Welcome 2014!

Happy New Year to everyone!! At the end of 2013 I turned the big '40' and I've decided to make some positive changes in my life.  One of those changes will be to put forth more effort on my blog.  I really do enjoy writing new posts so I promised myself that I will blog on a regular basis.

My last post was from April 2013 and a lot has happened since then.  One of the best was a summer trip to my hometown, New Orleans.  The boys and I had a wonderful time and RJ celebrated his 5th birthday there with all of his cousins.  It took him FOREVER to decide on a theme, but he finally settled on Curious George.

I must admit I had a lot of fun creating the decorations for this party.  It took a lot of time, but I think for a DIY party everything looked great.  The Curious George balloon wall was a big hit.   RJ didn't want to give up his George stuffed animal until the last minute.  I'm not sure what he thought I was going to do with it, but as you can see he finally gave it up.

I loved the kite strings with all the baby pictures of RJ.  I really wanted lots of pictures of him from birth to 5 years and this worked out well.  I was able to incorporate his pictures into the design and it looked more put together than a wall of pictures.

I cut out a large R and 5 out of an old cardboard box that I receive my wine of the month in.  With 2 young boys, you must have your "Mommy Juice" on a regular :-)  I cut out tons of red, yellow and blue crepe paper and glued them to the cardboard.

I set up a table for the gift bags and a Curious George book for our guests to sign and leave notes for RJ.

We had chocolate covered bananas, cupcakes and chocolate covered marshmallows for all of our little monkey friends.

The majority of our party took place outside.  My mother went dumpster diving and found several crates that we used to make a table and chairs for the kiddos to color their Curious George pictures on.  

We also had a large sheet of paper for the kids to do finger painting on.  My dad wasn't too thrilled about this because he had a lot of paint to clean off his house the next day.  Sorry Daddy :-)  In addition we had a pool in the backyard that kept the kids and adults quite busy.

Attached to the house I had my favorite decoration, a balloon banner.  It took me two days to blow up all those balloons, but it was by far my favorite.  

At the end of the party we had a Curious George piñata filled with candy and toys.  The kids all had a blast taking turns hitting poor George. 

RJ had a great time, he asks me on a regular basis what we are doing for his 6th birthday party!!  Hope you enjoy the pictures as much as we enjoyed the party.

Renee