PAR-TAY

JillyBean doesn't officially turn two until tomorrow, but she partied like a two-year-old Sunday afternoon. The celebration took place at The Little Gym and we invited several of her friends. It was a lot of fun. Jilly was so excited for her "party" but didn't quite realize that it started with activities in the Gym. In her mind, the party was supposed to take place in the room that had all of the balloons, pizza, and, of course, the cupcakes. She threw a little bit of a fit in the beginning of the celebration but relaxed and enjoyed herself toward the end. Still, she was anxious to get the party started.

The theme was monkeys. We sent out pink and brown invitations that had a monkey sporting a tutu and tiara. They were really cute and you'd think that it would have been easy to find pink and brown decor but it was a bit difficult. So, I had to dig deep down inside myself and become, hold on a sec, crafty. I like the idea of doing crafts but when it comes down to it, I would rather pay someone else to do it. I'll cook and bake all day long, but sitting down to do some sort of craft doesn't always turn out all that well.

The treat bags that we gave to all of Jilly's gifts were filled with a small stuffed Curious George, a set of Curious George stickers, a monkey jigsaw puzzle and Jilly's signature sweet - Jelly Belly jellybeans. In addition, I made a batch of monkey munch. I'm really lucky that those made it to the party as Beanie Daddy kept picking at the stash before I could even fill up the bags.

I made favor bags using pink lunch sacks and brown ribbon with white polka dots. A little thank you tag with a monkey sporting a pink bow was added to keep the monkey theme going.


The next creative endeavor that I undertook was a birthday banner. This was actually pretty fun. Jilly and I went to Michael's and scoured the craft paper aisle for different variations of pink and brown paper. I found some really pretty patterns, which you can't see so well in the photo.

Probably the best birthday move, though was ordering cupcakes from the fabulous Cappellino’s Crazy Cakes. They did a mix of chocolate and pound cake cupcakes with pink and brown frosting. Half had monkeys on them and the other half had pink flowers. They turned out super cute and tasted just as good.

We all had a lot of fun, especially JillyBean. She couldn't stop talking about the "party" two days before the event. The most important thing to her was having cake, balloons and a hat. I had thought about getting a new party hat, but decided just to let her wear last year's hat. We couldn't keep it on her then, but this year she wanted to wear it, for a while at least. Although it was pink and green, it still worked well and is super cute no matter what.

On one hand I cannot believe that she is going to be two tomorrow. On the other hand, it seems like she's been with us forever because I can't really remember life without her. We're going to have a small dinner celebration tomorrow night. I'm making Bean's favorite three-cheese spaghetti and she requested a "pink" sunflower cake. I typically make a lemon sunflower cake, but I guess that it won't hurt anything to make it strawberry. The celebration will continue when we visit Nana for Easter. She probably won't remember these parties, but they mean something to us. Plus, she'll have plenty of pictures to look back on when she gets older.