Weekend update and Olivia themed Birthday Party

This weekend was jam packed! Friday the girls and I spent the day at Missy’s house making the most divine desert for Hailey’s party on Saturday. We made Oreo Truffles from Bakerella. Yum! No, Yum x 10! Seriously, try these, they were heavenly!

Saturday was Hailey’s 4^th birthday party. We usually only have family since even that can get a bit large but we try to still make it very special. The kids always get to pick the theme for their party. We’ve done Mickey Mouse, Ben 10, Tinker Bell, Princess, Word World and this year, Hailey wanted an Olivia themed party. You know, Olivia, the pig from Nick Jr? The colors were red, black and white. (So elegant for a 4 year old!) The invitations asked that everyone wear red, Olivia’s favorite color, and be prepared to share a “rule of life.” Olivia always has rules that she makes up so I thought it would be fun to have everyone write a rule on one of the chalk board place mats, then photograph the author with the rule of life.

It was a cute way to digitally scrapbook the event without a lot of clutter.  We planned on swimming but the beautiful desert monsoons kept threatening us with storms so we could only dip in to cool off for a few min.’s then we had to get back out. I picked up a clearance craft kit from Target and the kids table was decorated with Little People animals so there was enough to keep the kids entertained.

 We served “Olivia’s in a blanket” (get it, Pigs in a blanket!) and a pasta chicken salad. There was also red ranch dip and veggies with red punch to drink. Dessert was a white cake with lemon filling (per Hailey's request) and the oreo truffels.

I asked Hailey when we got home what she thought of her party, she raised her head, closed her eyes and breathlessly proclaimed: “Beautiful, just beautiful!”

I love that kid!

This week is another busy week for us. (To be fair, I’m not really sure when it’s not a busy week.) My niece and nephew are staying with us this week. I love having them here, not only do I get to spend quality time with them but it mixes up the routine for my kids and they just adore their cousins. Plus, Abby is super helpful with everything. I suddenly have an extra pair of hands for everything, laundry, dishes, cooking and baking.

I volunteered (yes, I know, I’m a glutton for punishment) to bake the deserts for Brad’s company party on Saturday. There are going to be about 80 people there, kids included so I have a full range of desserts. I’m making:

Ice cream cake cones

Sugar, Oatmeal and Chocolate Chunk cookies

2 cheese cakes

Mini-monkey breads

Chocolate covered pretzels

Missy, my Aunt, and I already did all the pretzels (fantastic!) so tomorrow the girls and I are going to start the cookies. I’ll do the Monkey bread and cheese cakes on Thursday and the cake cones on Friday.

I am also still working on the embroidery project of polo shirts for Brad’s work. My machine has been in and out of the shop twice now and it’s been determined that it’s just not cut out for this type of embroidery. (I knew that but it helps to have a professional opinion!) However, because the people at the local repair shop I go to are so incredibly awesome they hooked me up with one of the employees who has a professional machine. She is letting me come over a few nights this week to finish up the shirts so I can still earn the income for our vacation. How great is that! Plus her machine is 10x faster than mine so I’ll be done before we go.

We are also in vacation count down mode here. We leave a week from this Thursday. I still have to finalize my list (I only have draft 1 & 2 – OCD remember?) and I need to start a list of house cleaning that needs to be done before the house sitter comes here. Vacation is one of those things that is so stressful for me. I spend weeks and weeks prepping for it, relax for a week then spend weeks and weeks recovering from it. However, that one week of relaxing is totally worth it. (I think.)

Tomorrow I’ll announce the winner for the Place Mats and its also Hailey’s actual Birthday so we’ll be having a special dinner.

Ugh, it’s only Monday and I’m already exhausted!