Family Birthday Party

I have several blogs to post, including Sara Kate's family birthday party, the big birthday present project, first time dyeing eggs, Easter/family photos, and the birthday projects I created for Sara Kate's special day. I'll start with the family party.

I decided a couple months ago to go with the 'Owl' theme for birthday #2. Why? No specific reason. I just found some cute stuff and I thought the saying 'Look Whooo's Turning 2' was too cute. I found an adorable pillowcase dress on an Etsy site, and of course when I went to order it the shop owner had closed the shop to catch up on her orders. That was 2 months ago. Lovely. I copied the picture and emailed my ZTA sorority sister Jennifer, who has a shop and a Facebook page (Sew What's Going On?) and asked if she could make something similar to what I could only describe as the perfect dress. She could, and after several discussions on fabric, she made the most adorable dress that is very close to the original! I just love it!!
Because of Sara Kate looking like a grease monkey so many days after school lately due to warm weather and playing outside at school, we couldn't get her a good picture in the dress in time so the invitation I created for her family party looked like this. I found great turquoise and pink so it worked and the picture of her in her birthday smocked dress worked fine for an invitation I decided to do at the last minute.

Of course, we ordered the cake from our favorite bakery, Rick's, and it turned out adorable. I took them a picture of the original owl dress to use that owl as a design on the cake, and it had pretty little pink and turquoise polka dots on the sides. The picture makes some of the pink look red but it was really just a darker pink.

We had my parents, my brother and sister in law who came over from Nashville (so thankful they were able to make it), Chris' parents, Chris' sister and brother in law, the niece and nephew, and Chris' grandpa. It was so wonderful to have everyone here to celebrate. Chris grilled some chicken, and we had potato salad and baked beans, along with cake and ice cream. We ate dinner, and then Sara Kate opened her presents. She got lots of Elmo stuff, which she's REALLY into right now. She was so cute getting excited about her gifts.

Then it was time for cake! It was absolutely too precious watching her while we all sang 'Happy Birthday' to her. She was in complete awe. This picture of my mom holding her and looking at her melts my heart.

Blowing out the candles was quite the challenge because she blows up not out so she couldn't quite get it and had to have some help.

And of course, the birthday girl dug into her cake and loved it! She did use a fork for a while but eventually went with her hands, which is what she does alot of the time when eating.

The birthday girl stayed up way past her bedtime playing with everyone and she definitely crashed when we put her in bed. I thought it was so adorable when I went in to check on her later and she was snuggling with her new Elmo and sleeping on her new Elmo pillow that her Meme made her (her first pillow!).
Once again, we are so thankful to everyone for coming over and celebrating Sara Kate's special day. Her friends party is coming up in a couple weeks so there will be more party pics then! And there are more birthday blogs to come so stay tuned! :-)