her ‘punzel party

after celebrating each of her siblings’ birthdays and patiently waiting for the ever-so-slow july to arrive, it was finally lauren’s turn to party!

she was beside herself with eager anticipation.

i was beside myself with party preparations.  let it be known that pinterest is a bad, bad place.

etsy, too.

after a few weeks of gathering ideas, making plans, purchasing supplies, making lists, preparing items, hanging decorations, rehanging decorations, and a couple late nighters, came the night before the big day.

and if you know phil…

you know that he is all about the party favor bag.  unfortunately for me this time, he was too busy with work to be able to help pull it all together.  so the task fell entirely to me. 

thankfully though, as i was assembling them the night before the party, phil nodded his approval and said he would have liked one of these bags.  “if you were a 4-year-old girl?” i clarified for him.  “no, i mean i would totally want one of those bags.  you don’t have to be a 4-year-old girl to appreciate a good party bag” he declared.

success!

and then the big day was here!  see those flags?  each one had to be printed, cut out, and strung together with ribbon.  they were all throughout the house, too.  300 of them.  i’m telling you, etsy is a bad, bad place.

the backyard all ready for the ‘punzel party.

fit for a princess party luncheon.

hard to see in the other pictures, but in a fit of sheer madness, i had made a butterfly mobile to hang in the girls’ room and thought it would be cute hanging above the table during the party too.

lauren’s been all about rapunzel lately and loved seeing her all over the place. 

ok so if your original goal is to keep things simple, then avoid sites like etsy and pinterest AT ALL COSTS.  they do bad, bad things to aspirations of simplicity.  this is what i have learned.

if not, you may find yourself dangling off a stepladder at six in the morning hanging paper lanterns in your backyard tree and listening to peacocks screeching at you instead of being sound alseep in your warm cozy bed like any other sane and rational human being.  don’t say i didn’t warn you.

and in true michelle style, i had put 11:00 on the invitation but happily believed forever after that the starting time was really 11:30.  and was all set to work up to the last minute to get the food ready.  that is, until i happened to recheck the invite at 10:50.  pure awesomeness is all i have to say about that.  that and my eternal gratefulness to my dear friend heesun who happened to arrive first and i pounced on her and immediately put her to work.  she ended up arranging fruit and cheese platters way prettier than i ever would have and her calm yet cheerful disposition worked wonders on my own frazzled state.

so heesun, i thank you!

because for better or worse, party time was upon us!

we started off the festivities making pascal blowers.

hee hee, this was my favorite activity.  and happily, the girls enjoyed them too!

then we moved on to decorating crowns.

i love how girl parties usually end up involving arts ‘n crafts in some form and how the girls seem to always enjoy doing stuff like this.

the big brother on the other hand…

k, then it was time for lunch!  which included jello boats!  (woulda been nice to get a shot of the whole table with all the food, but i seem to not be so good at hostessing and picture-taking simultaneously.  gotta work on that.)

and the sleeper hit was nutella on toast with strawberry.  or banana.  your choice.

i had grand plans of making a fancy pink punch, but had to nix that idea and went with pink lemonade instead.  but i did manage to get these cute little flower ice cubes made!

so… all that work?  totally worth it.

yep.

right after lunch, we moved on to castle painting.  the big brother decided to he wasn’t too big yet to take part in this activity.

“dude, where are your shoes?”  “dude, where are your pants?!”

ah, little brothers.

the kids loved painting.  even if there didn’t seem to be a cohesive vision for the project.

this little brother really, really loved the painting.  it was written (er, painted?) all over his face.  and feet.

they didn’t forget to paint the inside of the castle, either!

the masterpiece.

and this is when phil started inhaling helium from the balloons to sound like a chipmunk.

silly daddy.

and just when everyone thought the party was winding down…

a special surprise guest rang the doorbell!

more party pics to come!