Welcome the new year!

Well the Christmas season is over, and the new year is officially here.  For most people the day after Christmas means shopping all day for discounted wrapping paper, Christmas ornaments, and holiday decorations.  But here at the Seymour house the day after Christmas means party planning! Brody's birthday is the last weekend of January, so that means only a month to plan a fantastic party! This year I started way WAY early (yeah for being organized!) I started back in November.  I originally wanted to do a LEGO party, or a Batman party because Brody loves both.  But as I started searching on line for cute party ideas, I ran across this really cute party idea from Bliss Bloom Blog I immediately fell in love with this party idea, mostly because Brody always says he's a man not a little boy, and because he loves wearing ties (he has to even wear one to the grocery store).  So the party planning began! I used her templates for the super cute glasses, mustaches, and lips. I made my own tie template for the tie banner, and found a cute font online and printed out my Happy Birthday Brody letters, then traced them and cut them out of card stock.  I also searched online for more cute party ideas and found these cute websites Event Lucky I loved this site....the little boy with the hat is so adorable, and I loved the tie cookies, 'stache suckers, and the hanging frame for taking pictures.  All such great ideas!! Courtney at Pizzazzerie posted this really cute version of the lil' man theme from Cakes like a Party, I love the houndstooth theme, the ties for invitations, and Annika's cute tie skirt all so cute! Our party will be pretty big, we have a huge family and Brody has quite a few friends.  Our normal party turn out is 40, 18 of which are kids! So back in November I bought the tie and 'stache cookie cutters, 'stache & lips chocolate sucker molds, and even some fake stick on mustaches from Amazon.  Then went to Hobby Lobby and found some very cute tie and dress shirt looking paper for the invitations, tie banner, ties on the goodie bags, cupcake wrappers, and food tags.  So now I have been a very busy lady crafting my invitations and other party decorations.  As I get finished with my projects I'll post some pics and maybe even a few tutorials!

Wonder Pets PAR-tay!!!

This past weekend we had my little baby's birthday party! He will be turning two on Wednesday, so we had all of our family and our friends out to celebrate. The party went great, the food was awesome, and everyone had a great time. We are lucky that Wesley's family and mine all get along so great and all really like each other. It makes family get togethers much easier.

I am also so very blessed to have such an awesome mother! She came out on Friday and helped me clean the house and make food for the party. I couldn't have done it all with out her. I had so much to do, and the little boys don't make it very easy! They were running around the house crazy, while we were trying to clean and bake.

So here are some of the pics from the party!

This was the dessert bar, it was filled with all kind of yummy goodness! Everyone loved it, and as the guest were leaving I had empty sacks ready for them so they could fill them up with their favorite treats! I should have taken down the mirror and iron scroll above the table but it is so heavy I didn't want to mess with it.

This was Marak's birthday cake, made to look like the Wonder pet symbol. The bottom layer is chocolate cake with honey buttercream filling and chocolate frosting. The top layer is one of my favorites bananna cake with the same filling and frosting combination. I made the same thing for Brody's Birthday cake too, it was so good I was wanting more!

These were one of the desserts on the dessert bar. This is what I call Boomer Sooner Whoopie Pies. They are so delish! It is red velvet cookies with cream cheese frosting.....YUM!

And of course it's not a party with out cake balls. These were a mix of strawberry cake and red velvet cake. Everyone loved them, they were gone pretty fast!

And what's a party with out jelly beans and gummy bears? I bought way too much candy, but it filled up the jars and it looked really pretty....and that's all that really matters at a birthday party! The little wonder pet symbols on the ribbon, I made myself out of punch dots and then I free handed the W.

This is just peeps on a stick. It was so easy and so fast to make. I got the idea online, luckily Marak's birthday is right around Easter...otherwise it would have been impossible to find peeps!

So glad the dessert bar was a hit, and we didn't end up with too much food!

Marak had a great time at the party, he loved all of his toys! He even started to cry when it was time to sing happy birthday because he didn't want to stop playing with his toys! And after the party Wesley's mom was sweet enough to take the boys for the night. So Wes and I cleaned up the house (it took me 4 hours to clean up just the toy room!), and then went out for dinner, and picked up a bottle of wine and came home and watched our shows in the wonderful peace and quiet! It was fantastic!

The cake business is getting busier and busier! My latest project is for a very special man. He is not only the pastor of First Baptist Church of Dale, the principle of Harrah Middle School, but he is the father of a very good friend of mine. He is by far one of the nicest people I have ever met. This year is a very important birthday for Big Doug because, he is turning the big 5-0!! I hope you enjoy!!

Not a baby any more!

Tomorrow will be my little boys first birthday! What a huge milestone this is, not only for him but for us too. We had his party this weekend and it was so much fun. My sweet mother and father came up to help us clean house and watch the boys. Then on Sunday we all got up had breakfast and got to work decorating and doing lots of last minute details for the party. We had all of my family, Wesley's family, Marak's daycare family, and my best buddy Amber over for the party. We had so many people over, but luckily it was so nice outside that we were able to open up the French doors and let everyone go back and forth. Marak had so much fun, he really wasn't into open the presents, but as you can see from the picture below that he enjoyed the cake! It wasn't until after the party was over that I realized that all day long Brody was thinking that the party was for him and so was all of the presents. Up until this weekend he has never had to experience Marak having a party.

Although I was excited for Marak that he was older and able to do so much more, I was at the same time a little sad. My little baby will never be a little baby again. All of the sudden he looks like a little boy (must be something in the birthday cake?) This morning he just looked older. Looking back over the past year I realize how far we have come. We had a 1 yr. old and an infant, now we have a 2 year old and a 1 year old. I remember wondering if we would ever make it to today, or if we would just end up crazy and in a mental institution. I remember the great advise from my mother to just take it a day at a time. As much as this past year has been wonderful and so joyful and excited to watch the boys grow together. It also has been so challenging. Many nights with little to no sleep, almost in tears because the kids just wouldn't sleep. Marak for sure test my every patients, but then he can be just so loving and sweet. And I must admit that he is my payback, he acts exactly like I did as a baby (which from the many stories I've heard I too was very VERY needy) I remember coming home from the hospital thinking we just had a baby and they are letting us come home with another one??? Are they nuts?? Do they really think we can handle this? But like my mother said, we just took it one day at a time and the year went by so fast. Now my so sweet (and sometimes evil)little boy is 1. And now I never thought I would say this, but I have no more babies. (I must admit, the way things were looking like this time last year...I thought I was going to end up like the Dugger gal with all of those babies...Many prayers were answered to have another years from these two boys)I have really enjoyed watching the boys grow up this year we have had so many milestones go by. I love watching them play together, if you watch closely they can have the sweetest little moments with each other, but don't blink cause you will miss them being mean to each other the very next second. It must be a brother thing or a common understanding between the two of them.

This is one of our milestones. The first time both boys are in their big boy car seats!

This is Marak eating his birthday cake.

This is Marak eating his birthday dinner.
I am so glad that we survived our kids, and all in all I think we did a pretty good job!