Everything was pink and everything was DELICIOUS!

We made pink candy popcorn – recipe here – and it was the unanimous favorite of all the girls at the party. We made ours the morning of the party and it was still tacky when it came time to eat. Next time I’d make it ahead of time to give the candy a chance to harden.

My favorite thing were these adorable ballerina slipper cookies! They are nutter butters covered in pink candy melts and piped frosting details. Aren’t they amazing??! The lady who came up with them has even more cookie shoe tutorials here.

This was my first time making cupcakes. I’ve made cakes for parties in the past, but I thought that cupcakes would be easier. I think they were, and I’d say they were even more fun, too!

I opted to not make them gf as I was the only one who that mattered to anyway. I followed this recipe for the cakes and this recipe for the frosting & followed her addition of the raspberry preserves for color. Seriously- BEST.CAKE.EVER! I don’t know if it was the cake flour or the buttermilk but they were SO moist and airy! The frosting was also incredible – it had just a touch of tartness to it that was SO GOOD I have been thinking about making a lemon version ever since. I decorated them with precious white sprinkles and adorable ballerina picks. I think they turned out great!

oh yeah, we had fruit too. ;P

I hand-painted her invitations – I’m really pleased with how they turned out!

I love tissue paper poofs, as they add so much visual impact for little money. And they are very easy to make! The best tutorial on how to make them comes from, who else?, Martha Stewart. I made 13 in all, using four different kinds of tissue paper. I love how they mimic the feeling of ballerina tutus.

What’s a ballet party without tulle? I bought about 15 yards and my Mother in Law helped me sew these lace curtains for the dance floor. We adorned the sides with gigantic flowers (I picked up at Michael’s for 50% off) for the girls to flutter around during their Butterfly Ballet performance.

I also made the tutus you see in the picture. I could have saved myself hours&hours of work by choosing a different tutu, but I saw this tutorial and just fell in love with how these looked and twirled. Have you ever seen cuter tutus? Most other ones always look so scratchy and static and these are just so feminine! Do not be deceived – these are NOT no-sew tutus. I sewed 200+ ribbons onto each one of them. And, to make them stay in place you need to sew the waistband with a long stitch on your sewing machine. They were worth it.

I also made this wreath by taking a discounted Valentines’ Day wreath, adding a bow and a pair of Geneva’s old ballet slippers stuffed with coordinating tissue paper. Didn’t it turn out adorable?

For the tabletop I used a luncheon set of milkglass plates and cups that I inherited from my mother. Also from my mother’s tea party collection, lace napkin holders. They always make everything fancier.

And of course we displayed Geneva’s handprint tutu as well.

The fun thing about all these decorations is that we’ve moved them all into Geneva’s room. We took down her younger 1-10 animal prints (wow this picture is soo old – her room has gone through many changes since 09!) and now she has all the pink poof balls hanging from her ceiling. We also re-purposed the tulle curtains and turned them into a canopy over her bed. She’s in little girl bliss!

We started by Geneva’s wonderful Mimi reading some Angelina Ballerina books while we were waiting for all the guests to arrive.

In the original story, Angelina’s parents surprise her one day by presenting her with a large box with a pink tutu inside, and telling her she could start taking ballet classes. So after the stories were over we also brought out a huge box filled with pink tutus I had made for all the girls (my main labor of love for this party, since they took about 3+ hours each to make, and yes I made 12!) and then told them they were going to get to go to ballet class that day as well!

Two of our dear friends, Hannah (14) and Brynna (10) offered to be our helpers for the party, and since Hannah had taken ballet before I asked her to be our Ballet Mistress and lead the class for the girls. They stretched like butterflies, and learned the basic positions and how to plie, grand jete, arabesque, pirouette, and curtsy. Fun!

Next we played two ballet themed games. The first is Ballerina Balloon Relay: First you divide ballerinas into teams and line them up.

Give the first ballerina of each team a balloon and when you say “Go” they must kick balloon across the room to the ballet mistresses. When they arrive they must do 1 plie’, 1 arabesque, and 1 spin, and kick the balloon back to the next ballerina on their team who repeats the process to the next ballerina in line. Whichever teams gets through all of their ballerinas first wins!

