Lets Talk about Birthday Food!

I went through a lot of different "menu" ideas in planning for their birthday party.  First I thought a BBQ, casual & easy right....The more I thought about it, I thought that so many people do a BBQ lets do something else.  So I though pizza...well that lasted about 2 seconds. I finally decided on simple finger/foods that are on a skewer. 

Fruit Skewers/Pasta salad/veggies

We just bought large packages of grapes, pineapple, and strawberries from Costco.  We purchased bamboo skewers (buy one get one free).  We cut the pineapple into smaller pieces and washed the strawberries and grapes and just started putting them on the skewers in an organized fashion of course.
I made a fuit dip that was very tasty as well.

Fruit Dip
8 oz cream cheese
1 jar of marshmallow cream
8 oz of sour cream
1 can sweetened condensed milk
puree in blender till smooth, pop in fridge for at least an hour before serving.

The Pasta salad was a recipe from a friend of mine.  I made it as follows.

Pasta Salad
2 bags of multicolor rotini pasta
1 1/2 bottles of Tuscan(has to be Tuscan) Italian salad dressing
2 cans sliced olives
1/2 container grape tomatoes from Costco
Two handfulls of pepperoni(cut into fours)
Two big handfuls of jarred artichoke from Costco

Cook pasta, strain, mix in small amount of olive oil, let cool in fridge, Mix everything together let it marinate for a day, add more dressing right before serving for best results! It was soooo Yummy!

Veggies, well veggies are veggies, I used Hidden Valley packet mix, 16 oz container of sour cream, mix, cut veggies and serve!

Main dishes

We made chicken and beef skewers as well as pigs in a blanket for the kiddies. 

The chicken skewers consisted on chicken thighs (from costco) thawed, cut into strips, marinated in a secret..(ok fine I'll give you the recipe) sauce, which by the way if you are reading this you HAVE to make this, I promise you'll like it, if you don't then well I'd give you something but none of you live next to me so I guess you will just have to take my word for it.

Chicken Marinade
1/4 cup veg. oil
1/4 cup soy sauce (you can use low sodium too)
2 T ketchup
2 T vinegar
1/4 t garlic powder
1/4 t pepper

Marinate chicken anywhere from 1-2 hours, or more if you want.

Stab chicken with skewers, grill and serve! YUM!

Beef Skewers
We had our in-laws make these for us to help out with the food load, well that and they are AWESOME cooks! From what they told me they just seasoned some steaks with Montreal steak seasoning, placed on skewers and also added mushrooms and red/yellow peppers in between.

Pigs in a blanket are a classic staple for one simple reason, they taste good and they are easy! Just follow package instructions on the cresent rolls! I made like 3 dozen of these and they were gone in under 7 min!

Cupcakes

I purchased a Groupon deal a couple of months back for Jubilee Cupcakes in Tacoma.  They tasted as amazing as they look.  I was not dissapointed!

The Beverage

A couple of weeks ago I had a strawberry mango limonata from The Olive Garden, it was sooooo good! It was fruity and refreshing, the perfect drink to make for a crown.  I searched for a recipe online and couldn't find one anywhere.  I finally found a similar recipe and just went off of the ingredients, I didn't use their measurements, but it came out very similar to Olive Garden's.

Strawberry Mango Limonata

Concentrated lemonade

Strawberry liquid smoothie mix, I found this at Cash and Carry

Mango liquid smoothie mix

Sprite, or any lemon/lime soda

Mix up your lemonade as directed, add in small amounts of the strawberry to taste, same with the mango, mix in the sprite until you taste the fizz.  Add a bunch of ice and serve!! It will be a hit I promise!

The other drink we had is called Brazillian Lemonade.  I'm unsure of the recipe since my in-laws made it. But I know it has lemonade, sweetened condensed milk, and sugar.  You also have to have a serious blender to make it since you have to blend it with ice to make it slushy like.

Thats all for today folks! I will be back tomorrow with all the details on the Twins cake and the Twins themselves!!

The Decorations (1st Birthday part 1)

Cupcake Towers

Lets start with the Cupcake towers, I looked all over for what I had in mind for the twins birthday.  I knew I wanted two, I wanted something I could use over and over again, and something that had a large enough top layer to fit the bear cakes that my dad was going to be making.  I came across All Custom Gifts on Etsy.  I messaged them to see if they could do a custom order for me.  They were so great to work with it was so easy and in no time, they were on my front doorstep! The best thing about these is that the 1/4 inch grossgrain ribbon that you can find for 1.00 at Jo Anne's can be wrapped around them to add whatever color you would like to the stand, I also used these for a recent bridal shower I hosted.  I love them!

Cupcake topper, banners, and water bottle labels o my...

