It's birthday time!



tissue paper flowers for our 'garden'

Today is Terza's birthday.  The little lady is two years old.  What a big girl!  It's hard to believe that two years have gone by so very quickly.

This week has been pretty great.  I've been too busy to think (about the things that were causing me so much stress the past few weeks), which was - quite honestly - a welcome break!  Making decorations and cupcakes, etc, has really been mostly for me, because let's face it, Terza is two.  She's got no idea that it's her birthday, or that she's having a party.  She just wants a cupcake. STAT!

tissue paper butterflies
 and "flower balls"

The party is this weekend and I've been busy making a 'Backyard Garden Party" bonanza for Terza and her little toddler buddies.  Every year, I make the kids' birthday cakes, but this year I decided to make most of the decorations as well.  It takes my mind off things and I enjoy the craft-time with Prima (who loves to help out!).

Terza LOVES hats.  Earlier today she was running around with a chicken hat on, yelling "Hat! Hat! Hat!" in her loudest, happiest voice (Yes, I said chicken hat.  A felt chicken hat.  It's hilarious.  Seriously.  It is seriously hilarious.).  So, I decided to make her a hat for her party, instead of the run-of-the-mill cone party hats.  I took a plain straw hat and added two kinds of pink ribbon and some flowers we had left over from another project.  Voila! a garden hat!



With the same idea in mind, I decided to forget about those tiny, flimsy, plastic "goody bags" this year.  Instead, as I was food shopping with my mum a few weekends ago, we noticed pails/shovels sets and bottles of bubbles on clearance.  I mean, we're talking *SUPER* cheap.  (My favorite kind of cheap, almost as good as FREE).

48 cupcakes - to be frosted into
beautiful flowers tomorrow! Yum.

So with this party looming, I've really been trying my best at Time Management.  It has never been my forte, but I'm working at it.  I made a schedule for myself at the start of the week (using Google Calendar, what a nifty tool.  I'm sure there are others online that are interesting, I just happened to already have a google account.  I'd never used the calendar before, but after only a week, I'm not sure how I ever lived without it!). 



Anyway, like I said, I made myself a schedule and I've largely stuck to it.  I created task lists and reminders.  I spread everything that needed to get done out over the week.  It was all very organized (and perhaps a tad obsessive).  But, the usual "schedule" of putz around all week until Saturday when I try to cram everything in at the last second and half-ass a good portion of it really sounded unappealing to me this time.  In fact, I think I could get used to organized MamaNiki.  Yes, I could.

the workstation - making name tags for the goody pails