getting ready for the party

Tomorrow is Ben's birthday party. He decided he wanted it at the bowling alley so we picked the "extreme bowling" time which means they'll be bowling with the black lights. Should be a lot of fun! He's really excited. This is his first birthday party, all for himself. Of course, he had a 1st birthday party. But that doesn't really count cause that's more for us parents, right? Then he had a shared birthday party with Olivia when he turned 3 and she turned 5. So now this is his very own party.

I made these cookies party favors

I got the idea from here. I had seen her do this a while back and thought it was a great idea. I didn't want to give out treat bags cause, quite honestly, everyone does that and we're kind of "candied out" at our house. Between Halloween, Christmas, 2 birthdays and Valentines' day coming up in amounts to a lot of treats. I wanted to keep the party favors pretty simple since we're paying a bit for this party and the kids get to bowl and have pizza, drinks and cake. Plus, I don't want to spend a bunch of money on candy and toys that will be thrown away.

I put a cute little note on the front that says "Thanks for celebrating with me! Benjamin" The holders are actually CD sleeves that I bought at Target (you can get them other places, too).

While I worked on these (and the cake) the kids were outside playing with daddy. It was so nice to see Ben doing his usual stuff again like riding his bike.

Riding your bike with the bubble machine going...what could be more fun??!

Last night we had stamp club and we made these cute little shaker card

You can find the directions for these on splitcoaststampers under the resources. Super easy. We used the smallest heart from the heart punch for the inside of the shaker part.

I bought the plastic for the front of the card on www.scrapbook.com and stamped the image with black StazOn.

Well, I'm off to finish Ben's Star Wars cake. Hopefully it looks ok. It surely doesn't look like I bought it at a bakery but he's already liking how it's turning out and that's all that matters :) I'll share pics tomorrow if it looks even remotely presentable!!

Oh, and I finished reading Twilight. It's official...I'm TOTALLY hooked!!! You know I'll be running to the store tomorrow to get New Moon. Can't wait to start reading that one. I read the intro at the end of Twilight and I'm dying to know what happens next!!