Frozen Party: Making it happen

I wanted to dedicate a separate post to giving lots of tips on how I put together the details for my bug's 5th birthday party. I know Frozen parties are BIG right now and I hope my tips can help save other busy moms some time trying to figure out all the picky details on their own.

Finding Frozen merchandise is not for the weak of heart

Frozen merchandise is nearly impossible to find. I managed to get my bug the pictured Elsa doll/dress set during a random trip to Target. My best advice is to walk through the toy section of Target (I hate Walmart, but did try them too and never found anything) as often as you can. Doing this I managed to snag this gift set, a snow globe wand that plays "Let it Go", and a small Elsa figurine.

Turn portraits and paintings into party decor!

A simple way to decorate at home is to turn pictures that are already hanging into party decor. I covered a large painting that was over the fireplace with an inexpensive plastic tablecloth and paper snowflakes. The tablecloth can be saved and reused for a future party to reduce waste:-)

Hanging decor creates an impressive "centerpiece" when you don't have much room on your table

If you know your theme ahead of time, you can collect items on sale to save money. These lanterns, pom-poms, and hanging twirls were all purchased from Hobby Lobby on sale. The twirls were "Christmas clearance" at 90% off and the other decor were from the wedding section during a 50% off sale. These were hung using the easy to remove tabs from Command.

This falling snow creates a dramatic effect for a small cost

Using invisible thread I strung white pom poms (but you could easily use cotton balls!) and placed them at different heights to give the illusion of falling snow. The larger snowflakes were purchased from the wedding section at Hobby Lobby during a 50% off sale ($5 for 25 snowflakes). To save money, make paper snowflakes or find clearance items after the holidays.

Turn an easy cheese ball recipe into an impressive Olaf replica

The make ahead cheese ball recipe I created was incredibly simple:

1. Soften two 8oz bars of regular cream cheese and one 8oz bar of reduced fat cream cheese on the counter for a few hours.
2. Mix all of the softened cream cheese in a large bowl with one packet of ranch dip mix and 4oz of shredded sharp white cheddar. I shred my own cheese because I don't like the consistency of pre-shredded cheese because of the anti-caking agents they add.
3. Chill the mixture overnight or for several hours until firm.
4. Create two small balls for feet (I used a Pamper Chef 1 inch cookie scoop), a large and smaller ball for the body, and an oval for his head. I wrapped each piece separately in plastic wrap and then placed them all on a plate and covered again with plastic wrap. Freeze until the morning of your party. 
5. Right before the party, assemble Olaf. I am going to make a second one for bug's kid party and will post a separate tutorial on Olaf's assembly in a few weeks. 

These cute milk bottles play double duty as a dessert table decoration

I love the way fancy milk bottles look for parties, but hate the cost. I also hate how much milk gets wasted when the kids take them because they look cool, but only drink a few ounces of milk. For these reasons, I decided I wasn't going to make them. Then, I stumbled upon these bud vases on sale at Michael's. They only cost me 40 cents apiece and hold 3-4 oz of milk. Perfect! I cropped a photo of Olaf to just include his face, printed on a regular color printer, and then glued these onto paper straws (from the dollar bins at Target). I glued the black pom poms on with hot glue.

Fun way to display treats

I used this same cupcake stand last year (which my mom purchased from a craft store using a coupon) to display "wisps" for our Brave themed party. The treat this year was hot cocoa muddy buddy mix. Recipe can be found here.

Snowball and snowflake cookies complete a perfectly frosty dessert display

The vanilla meringues were purchased from Trader Joe's ($3.99 for a decent size container) and the cookies were homemade. I purchased snowflake cookie cutters on clearance after the holidays and used my mom's sugar cookie recipe. After reading many blogs for advice to prevent the cookies from spreading, I omitted all baking powder/baking soda from the recipe and made sure to chill the cut dough in the freezer for at least twenty minutes before baking.

I made the cookies ahead of time and stored them (un-frosted) in the freezer until the week of the party. Two days before the party I took the cookies out and used this small batch recipe for royal icing to outline and flood the cookies. The next day I made a second batch to pipe on the details. I kept them stored in an air-tight container until the party.

This impressive, but easy to assemble Frozen cake is a show stopper!

The first step in creating this cake is making all of the snowflakes to embellish the cake. I used a coupon to purchase a small package of Wilton white fondant at 40% off. I used the snowflake cookie cutters for the larger flakes and a set of flower fondant punches from Hobby Lobby for the smaller flakes. I left them out on a cooling rack for 24 hours to harden. I embellished the flakes with larger teal pearls, mini white pearls, and the same royal icing I used to decorate the sugar cookies.

Two days day before the party I used two box mixes (I know, I hate them too. I replaced the oil with melted butter for a more homemade flavor) to bake three layers of cake (6, 8, and 10 inch Wilton pans). They need to cool completely before you frost!

The day before the party I made 2 batches of this buttercream that I piped on using a Wilton 2D tip. Once all the frosting was piped I sprinkled the cake with white sanding sugar for sparkle and added my hardened fondant decorations and extra teal pearls.

I will have more details on Frozen party activities coming up in a few weeks after the bug's friend party, so check back then if you are hungry for more!

