Diary of a MOMprenuer {week 10}

Well the orders for the week have been done and my daughter's birthday party is over...WOW what a week! I do believe last weekend I was experiencing the calm before the storm and boy was this week crazy! Lot of orders, trying out a new menu schedule and attempting to get everything done I have planned for Aly's party.

So, the menu scheduling thing... I am SO tired of trying to figure out breakfast, lunch and dinner EVERYDAY!! I hate the saying "whats for food?" which is what I hear 2-3 times a day!  So what I thought I would do is check out a menu planning website and see how it goes and if it would make life any easier. I ended up at Tasty Planner and so far so good. We have been doing it for a week and a half now and I must say that trips to the grocery store have gone way down and the stress of trying to figure out what to make every night has almost gone completely! You simply browse through recipes that they have on their website or you can enter in your own recipes which is nice. Then you save recipes to your recipe box or you put them in your planner for whichever day of the week you want. Then when you are finished with a week of scheduling you can print out a grocery list. I must say I don't like the way they handle their shopping list. All they do is take every ingredient and put it on a list. You get lots of duplicates this way, but it is a free service, so its up to you how much your time is worth having to simplify your list. If you want it all done for you then a paid service is probably better. Since we are trying this out, I figured I can deal with sorting for a while, looking over the list several times helps me remember what I need while shopping anyway I suppose.
I told my 13 year old son that he needs to start  picking out a recipe for dinner once a week and he is in charge of making it (with my help if need be). I am NOT going to have boys who are  helpless in the kitchen! I will let you know how that goes this week as we need to pick out our recipes again and get to the store sometime today.  Finally ONE thing to make life a little less complicated!!

The party...while I had some ideas of what I wanted the party to look like and had picked up a few things up here and there I really wasn't ready. Friday I spent most of the day running around, taking kids to friend's houses and Aly to ballet (she just started ballet 1 this week). I also hit the second hand store in town that was having their big Summer blow out sale. They mark everything in the store 50% off to get rid of all of there Summer wear and accessories to make room for Fall and Winter. I got a few glassware pieces that I am in love with for the party as seen in Friday's Sneak Peak post. Friday night the panic set in... and I realized how much I didn't have done! I am SO much better at planning other people's parties, but when it comes to my own it seems to be last minute. I also was nervous about creating something different. There are tons of "Fairy parties" out there right now and I want mine to be unique, just like my Hazardous Teen party was unique. Anyway, at 11:00pm I was making cupcake balls, cupcakes and chocolate covered marshmallow pops. At 1:00am I was making cupcake wrappers, fairy boxes and cupcake picks. By 2am my brain was mush and I went to bed. I knew I would just start messing stuff up if I continued. Back up at 7:30am to get paper products done, run and grab flowers at the store and then set up. I am so pleased with how it all turned out!

Here are a few pictures from the party:

 This is the dress and headband I made for Aly. 

 

One of our party activities was making Fairy Tutus. My plan was to have them done ahead of time, but this actually worked out great as it took up some time and the girls got to pick which colors they wanted. Plus they loved watching them come together which was really cute! A big thank you to my Mother in law and Sister in law for helping me cut and tie 18 yards of tulle.

 

Corbin my 10 yr old and my niece who is 13 yrs old face painted the other girls while they waited for their tutus. Corbin was my "project coordinator/ face painter" or so he said..LOL. He was fabulous and played "duck duck goose" with the girls while they waited for each activity. What a wonderful big brother and a huge help!

After we made tutus the girls made necklaces with wood beads. Then I got out a big box of foam stickers I found on clearance for .97 cents along with giant Pixie sticks for them to create their own Fairy wands. They loved these, especially when I said there was candy inside the stick. 

The girls had their fairy wands, glittery crowns, tutus and faces painted then they were off running trying to find real fairies in the flower garden. I love this photo, it just looks magical!

 Last here is a sneak peak of the table set up which I will share tomorrow. This was a little side table for the lemonade and to show off some of the adorable Fairy Marshmallow pops from Stix N Pops. A HUGE hit by the way!!!

So there is a little taste of the party and of my week. See you tomorrow with all the Fairy party decorations and details!

Hugs,
Pam