Hi All,

This weekend we hosted a birthday party for Hudson at our house. You see Hudson turns 3 next weekend, but due to everyone’s availability this weekend worked best for all. Lately we have been to way too many birthday parties at a kids place where they handle everything from the invites to the cake and we wanted to do something different.

We decided on a movie night where our guests could come in their pj’s watch a movie, eat some goodies from a stocked concession stand, decorate cookies and have an indoor snowball fight. Seemed simple enough.

It never is. I spent a big chunk of last week picking up supplies for the parties and was up till 2am on Friday getting things ready. I now know why parents decide to have parties at all of those kids places. Fun was had by all, but I’m wiped.

Here are some fun details from the bash:

{Invite designed by Barbara of Studio Bara Bom.}

We used our invitation as our inspiration for the decor at the party. We wanted the party to have a wintery vibe, but not Christmas. So the addition of the blue in our invites really helped stick with a winter theme and break away from the traditional red and green of the season.

We set up the dining room with a pale blue tablecloth and a red/black buffalo check fabric. Since we had a good amount of adults attending the party so we used the dining room to set up a drink station and an area for all of the paper goods and cutlery that guests may have needed.

The initials of our guest of honor and a massive floral centerpiece that was inspired by a candy cane with a mix of cherry red and white. I picked up loads of blooms the night before at Trader Joe’s and made it myself.

Mason jars that we normally drink out of dressed up with snowflake paper straws that I found at Dollar Tree.

S’mores station with the standard supplies and the addition of peppermint white chocolate and chocolate covered graham crackers.

The basement was decked out with twinkle lights so that the kids could feel like we were having an outdoor movie night. The kids at their chicken nuggets and fries and then got to enjoy a little concession stand that I filled with an array of treats and little bags for them to do a little pick and mix.

After the movie we brought everyone back upstairs to decorate cookies!

After cookies they went back down to part take in a snowball fight with this faux snowballs. The kids loved it. Highly recommend them. I couldn’t even get any good photos of this because everyone was moving around like crazy.

We finished off the night with birthday cake!

Each little party guest got to go home with their own apron. I decided it would be a good idea to make these myself and I was making them until 30 mins before the party!

Hudson loved his party and everyone had a blast, but I’m exhausted and don’t think I will be hosting another birthday party at my house any time soon.

On Sunday I was wishfully hoping everyone would sleep in, but no we were all up by 7:30am. We helped me get the house in the Christmas spirit.

Hung a boxwood wreath that I picked up for $10 at Trader Joes:

Hung garland over the fireplace:

Christmas tree went up. I traditionally like going with a real tree, but with a curious little boy the last couple of years we have had to go fake and I do colorful bows instead of tempting oranaments as my decoration.

My front door got into the holiday spirit as well. Cheerful striped burlap wreath from My Little Lady Crafts. Thanks Liz!

I also had time to work on two photo shoots/blog posts and Hudson asked if he could go shopping aka open some of his presents. He opened a couple of gifts and Asher was extremely happy with this dragon bearing Hudson’s name embroidered on it’s foot.

Asher also got into a little mischief with the paper towel roll during lunch time.

Our weekend ended with a trip out to pick out a Christmas Tree for my parents house.

Asher really enjoyed the whole process and squealed with delight. Hudson enjoyed it too, but he is still his in his no picture stage.

It really is beginning to look a lot like Christmas!

I’m wiped and need a weekend to recover from my weekend.