Happy 7th Birthday Ariel! (Party Photo and Info)

Hello my Crafty Friends!  Today is my daughter Ariel's 7th Birthday!  I can't believe that she is 7 already!  I still remember the day she was born and her being our baby!  Yesterday was an inservice from school so we had Ariel's birthday parties!  In the afternoon we had her friends 12 girls!  And last night we had family over to celebrate her!  

Happy 7th Birthday Ariel!  I love you so much and God really blessed us when he gave us you!  Every moment with you is a delight!  You show God's love to everyone in all sorts of ways!  You are so sweet!  Your an amazing sister, loving your brother and playing with him all the time!  You are such a good friend being friendly to everyone you meet.  I remember asking you who you played with at recess and you said a boys name I asked you oh why?  And you said Because he asked me to!  You are a great kid and everyone always says that!  Your teachers always have the best to say about you, how hard of a worker you are and they describe you as sweet too!  When I had you and Daddy said you were a girl I never imagined how amazing it would be to be your mother (and I thought it was going to be pretty great!)  We love you so much!  Thank you for being our daughter!

I do want to share something that just happened the other day my arms were full and I was quickly going to run into the house and put the stuff down and come back for Carter.  He got upset and started to cry.  Ariel whose arms were full too with her backpack and a bag opened his door climbed over him and undid his seat belt and helped Carter out of the car!  She didn't just leave him or stand there while he cried!  She went above and beyond!  Constantly she does things like this showing love and acts of service!  

As I mentioned yesterday we had Ariel's parties.  We did a crafty party!  Ariel really wanted that!  For the invites I printed out:

Paint, color, cut, and glue

these are Ariel's favorite things to do!

Please join us for Ariel's 7th Birthday

Arts and Crafts Extravaganza 

Than I cut them small and stamped them in pink a Pure Innocence stamp over top.  Than I glued with a white glue stick cellophane.  Than I painted over top with 2 parts paint and 1 part dishsoap to  make it a scratch off!  For more details on how to do this please click here.

Like how I didn't scratch the personal info?  

This past week has been crazy and I may have waited till the day before to really plan out and get ready for Ariel's party.  Yes crazy woman I know!  But I knew in my head what I wanted to do I just had to figure some stuff out and actually do it!  Oh and bake all the goodies needed too!  LOL  Luckily on Thursday Ariel was in school and Carter was at a playdate at my SIL!  So I made all the decorations the night before:

I made the pom pom's out of tissue again this year but used a different tissue paper and while it worked it didn't work as well!  I also punched out circles and adhered them to ribbon and had them hanging!  I love the chalkboard banner!  I actually won them from Holly over at the Say Hello Etsy Shop!  They are wood and I painted them with chalkboard paint!  Love it as I can reuse it!  Not sure if you can tell but I tied them together with twine, I used purple so I hope Carter doesn't mind when his birthday comes and it's purple twine, lol! 

Ariel really wanted a pinatta.  The thought of spending $15 to 20 on something that gets crushed in minutes was too hard to handle so I went to pintrest to see if I could make one!  I saw so many ideas and started, I filled up a cereal box with candy and tied a ribbon through it and than wrapped it with mailing paper.  I than planned to decorate it with tissue paper.  But I ran out of time!  At the last second I thought to myself hey it's a crafty party so I am going to put it on the living room table with markers and stickers and have the girls decorate it when they first come!  It was a HUGE hit!  The girls LOVED IT!  And the mom's thought it was super clever!  Don't worry I admitted that it was a run out of time idea, but hey it really worked out well!  Here's a few of them doing it:

 

As for crafts I was horrible and didn't take photos of this part!  What was I thinking?  Well I did have 12 little girls doing crafts!  I was really lucky as 3 of the moms stayed and were such a help!  My wonderful friend Lynn sent me 20 pink die cut PTI Wine Bottle papers!  What a blessing she was to me!  I never would have been able to have bought and got the die here in time!  The die is great as a door hanger!  I "taught" the girls how to stamp and they made the door hangers and cards at the same time!  I so wish I took a photo but I was sorts stuck in the dining room!  I had rhinestone strips, feathers, markers and markers, pencil crayons, stamps (all the cute ones) and me and one of the mom's put there names on a clear block with a HA letter set and than they stamped there names too!  I also had them decorate a kraft gift bag, for them to take there crafts home in!  Than we went and hit the pinatta, and THEY LOVED IT!  Since it was a cereal box it was super hard to break and each girl got to hit it probably 5 times!  It was so funny!  We kept asking them if they wanted us to break it open since it was taking a while but they didn't!  They loved hitting it!  LOL  

I am thankful while we did this the mom's cleaned up the table and it was time for food!  I had bought a cupcake corer and had sent to school for Ariel's birthday chocolate cupcakes with vanilla pudding inside!  I came up with the idea to core the cupcakes and offer fillings (vanilla pudding and cherry pie filling) and icing and stuff to decorate the cupcakes the day before!  They loved it, I made cherry chip cupcakes and chocolate and each girl got one of each:

Before I fed them we made headbands! I had planned to make hair pins like Leigh did but found three nice headbands for $1 and it was much cheaper so I went with that!  I emailed Leigh the day before to ask her what glue did she use for them?  I was unsure and she shared with me that she hot glued them for the girls.  Leigh actually lives about an hour and half away from me and I run into her from time to time at our LSS!  She is so great and I hope one day to get together and craft with her!  :>  Chad die cut all the flowers just before the party started and I put them all in a big bowl and sent them around letting the girls pick and also let them pick which headband they wanted.  And sent out buttons if they wanted it and told them to stack the flowers how they wanted it (with a circle on the bottom) than I handed out food.  And two of the mom's hot glued them while the girls ate!  It worked so well!  You can see above some of the headbands...

Here is a photo of Ariel:

Here's a photo of Ariel and her friend they both have the headbands on:

After Ariel opened gifts!  It was so sweet to see the girls all line up in a line with there gifts ALL EXCITED to give Ariel her gifts!  After gifts it was free play and the girls ran around and had a blast.  It got loud again (it has been loud before when they decorated the pinatta but during crafts and everything else it wasn't too bad!)  I was really happy with how the party went!  

Later that night we had the families over here's a few photos:

What a great day!  And today is actually her birthday and we are planing family fun!  Luckily it's not a blizzard outside like they had predicted!  :>  Sorry for the super long post!  And I hope to be back with Day 3 of my Holiday Card Inspiration!  I am sorry I got tardy with that, what a week!