Birthday Planning!

With the kids' birthdays coming up, I have lots to keep me busy the next few weeks! This is the first year Parker understands what a birthday is (somewhat, anyway) so I wanted to let him help out. I showed him some cakes of various things--animals, cars, trains, etc. and asked him what kind of cake he wanted. At first he said yes to all of them, so it took a few minutes to help him understand that he only gets to choose one. But once he got that it didn't take him long to pick one out. Keeping with the cake theme, he and I picked up a few things for goody bags, and we baked a batch of cookies yesterday and put them in the freezer. I tried to get an early start this year so I'm not running a bunch of errands the day before the party. All that's left for his party is to get the food for lunch that day, a few balloons/decorations, and make the cake. I'll leave all the fun little details for later when I can post pictures of the party!  :)

I have an idea of what I want to make for Elise's cake, too. I've been pinning a bunch of pictures, so now I just have to sit down and pull things from different sites to make it just right. Hard to believe our baby girl will be one in just a couple months--where did this year go?! 

I had wanted to make her a quiet book for her first Christmas, as I did for Parker, but with a newborn AND a toddler this time around, that didn't happen. After she was born I still considered trying to make it for Christmas. And then I laughed that I would even consider such a thing. :)

So....it will have to be for her 1st birthday instead. And you know what? She will never know the difference! My goal was to work on it over the summer and have it finished by now. Ha! Haha! Yeah.... I finally found and ironed the fabric for it last week.  

At first I thought I'd use the same pattern as Parker's but that's boring, right? I might use one or two of the same pages. But I went on Etsy and Pinterest and looked at a lot of quiet book pages and patterns and I think I found enough different page ideas that can fill the book. The downside is that because the pages I found were from so many random sites, I'll have to make up patterns as I go along. It may take a bit longer since I'll have to draw them out first, but Elise will end up with a one-of-a-kind book! I went ahead and cut out the cover and the pages so I'm ready to start putting the pictures on them. Will post pics later of the finished book!