This was a lot of fun, so we played it twice and amazingly both teams won a game, so everyone got a prize.

The second game we played was called Around the Dance Floor. Before the party we taped down squares in a long path around your floor. Every 5th square has an X drawn on it. Play fun ballet music 10 seconds at a time while the girls dance from square to square. When the music is stopped, they have to stay on their square. If it has an X, they have to go back to start. The first girl around the board wins!

Next, in preparation for our Butterfly Ballerina Ballet Performance at the end of the party!, all the girls painted and bejeweled their own butterfly masks.

I pre-painted the main parts of the butterflies prior to the party, otherwise this would have taken too long and been too messy. The girls had a blast! And all the masks turned out really cute.

Even our ballet mistresses got in on the fun!

A well earned reward for patient ballerinas – it was finally time to EAT!

Geneva had a great time blowing out her five sparkly candles.

Opening presents with 5 year old girls is always hilarious – a more excited, squeely, mini mob you’ll never find!

The party’s grand finale was a ballet performance by the girls. Here’s the overview from my outline (since we only took video):

Before the performance, teach the routine and assign each girl one move that they learned earlier in the day. After the music starts, each ballerina hides in the living room behind the tulle. One by one, each ballerina will come out with her butterfly mask, do her “move” in center stage, and then dance like a butterfly, flutter around the flowers, etc. for ~10 seconds. Then the ballerina will come sit on her mark on the floor – all the girls together will make a complete circle – put their mask in the middle of the circle, and do the butterfly legs stretch while they wait for all the other dancers to join them.  When all the girls are on their mark, have them stand up and hold hands and dance in a circle. Ta-Da! Have everyone curtsy to applause!

Every dancer was given a pink carnation at the end of the performance, just like a real ballerina! (The flowers were such a hit, it might have been some of the girls’ favorite part!)

Such great little dancers! (sadly not all of them made it into the picture)

A wonderful birthday morning all around! Big thanks to Mimi and Papa for making the trip to celebrate with us!

and a big thanks to Michael, without whom I wouldn’t have pulled off this party! And who took pictures when I wasn’t able!

Happy 5th birthday, Geneva!! We adore and treasure you!

1. Gather all your supplies and your super cute helper!

For this project you will need:

1 canvas, pink paint in two tones, paintbrush, pink scrapbook paper, scissors, glue, coordinating ribbon and any embellishments you want to add. We had everything around our house except for the canvas, which I picked up at Michael’s for 50% off.

2.  Fold a white piece of paper in half (hot dog style) and draw half of leotard shape (length-wise).  Cut this out, open it up and you should have a symmetrical leotard shape.
3.  Trace that shape onto your pink paper and cut it out.  Glue to the top 2/3 of the canvas and let it dry.

4.  Turn the canvas upside down. Paint your daughter’s hands with the light pink paint and place them on the canvas around the leotard to create a full tutu effect.  For a nice rounded tutu effect you’ll want to use the left hand for two handprints on the right side of the upside down canvas and the right hand for the left side. (tip:  if you are using a pre-stretched canvas, you may want to place a book under the area of canvas where your daughter will be placing her handprints to avoid her denting or pushing through the canvas.)

This part is messy but FUN!

5. Have your daughter wash her hands while you’re waiting for the handprints to dry. Then paint her hands with the darker pink paint and make two more handprints on top of the light pink handprints in a darker pink shade.  Allow these to dry.

Geneva mentioned she wanted to put flutter sleeves on her painting because the uniform leotard she wears in ballet class has sleeves. What a great idea! So we repeated the painting process using her fingertips for the sleeves. I love how the addition turned out! So don’t shy away from making this personal.

6. Glue a section of pink ribbon around the waist of the tutu.  Tuck and glue under the sides at the waist to give a nice, finished look. Make a simple bow out of the ribbon and glue it at the waist.

7. Add other embellishments of your own to the leotard and tutu (rhinestones, pearls, make and glue a smaller bow to the neck of your leotard, etc.) We added a little bit of sparkle, using some ribbon I had in the house, because what little dancer doesn’t like that? You can also give it a quick spray outside with aerosol modge podge if you have it.

