Preparing For a Birthday Party.....

As most of you know I absolutely LOVE planning and decorating for my kids birthday parties.  Kyle says there's no telling how much time or money I spend in them.  But my thing is.... I start so early in advance that the money is spread out :)  Plus it is something that i really enjoy. 

I want to make sure that H, K, & S feel extra special on their 1 BIRTHDAY that they'll get all year. 

With that being said..... I thought I'd show you a little bit of what goes on behind the scene :).

I got my wonderful coworker, Beth, to draw me a cowgirl hat to use for the homemade fans at Heidi's party.  So I then took this as the template to draw all the others.

These were the start to our cowgirl/boy boxes.  My brother is an incredible artist, so I generally get him to do stuff like this for me and then I just paint it.

Work in progress.......

And the finished product.... I was very pleased. 

I tend to splurge on the cakes a bit :) but I just like the cakes to be "different".

Homemade jail that Kyro built...... he doesn't like to admit it, but he gets just as into it as I do.

This is a glimpse of us getting Kmans all set up :)

These "cars" boxes were a lot more time consuming than I thought.  After I got them painted and assembled to look somewhat like a car, I think hot glued the sides down and together to make it be the shape of a car.  That's what took the most time.

And wah-lah!

Sometimes it gets hard because I have such wonderful little helping hands :)!

I was sooooo pleased with Kmans cake!

I got the banners and party favors all ready to go :)

I finally gave each of the kids a box to paint and that made them happy for a good while..... but there would still be streaks of paint to show up randomly on each of the cars.

Karter was so excited to see it all come together.

The wind was blowing so bad the day of the party that it was very hard to keep anything on the tables.

All coming together.....

HAHA And Heidi's party..... With it being away from the house, it took My Dads big trailor and then that little trailor for the hay to go out there.... not counting my car, dads truck, and Kyle's trucks being completely packed.

Either way I thoroughly enjoy it :)!!! And I am so thankful that my kids get to enjoy their special day.