Alicia's Birthday

Alicia's birthday this year WAS surrounded with a lot of hoop-la. I've never done a birthday party other than the family party for Alicia....there are a whole variety of reasons for this...all of which I will spare you from. It's not important...what IS important that is that I think Alicia had the birthday of her life this year!! It was so fun to see her so happy and excited. Her birthday was celebrated over 2 days. On the morning of her actual birthday, I got up early and made a fabulous breakfast of bacon and french toast. I let Tristan stay home a instead of catching the bus, and I just drove him in later (but still in time for school), so that he could participate in the celebration. After breakfast I let Alicia open her gifts (normally I make the kids wait to open their gifts until dinner time when Daniel is home, but we weren't doing her birthday dinner that night since Tristan had a track banquet and we were throwing her a party the following day). Addi bought her roses from Costco and Tristan got her a new jump rope. She was also pretty excited about her new pink iPod nano with a touch screen (her list had requested an iPod touch...THAT wasn't going to happen...again, for a whole slew of reasons I will spare you from). So I took a gamble and compromised without consulting her....but that's the fun of a birthday isn't it??? I think my gamble was accurate. She seemed excited about it, and I spent some time while she was at school putting music on it. I knew she was really in love when she came home from school and was ready to spend $55 of her own money on Amazon.com to buy a docking station and accessory pack.

The next evening was her party. I had spent the week prepping for the shindig. I have to say I think I pulled it off! Alicia wanted lime green and light pink as her colors. I got 11 pink and 11 green helium balloons and had streamers to decorate. I don't think any of those girls really appreciated all the color coordination I stressed over, but whatever...the party looked awesome. I had let Alicia invite 10 friends...but I was hoping not all would be able to come! That's a lot of 11 year old girls!!!

When all was said and done she had 6 guests show up, plus Addi was able to participate. We started off eating dinner. I had a fabulous fruit tray with toffee dip, and a veggie tray with a homemade dip, and then we had pizza. We had WAY too much food. These other girls don't eat near as much as Alicia, and they definitely did not eat off the fruit or veggie tray like I thought they would, but that's ok, because then there were lots of leftovers for me to enjoy!!! After dinner, they went up into the FROG (finished room over garage) to play "Sing It" on the XBox, but I think most of them got pretty distracted with the array of lizards and snakes up there!

I got dinner cleaned up and changed the table to do the craft I had prepared. I got an idea off the internet to decorate tin buckets. So I got a bunch of mini buckets for $1, gathered some old magazines, got some scrapbook paper, some ribbon, and some Mod Podge, and there you go. Totally money friendly and the girls had a great time. All of them cut out letters to spell out her name, and then they all just got creative.

After the craft, I sent them back up to the FROG where they watched "Justin Bieber: Never Say Never." It was the only thing at RedBox that seemed 11 year old appropriate, so there you go. After I transformed the dining room AGAIN, we had cake and ice-cream. Then the girls filled a little bag of candy from the candy bar (I'm sad I missed getting a picture of my candy bar...I had candy in pink and green plastic margarita glasses...SO cute) to put inside their bucket that now also had a pink and green helium balloon tied on. And that was their party favor...how awesome am I???? Alicia opened gifts, and then they finished up watching the movie until all the parents came to pick the girls up. Alicia was beaming the entire time. I was so happy to see her enjoying herself so much...it made all my hard work totally worth it! I don't think the poor girl got to bed until midnight, and was totally exhausted the rest of the weekend, but that's what partying is all about, right??? Happy Birthday, Alicia! We love you, girl!!

the food

the cupcakes

chocolate cake with strawberry frosting

totally delicious...did it myself

Addi's flowers she got Alicia added to the decor. I also had Alicia go outside before the party and cut some of our knock-out roses as well.

the craft table

you can see the variety of buckets if you look close

Also got the idea from the internet to cover the table with old Christmas wrapping paper. It worked great! The wrapping paper was pretty, and it kept any spills and messes from going thru to the table.

the back of Alicia's bucket

decorated with things she loves

blowing out the candles

I was so excited about my fabulous cupcakes that I frosted them WAY too early, and my frosting wasn't quite stiff enough, so the frosting was sliding off as we sang "Happy Birthday." Oh well...they tasted AMAZING.

The Guests

Clockwise from Alicia

Parker, Grace Ann, Hannah, Ashley, Hayley, Kameryn, and Addi

This was a fun and sweet group of girls. They were all well mannered and polite and they saved their crazy hyperness for when they were in the FROG, for which I was very grateful!!

Back row: Hannah, Hayley, Ashley, Kameryn

Front Row: Parker, Alicia, Grace Ann, Addi