8. Have your ballerina sign and date it at the bottom with permanent marker (or if she insists, you can sign it for her, since you’re writing is “fancier.”) haha.

9. Voila!! Now you can hang it up in her room and admire her handiwork!

We got a great snow storm this weekend! Snow = happy babies!

happy dogs, too!

classic Clara face, haha

snow sledding! not very fast, but so much fun!

it is truly amazing how much snow one child can consume!

sister smother hugs <3

I'm turning one!

This Tigger was the best character we met at DW. He even wore a party hat with us!

Poor Pooh, He even tried staying behind her so as not to scare her, but alas.

<3 Piglet! <3

Clara wasn't so scared of Eeyore. This made me exceedingly happy!

one of my absolute favorite pictures from the trip

HAPPY 1st BIRTHDAY, CLARA!

But now at 17 months Winnie the Pooh, Eeyore, Piglet, and Tigger are Clara’s constant companions and favorite game she begs you to play every day. If she wants to play “bounce,” she’ll bring you Tigger and another stuffed animal and bounce Tigger up and down vigorously until you and your animal join in. If she wants to want you to sing either Pooh or Tigger’s theme song, she’ll bring you that animal and then dance her elbows up and down singing “lalalala” until you oblige and sing and dance with her.

Don’t be misled though, Clara has another best bud in the house….

…and I pray they are best friends for their whole lives!

Cut off bottom of your celery stalks, pat dry with paper towel, dip in paint

and stamp on a card to make a beautiful flower!

Take off one of the larger stalks from cluster and cut a clean edge, dip in green paint and stamp twice to make the leaves.

You could use these cards for any occasion, but to make them valentines we added hearts – take an empty toilet paper roll, shape into heart shape, dip into paint and stamp away!

CUTE, right? Happy Valentine’s Day!

- Geneva insisted they matched outfits today. My sweet girls!  They are such completely unique and different personalities, but both of them prove daily how much they genuinely love each other. blessed. -

(Clara was sleeping for all the bonding time in the car, but I promise she got some lovin’ too!)

We love you Auntie Debs!

Sometimes the mini-me moments we hear are so demoralizing. Oh no, they are picking up THAT? Oh no, I sound like that?! But then, sometimes, there are other moments that send your heart so high that it reaches heaven itself. not kidding. Heaven itself. it has to.

I found Geneva in the corner the other day reading to her doll, telling her about Jesus, about “the Lord,” and singing “lead me on and I will run after You, lead me on and will run after You.”

Most of you probably know that chorus well – it’s from this song from Passion-

Give me one pure and holy passion.
Give me one magnificent obsession.
Jesus, give me one glorious ambition for my life:
To know and follow hard after You.
To know and follow hard after You,
To grow as Your disciple in the Truth,
This world is empty, pale, and poor
Compared to knowing You my Lord.
Lead me on, and I will run after You.

The fact that she was singing this song hit me hard that day. You just don’t realize what they are picking up, you know?  This is one of the most significant worship songs to me as it embodies Ps. 63:8: “my soul followeth hard after Thee.” I’ve considered this to be my “name verse” – meaning the verse associated most closely with the meaning of my name “follower of Christ.” To me that means to have a determined, purposed abandon to follow my God – fully consecrated to Him, fully trusting in Him, fully dependent on His word, to the end. I want nothing more for my children; I tell Geneva that often.

Then you hear these things and others, like when she says she is “part of Jesus’ kingdom!” and you can only fall on your face and thank God. That He is intervening on behalf of your childrens’ hearts. That He is hearing your prayers. That He is at work. That He is having mercy on them, on us, on me.

For there is no amount of force that can make her little heart love Jesus. I do pray that she pants for the infectious love that I have for my Savior when she sees it, but I know that ultimately I will be a road sign pointing her the right way.

I’m so amazed and thankful I get to share in her journey, though. And that I get to spend my days overhearing little faith grow, like prayers that say “Heavenly Father, I thank You for You.”

hahaha

Lord, thank You for truth that comes out of the mouths of babes, and for my precious encourager.