it back off and then move some ribbon around and then use a darker pink ribbon to finish the ends. I actually think this made it look better in the end anyway. This took me about 8 hours to make. 

Then to go along with the ballet theme I bought her this cute little outfit. 

She had a really nice baby shower. I had been looking forward to it all week so I could give her the gifts. Won't be long now until I get to meet this baby. 

3 fun baby shower games

Sunday May 15, 2016 was my sisters baby shower. I was in charge of games. This being her fourth child I didn't want to do a game we had already done at her previous baby showers. I also wanted some fun games that everyone isn't already sick of like "don't say baby".

You would think the easiest part would be to find prizes. I looked at so many places and finally just kind of gave up and bought three candles at Walmart for $1 each. They smelled amazing I was tempted to buy myself some.

I was very nervous about having to stand up in front of everyone and do the games especially knowing a few people there really hate games. As I was passing out paper they commented that I should have just set an alarm while the mom to be open gifts and then passed out prizes when the alarm went off. I had been asked to come up with a few games so that wasn't an option.


The first game I did was What's in Your Phone. Over the years I have been to showers that did what is in your purse but not everyone carries a purse with them to showers. Most everyone has a phone on them though so I thought this would be a good one. I wrote down the questions on a piece of paper to ask everyone. I passed out paper and pens and had them just jot down their score as we went along. The woman who won had a total of 70 points.

This is the link to the What's in Your Phone game: Etsy listing for What's in your phone game


The second game I did was "What television show were these fictional children on". This one took me the longest as I had to look up all different shows that had children over the eras. I haven't watched television in over 10 years so that didn't help much either. It took me at least 2 hours to make this list of 15. I had them turn their papers over to write on the back and then at the end read them the answers.

Most people didn't get too many but the girl who won got 13 correct. I never would have gotten more then a few of these. Looking through these television shows makes me miss watching them. I might have to buy some of them on DVD to watch with my own children. 

The third and final game we played is Left Right Baby Shower Game. It is similar to the ones my children play in school at Christmas to pass presents around. I had everyone sit where they could pass things in a circle. I gave one candle to the mom to be to start the passing and then I gave 6 little bags of hershey kisses to others around the circle. As I said left or Wright that is the direction they had to pass the item in their hand. It got a few giggles as they tried to keep up with the way the things should be passed. 

Here is a link to the game : Left Right baby shower game