A Letter to Adaleine on her Fourth Birthday

This is a letter I wrote for Adaleine late the night before her birthday. Since I’m just now getting around to sharing her party, I thought I’d share this too. : )

 Dear Adaleine,

Today you are four years old. I just sat and looked at pictures of all your birthdays and I’m completely overwhelmed with love for you. Your Nana calls you Sunshine and no name could be more fitting!

 I love your 1,000-watt smile. I love your chubby cheeks. I love the way your hands are still squishy, reminding me you’re still my baby girl. I love your beautiful giggle and how much you love to laugh. I love your gorgeous curls! They are such a perfect reflection of your soft and glowing spirit.

 You’re my sunshine on a cloudy day. You’re my brave little soldier. During the weeks and months of dealing with your burns last summer, I was constantly amazed and humbled that God gave me a little girl so strong. So strong that she didn’t complain about the pain. So strong that she didn’t complain about the bandages. And so strong that I know that when you get older and someone asks about your scars you’ll be able to shrug it off and say it was just something that happened to you. They are simply a part of this beautiful package that is YOU.

You’re so fearless. Your first day of preschool you actually waved me away, telling me you were fine and I should go now! I love the fact that even though you are one of the biggest kids in your class, the person you seem most drawn to is the littlest girl. That shows me, my dear little Sissy, that you are pure and sweet to the core. My gentle giant. Taking care of anyone you can and making sure they feel safe and loved.

You are nothing but light. You compliment my hair when it looks awful, tell me I’m such a sweet mommy when you know that I’m struggling, and you love to snuggle up close. I love the way you’ll shrug and make a funny face for no reason at all except to make me smile. I love the way you give so much love to your little brother. The two of you have such a special love that I know you’ll be close for always.

My sunshine. My girl. My brave one. My sweet Adaleine Grace.

I love you.

Rainbow Birthday Party: Planning & Inspiration

Like everyone else, we have had a lot going on this past month or so. The last time I posted I was getting ready for Halloween, working on Eden’s school fundraiser, attempting to slipcover a glider, birthday party planning, trying to figure out a paint color for the living room, and visiting family. Well all of that’s done now. I would like to say that I have updates for you on all of those things, but if I’m being realistic I will admit that that probably won’t happen. Such is life : )

I do want to share what we did for Adaleine’s birthday party though. It was so much fun and I thought it was quite the success! I will now bury you under a pile of ‘inspiration’ photos so you can see what I was going for.

 I'm completely obsessed with these triangle pennants. So that's what I took from this invitation and added it to...

...this one! I loved this invitation, and not just because it has my husband's name on it. : ) I love the color but also the simplicity on it. When looking for invitations I knew that I needed to find something that I can make myself. These aren't too high-priced at just $15 for the design and file to print, but I was trying to keep costs as low as I could.

I love the look of the poms at the top and the tulle down to the table. I ended up doing something similar to this, but a bit more cost effective.

When it came to the food, I wanted to have things that were colorful for our rainbow theme but still tasty and simple. These rainbow Twizzlers fit the bill 100%. The colors are so pretty and work perfectly with the theme.

I may have a slight obsession with pretzels when it comes to birthday parties. I think it's an easy way to break up all the sweetness with a touch of salty. I realized I served them at Sissy's third birthday party and also at Judah's first birthday party. That's okay. If it ain't broke, right?

I have a super yummy fruit dip that I LOVE with apples and I knew I could use that for the clouds instead of marshmallows.

Ah, the cake. There are about 3 billion different ideas online for cakes for rainbow birthday parties. Much to my sister's dismay, I lean toward simplicity and I really loved this simple and sweet cake. 

I almost lost it when I saw these adorable ribbon garland/wand/wavy things. No idea what to call them, but they seem so whimsical and nostalgic. Just what I love. I knew I wanted to do something like this for favors.

This table of party favors is uber-cute! I didn't think I would probably be able to pull off the ruffled tablecloth, but I thought that the plain white bags would be so fun with the ribbon sticks poking out of the top.

Now for the sweet little birthday girl's outfit. My sister is the reigning tutu queen and offered to make my Adaleine her own tutu for her birthday party. There were several rainbow tutus online, but I liked this one. 

I didn't link to the original sources on any of these pictures, but you can get there by checking out my Pinterest board here. Check back in the next week or so to see what I did with all of this inspiration. It didn't all look perfect, but we had a lot of fun!