Madelyn's Party

Well, hello, February! Where has the time gone? I have about 6 things to get caught up here on the blog. I thought when I hired the cleaning lady I would have all the time in the world, but it turns out I'm just as busy with a clean house! We've been doing lots of celebrating and having lots of fun around here. I'll do my best to get you all caught up, but I'm going to start at the end here with Madelyn's party, because I think it's the one thing that most of you out there are anxious to hear about.

We decided to do our first out of the house, friend party this year with Madelyn. She has lots of little "friends" (meaning, mom and dad have friends with kids). Since Madelyn loves ballet, I thought a dance party would be perfect. And it was. A couple of our friends were a little young for the class format, but it's exactly what I expected. My friend Mandi taught the class portion of the party, so I was glad that I was able to prepare her ahead of time.

Here's the setup. We had the party room for 1 hour prior to moving on to the dance room. I started the party at 4:15, so I had 15 minutes to get the room set up. I started out with grand plans for this party, but the more I thought about the logistics of transporting everything and setting up, I scaled way back. I could have used about 5 more minutes, but it was fine.

I'm really glad I didn't go overboard with the food. We didn't have time for much!

After I'd already settled on the theme and color scheme, I found the table cloth, centerpiece, napkins & confetti online. It worked perfectly!

For the kid snacks, I had strawberry yogurt O's from Trader Joe's with some heart shaped marshmallows that I picked up at Walmart a few weeks back. It was perfect! Our little guests were ages >1 to 3 (plus Brody), so these were a big hit. I also had crackers, cheese cubes and grapes. Mainly for the adults, but they worked for kids, too.

And of course I had to do water bottles! I bought these digital papers for the backgrounds. Then for the ballet shoes I bought ballet shoes from shutterstock and changed it to be all pink. For the Angelina Ballerina, I scanned it and made the silhouette.

I bought the striped straws and polka dot candy cups from this shop on Etsy.

Here is a closer view of the sign. I printed the chevron pattern and bought some matching cardstock to make the banner. I used my silhouette to cut it out. The shape might look familiar if you've been following my parties :)

Here is a close up of the cupcakes. I thought they turned out pretty! Julie let me borrow some fairy dust that she had. It looked great with the pink frosting!

The party sort of seemed rushed to me. As soon as everyone got there and got a snack, I had Madelyn open her gifts.

I love this little bashful face!

I tried to get a picture with her and each of her little friends, but it was more difficult than I was willing to deal with, so instead of stressing, I just made sure to get  at least one picture of each of our guests. I did manage to get a few with her, though!

Madelyn and her boyfriend, Liam! We'll make sure to save this one for their wedding slideshow!

Madelyn with sweet little Nolan!

And here they are walking to the dance room. It was so sweet! I got a deal on the tutus from Zulily.

They read an Angelina Ballerina story before dancing.

I got Madelyn's shirt on Etsy.



And this was our best attempt to get a group shot. It's missing Brody, Alexis & the babies, but it works! We have most of the eyes in the right direction!

 Madelyn had such a fun party! It was so sweet to watch all of them dance around, even if it was a little chaotic!