SUPER HERO PARTY PICS

As promised, here are some "action" shots from the my son's Superhero 4th Birthday party. Enjoy! Half of the photos you see here were taken by NShots Photography.

Birthday Banner I made. You can buy a custom one HERE

Batman and Spiderman Cookies made by Take the Cake. They were soft, fresh, and delicious!

Balloon Wreath I made. You can buy it HERE

One of the 2 giant wall decals

You can sort of see some of the capes I made and the kid's decorated.

The box city I made for the kids to play in. They all loved it and surprisingly it lasted until the end of the party. Then the kids literally destroyed it.

(Super)Baby Sister, Brooklyn

Little (Super)Sister, Mackadoodle

Look at those baby blues

Admiring his Superman Cake by Take the Cake. It was THE best cake I've ever had from anywhere.

Singing Happy Birthday to my 4 year old *sniff*

Make a wish SuperJack!

Opening his present from Mommy & Daddy. A giant Superman Fathead wall decal for his new room!

It was an amazing time. This was the first year that Jackson really enjoyed his party. I was totally stress-free and just took it all in. It was a lot of prep work for me but completely worth it in the end. I would do it all exactly the same if I had it to do over again. He loved all his friends being there (21 of them!), his decorations, the singing, the sweets, his presents. It was total perfection. He was happy and polite and I was so proud to be that 4 year old's mama.

Peace and Love from this side of the Mamahood

I DON'T PLAY FAVORITES

When I was pregnant with Mackadoodle (my 2nd child) I was worried that I wouldn't love her as much as I loved my son. I am an only child who was primarily raised by my mom so I had never know the "same" kind of love for two different people. I imagined most people who come from a two parent home love their parents equally, but as I only spent a tiny fraction of time with my dad as time with my mom I had a different relationship with each of them. I also didn't have any biological siblings so I didn't know the same kind of love that way either. Anyway, back to the story...I was worried that my despite what every parent of 2 or more children told me, that my love would actually divide and not multiply. Or worse yet that it WOULDN'T divide and my daughter would be doomed to live a loveless life as the "red-headed step-child".

Obviously, once she arrived my fears were totally and completely squashed as I immediately loved and adored that tiny little one. AND I somehow, simultaneously loved and adored my 18 month old too! Who'd of thought? Fast forward 2.5 years later. I have multiplied my love yet again and our 6 month old is the easiest, sweetest little thing that ever graced this earth. She is so peaceful and calm and not needy or demanding at all. DH jokes that she is the favorite and it got me thinking about whether we REALLY have a favorite or not.

When the 4 year old won't stop talking back to me and the 2 year old won't stop screaming, the 6 month old IS the favorite.

When the 2 year old won't stop screaming and the 6 month old won't go to sleep, the 4 year old is the favorite.

When the 4 year old won't take anything I say seriously and the 6 month old has her 3rd blowout of the day, the 2 year old is usually still screaming.

If one of them is sleeping that trumps everything else. Whoever is sleeping is the favorite.

Or whoever is not 2.

In all seriousness, I don't play favorites. I love all 3 of my kids, very, very much. But I DON'T love them the same. I love them differently. Because THEY are different. I love each of them with the same intensity and quality but not actually in the same way or for the same things. I have a different relationship with each of my children and they each bring something unique and incredible into my life. And each of them expresses and experiences love in a different (if ever so slightly) way. So I think it would be a disservice to them to love them "the same".

If you haven't heard of the 5 Languages of Love, let me summarize. Basically each person has one of 5 ways that is their primary way of experiencing and expressing love. This is typically used to help couples figure out how to most effectively express love to your spouse based on how THEY experience love most. You can take the quizzes on their site to find out what your love languages are. Anyway, children also have their own love languages and if you know your kiddo, you know what says "I love you" to them. If I do a puzzle or play any type of game with a ball with my son, I almost always get the jumping-up-and-down excitement followed by a big squeeze and an "I love you". For my middle child reading books, watching her dance, singing songs and eating her pretend food makes her totally giddy. For my baby, well she just needs a boob and some peek-a-boo and she's good. The point is, each of them needs something different to feel loved so there is no way I could love them the same. And I really and truly don't favor one over the other. They are all amazing blessings in my life. Besides, who could choose between giggles, hand-holding and eskimo kisses?

What is your experience with loving your kids "the same"? Do you have a favorite?

Right now my favorite is sleep. Who am I kidding, sleep is always my favorite.

Peace and Love from this side of the Mamahood

WE'LL HAVE A *SUPER *TIME!

My little man turned 4 on Tuesday and we celebrated last Saturday . I cannot believe how fast the time has gone. It's nuts. Anyhoo, last year he wanted a Spiderman theme, this year it was Superman. I was excited because I had a ton of fun ideas and I couldn't wait to get to work. I made some pretty cool stuff if I do say so myself.

First up, the invitation. I loved designing this one. It's probably my favorite invites to date. You can see some of my other designs at Little Star Studios.

Front:

Inside:

Inside left:

Inside right:

Back:

Then using Photoshop and Paul's Super Font I created this birthday banner. All I needed was cardstock to print on, an exacto knife (I couldn't find mine so I just used my husbands work blade), and some ribbon. Presto...Custom Birthday Banner.

I also made a balloon wreath. I used 460 balloons, 14 inch straw wreath and a frick load of greening pins. After about 2 hours and a very sore thumb I had myself a 3 color balloon wreath. Want it? You can buy it from my etsy shop Little Star Studios on Etsy

My biggest project, literally BIG, was the box city I put together. Well, I painted it and Daddy assembled it to withstand the wrath of 23 4 year olds. Luckily, we are in the middle of a renovation so we had a plethora of large cardboard boxes from appliances and cabinets for me to use. I used some left over black and gray paint from repainting Jackson's room and DH's work blade (again) and here's what we ended up with...

And how can you have a superhero party without proper superhero attire? So I bought some fabric, traced the cape from Jack's Superman costume, cut them out and added some iron-on velcro closures to the neck. Then I printed out monograms for each child on card stock, traced it onto colorful foam cut those out and hot glued them to Superman shields that I cut out of black sticky felt. So each kiddo got their very own monogram Superhero cape. Well, you can't have a cape without a mask so, you guess it, I made each kiddo a mask too. I used black felt for the back of the mask and different colored felt for the front. I traced a pattern from First Palette onto each set of felt pairs. Then I hot glued them together and cut them out. Used a small hole punch to make holes for the black elastic string to go through. I knotted each end of the elastic to keep it from slipping through the holes and added some hot glue if it was slipping through. Here's the final result...

I hung all the capes on hooks for the kids to choose the color they wanted. I put a mask, a monogram and some sticky foam glitter stars in a favor bag for each of them to decorate their capes with.

So there you have it, the makings of a SUPER birthday party. I will post photos of all my creations in action at the actual party as soon as I get the photos from the photographer. I had a really great time making all of it but I'm not gonna lie it was time consuming. It probably took me a total of 5 days of work spread over 3 weeks to get it all done but it was so totally worth to see how much my son loved his party. I will most likely be listing the custom masks and monogram shields in my etsy shop soon so if you love them but wouldn't love making them you can look for them there and let me do the dirty work.

Peace and Love from this side of the mamahood,