When it came to all of these I needed something that worked for a boy and a girl, I searched and searched and searched,  I am not someone who likes characters especially since my children aren't old enough to choose what they would want for their birthday so I was determined to find a good color combination. Of course I wound up on Etsy again.  I came across Inkberry Cards Cards.  She was awesome, I emailed her and said I wanted a colors that would work for a boy and girl.  She seriously must have read my mind because with that she sent me my beautiful PDF file full of cupcake toppers, waterbottle labels and their birthday banner! It was perfect! I loved it, she used their initials which I ended up using throughout the party as you will see.

Tissue Pom Poms...They have many many uses you know!

I found a great tutorial here.  These were so easy and so CHEAP.  These in my opinion is thee most budget friendly decoration out there.  You can purchase tissue paper for a couple of dollars and whip up a few of these and you will get compliments, I promise!! I was surprised at the amount of people that asked me where did I buy them, when I told them that I made them they were so surprised! They can be used anywhere, I made full ones and hung them from the ceiling and used them in the centerpieces and I used half ones to add pizazz to the banner and my front door as well as decorate the highchairs!

Centerpieces

I set up two large tables for guests to sit at.  Once I got my party package from Inkberry Cards I knew I was just going to run with the initial idea! So I headed to the nearest craft store and wandered until I found what I was looking for.  I purchased two of the large size cardboard 3D letters an A and a L, and some spray paint.  I decided we would showcase the twins pictures from their photoshoots from newborn to 10 months and I knew I had several matching frames but didn't want to drop a ton of cash on a whole bunch of frames when I came across tiny little art easels...50% off (yes please) perfect.  I just had my pictures developed all 5 x7's and "framed them with some cardstock paper to help them stand correctly.  I used two pom poms in pink and blue and I think that they turned out super cute! I was a tad impressed with myself {pat self on back}

You can find more information about the photographer here

Well I think that does it for the decorations, it took a lot of time but I decided I would work on one project a night and by the time the party was here I had everything put together and just had to set it all up.  I have to give some serious photo credit to my friend Jill  who came to the twins party and helped me by taking some AWESOME pics of all the decor/food/guests so that I could enjoy my babies birthday!! You can check out her photography website here, look closely at the teeny tiny twins on her babies page...yeah those are mine!! I will be back tomorrow to tell you all about the mouthwatering food we had!!

**I was not compensated in any way for the reviews given to any products/services I have posted on here, all opinions are my own and I would work with any product mentioned on here again.**

Look Mom Were One (A picture post)

We had the twins BIG 1st BIRTHDAY BASH on Saturday the 14th! Our whole family came out as well as all our friends and celebrated with us! I wil split this into a couple posts.  This one being mainly pictures! That being said....ENJOY!

 Birthday Girl

 Ava's cake (made by grandpa)

 dig in

 Centerpieces

 Favors

 Probably her favorite gift

 Cupcakes!

 Welcome

 This is the knockoff version of Olive Gardens Strawberry Mango limonata, easy and so tasty! I will share!

 The setup

 Fruit skewers

 Landon's cake (also made by Grandpa)

Well if you made it through those pictures...{pat yourself on the back}.

I'll be back tomorrow with the details on decorations, cupcakes, cookies, cakes and everything else birthday!

Hope you guys are having a great Monday. I'm still grieving the fact that my babies aren't "babies" anymore...

9 months old and time to start party planning!

They twins are now 9 months old ::sigh:: and I just can't believe how fast they are growing up.  I am the luckiest mommy in the world to have these two literally perfect babies! They are so happy all of the time, they sleep like angels, I just love mommyhood!! Here is some shots from our photo shoot:

So we took the babies to their 9 month well baby check up and here are their current stats

Landon: 21.9 lbs, 28 1/4 inches long
Ava: 18.9 lbs, 27 1/4 inches long

They are doing wonderfully developmentally for being preemies.  They are doing most things that a full term 9 month old would be doing so we couldn't be happier!

So naturally since I now have only 3 months to plan their 1st birthday party, and for anyone who knows me I love to plan parties! I am most likely sticking with colors since they have plenty of birthdays that they will what characters or themes, I plan on doing a candy buffett like some I have seen online and on other blogs! I have started picking up glass containers already! I luckily have a mother in law who is super crafty so I am sure I will be requiring her help on favor tags and labels.  And I am most excited for doing CAKE POPS! I purchased Bakerella's cake pop cookbook today and I can't wait to practice!

I'm thinking that each of the babies will have their own smash cake and then I will have cupcakes for all of the adults and kids at the party! I am such a fan of cupcakes rather then a sheet cake! Well I just wanted to update really quickly, I am still doing horribly at blogging regularly but its hard to be a working mama of twins.