Thanks to all of our loyal customers and the MANY friends we have made –

I thought these looked cool with a”vintage” look –

A lot of people have asked for details so I am going to do them all here in the blog —  the invitations were designed by me and I am quite proud of them.  I knew I wanted some type of treasure map, but then I saw the “message in a bottle” invites on the net and couldn’t resist.  We bought our bottles from a SandArt company (if you want the link just email me — I can look it up) and then added sand and small shells.  The invites were printed by Select Graphics & Printing in Coeburn, Virginia and she did an OUTSTANDING job on them.

The decorations at the party were bought from various vendors and then some made by me.  The wall decorations were made from foam board purchased at Lowes and then cut out, painted and glittered.  Much, much cheaper than buying — but definitely takes some time.  The chandeliers and lanterns were found on Ebay.

The wands, crowns and pirate swords given out at the party came from — Oriental Trading of course.  The tablecloths, plates, etc. came from a very reasonable on-line store called Partypro.

Lisa Lawson from Nails by Lisa located in Wise came to the party and provided all the fair princesses with a manicure, make-up and glittered their hair.  All the fearless pirates could get their hair colored as well.  We then had Birthday Table cloths set up for everyone to sign and place their hand-print on for each one of the girls.

We tried to do a Pirate food table and a Princess food table.  The pirate food table had barbecue, corn-on-the-cob, potato salad, cole slaw, pb & j sandwiches and an island cheese-ball.  The Princess table had chicken salad on croissants and in phylo cups, fruit, meatballs, little smokies, spinach dip, tortilla pinwheels, chocolate dipped strawberries and pina colada punch.  The reasoning behind this was I wanted Chicken salad and Chris wanted barbecue but I didn’t think the two items mixed so we dividied the tables up so we could both have the menus we wanted — now I have a stomach ache from the eclectic mixture of food that we have eaten since Saturday!!

The cakes were done by a lady in Pound.  The castle cake was white with raspberry filling and the pirate cake was pineapple with pineapple filling.  She does a wonderful job and her cakes are always delicious!

Games included — Kiss the Frog (a version of pin the tale on the donkey) and a Pirate Ship Ring Toss — which I don’t think anyone ever got around to playing with — one of those things I forgot.  We ended the evening with Pinatas — one we had to actually hit with the stick (which I will never do again) and the other was the pull string. 

After the party we arrived home and could barely get in the door from all the stuff we had to cart back from the party.  The girls were dying to open the rest of their gifts but I told them to give me a few minutes so I could change clothes and get a path cleared out for them to open up the rest of their presents.  While I was upstairs I heard Gracie start crying (really loudly) and Olivia immediately started apologizing.  I knew something was up so I ran down the steps into the living room to see Grace and my couch covered in blood.  Olivia had gotten the Pinata stick and was playing and ended up hitting Grace in the nose.   Grace’s nose started swelling and I couldn’t believe the amount of blood.  We didn’t know if it was broke or not so we decided to go on to the Emergency Room.

After waiting an hour and a half at the ER and still no Doctor or any visible hope of even seeing a Doctor — I woke Chris and Olivia who were sleeping and had him check her nose again.  He touched it and moved it and she didn’t scream.  She then also informed me she was hungry — so we packed up and came back home.  Needless to say the stick has been trashed.  Her nose is still swollen but she seems to be fine — Olivia on the other hand — is definitely guilt ridden and Grace is working it to her advantage!

Enough Rambling –  Thanks to everyone for coming out to the party!!!

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 The trip was everything I imagined it would be and more.   I just now have gotten to start going through our pictures … and I want to go back again!

 I am afraid poor Chris is doomed to vacations at amusement parks for the rest of his life as the girls and I love to ride those rides!! 

I just wanted to share some of our personal pics from our holiday season this year …

We had a wonderful holiday season this year!  We went to a tree farm on Big A mountain with Mamaw and Papaw to let the girls pick out our tree.  They picked out one of the biggest ones in the field.  It was wonderful EXCEPT for the cold rain and blowing wind — but nothing was going to dampen our Christmas spirit. 

Once we got home — Chris couldn’t find his tape measure so he measured the amount of tree to be cut off the bottom with my broom.  I had no idea any of this was going on until I looked out the window and saw him holding my broom up to the tree — needless to say — he cut about two feet more off than he should have.  Yes — I am rolling my eyes and yes — this is so typical of my husband to not be able to find one of his tools.

Once we got that tree decorated — it was all on at that point.  The girls couldn’t wait for Christmas to come.  According to Grace the best part of Christmas was getting to spend time with her Cousin Tyler who came in from Texas.  According to Olivia … getting the “Eddie Spagetti” (betty spaghetti) doll was the most awesome thing!  Chris and I think the doll is a tad on the strange side … but she likes it.

We took the girls snowtubing in West Virginia with my family and they loved it.  At the bottom of the hill where the snowtubers come down they have a big dip to slow you down … poor Grace would go down in the dip but when she would start back up the dip her tube would start sliding back down because she just wasn’t heavy enough.  Grace jumped off her tube and tried to pull it up the little hill but it was so slick she just kept sliding.  In the meantime -  Olivia came down in the other lane and immediately left her tube and crossed the snow barrier to help out her sister.

Our holiday was just wonderful.  Being able to spend time with the girls and just make cookies, etc. was the best part for me.

Another Christmas has come and gone and it certainly was a wonderful Christmas this year.  My only regret is it seems to take forever to get here — according to our girls — and then it is passes so quickly.   I hope to share some of our Christmas pictures soon. 

We are getting ready to take the girls on a surprise trip to Disney and we can’t wait!  Unfortunately, Olivia has caught some type of virus — she has had a fever, horrible cough and congestion.  Yesterday as we were trying to get her to take some fluids — we finally told them we are hoping to go on vacation soon and she has to get better before we go so she FINALLY had some chicken noodle soup.  Chris keeps asking them if they could go on vacation anywhere they wanted to go where would they go — they always say DOLLYWOOD which drives him insane because he hates going to Dollywood!!  He keeps trying to drop them hints about Disney — but they haven’t caught on yet. 

Enough about us — my beautiful ballerina has so patiently waited on me to finish her album.  I am almost done, but thought I would share some of the pages I have created for her album layout.  I have a couple of more pages to finish and then we can sit down with Mom and Alyssa to make some changes before printing.

Mom & Alyssa — I hope this gives you guys some idea of what direction we are heading in with the Album.  The album will be square and the page fold will be in the middle.  Let me know what you think …