Frozen Party

My bug is five (FIVE!) years old now. I'll spare you a bunch of cheesy comments about "time flying" and feeling like it was "just yesterday that she was born". The truth is that some days being her mom have been amazing and others have been really, really hard. Even on our worst days, I love her with all of my heart. This year I had a blast planning a Frozen themed birthday party to celebrate what a special little girl she is to me.

Thanks to the internet and Pinterest I've been researching ideas for her party for months. I thought it would be fun this year to share "inspiration" versus "actual" photos of our party details. I'll fill in a few more details and post larger photos in a separate post later this week.

I really wanted to share these photos early, check back later this week for tutorials, recipes, etc! As always, I hope my work inspires someone else out there!

Happy Birthday Mom

My mom's birthday was actually last month. In the month prior to her birthday and the entire month after her birthday I've been trying to think of the perfect gift. In the past I've given her jewelry, photos of the girls, clothing, gift cards - all the usual "mom" gifts. And after living in her house for the past few months I could think of plenty of *stuff* to give her. But for some reason that really just doesn't feel like enough this year.

Why is it so hard? It's not something specific she did. Or something she said. Or really any one thing at all. It's that it just hit me. I'm a 31 year old woman living a parallel life to the one my mother must have lived 25 years ago. Sure, there are some obvious differences. I work out of the home, my mom babysat at home. My dad worked long hours and rarely helped with cooking or cleaning and left the majority of the parenting responsibilities to my mom. My husband neglects much (but not all) of the household work, but is 100% my full time partner in parenting. Money is slightly less of an issue for me than it was for my mom.

But if you throw out the details, the core of our everyday lives is too similar to ignore. Raising two little girls, trying to be a good wife, working hard, and going to bed exhausted. And the heartbreaking fact of it all - what I think has been keeping me up at night -  is that the vast majority of these earliest efforts at motherhood will go unremembered and without thanks.

Now that I am on the other side of the equation, I feel like the number of things I want to thank my mother for could fill volumes. The amount of gratitude I feel seems like it couldn't possibly be expressed through anything you'd find at the mall. So today I am presenting my mother with my genuine thanks for all those things she thought were forgotten.

To My Mom,

Thank you for getting up early, even when you wanted to sleep for two more hours.
Thank you for making me breakfast and talking me down from the edge when there wasn't any more of my favorite cereal left and I had to settle on something else.
Thank you for doing the laundry so I had clean clothes to wear every day. And thank you for biting your tongue when I put ridiculous outfits together.
Thank you for putting my toys away eight times a day as I left a trail of destruction behind me on my quest to have fun.
Thank you for listening with rapt attention to my long winded nursery school stories about nothing that I forgot the point of halfway through.
Thank you for not killing me when I threw a tantrum about nothing and wouldn't stop screaming for twenty minutes.
Thank you for grocery shopping with me and having to explain over and over again why we did need frozen vegetables and did not need frosted animal crackers.
Thank you for finding a way to make holidays magical even when you were tired, stressed, and couldn't really afford all the things you wanted me to have.
Thank you for spending hours decorating beautiful cakes for my birthday parties.
Thank you for making family vacations special. They might not have always been what you wanted, but were what we could afford and you made the best of it.
Thank you for playing silly games with me when you would rather have laid on the couch and gone to sleep.
Thank you for staying up all night when I was sick with painful ear infections.
Thank you for cooking me dinner every night, even when I told you it was gross and refused to eat it.
Thank you for reading me the same books over and over at bedtime even when you hated them.
Thank you for never getting a sound night's sleep because you were constantly on the alert for my nightmares, sleepwalking, and sleep talking.
Thank you for being willing to do it all over again so I could have a sister.

Thank you for all of this and so much more.

Let it Go

I can hardly believe this, but my bug's 5th birthday is just over a week away!! Which means right now is party planning crunch time! Things always become stressful around now because I get overenthusiastic and try to do too much. In addition to keeping up with the normal routine of being a full time pediatrician, raising two monsters beautiful children, preventing the destruction of my parents' house, stressing over the building of our new house, getting back to the gym (at last!), and feeding us all, squeezing in time to plan adorable goodie bags for 20+ kids with a quirky theme is challenging.

Obviously no one is holding a gun to my head to do anything. It's just that planning a party brings together theme-ing, crafting, decorating, food, and baking which are seriously some of my favorite things. I find it very hard to hold back sometimes because I get SO EXCITED when I find a fun idea. The problem with the internet and Pinterest is that I find too many fun ideas and then I get too busy and lose sight of what my goal really is - enjoying my hobbies and creating fun for my girls.

That is the inspiration for my post today - finding balance. I'm not going to throw it all out the window as some cheeky blogs are telling me I should. I think it's rude and judge-y to say what I'm doing is all fluff and doesn't matter just because it doesn't matter to you. Honestly, when you get right down to it, isn't that attitude really just more of the same? Instead of "I'm a better parent than you because I had a cupcake station at my kid's party", it's "I'm a better parent because I didn't have to make a cupcake station." For me, I'm letting go of the bad stuff and keeping the things that mean something to me. I hope I can inspire more overly stressed mamas out there to embrace what they love and let the rest go.

Today, I'm letting go of...

• Cooking myself into a frenzy
• Spending a fortune in time and money replicating every party blog detail just because I saw it when I don't love it
• Having to decorate everything! I'm focusing on my dessert table - because it's my favorite thing!
• Having too much to do the day of the party so I miss things
• Hating myself when I can't do it all - this applies to party planning, parenting, and LIFE