Red, Pink, and Hearts Party

Oh man, are we still celebrating Emma's birthday?! ;) haha - it seems like Emma's birthday has taken up the entire month of February... but I do love the girl, quite a bit, so I guess that's alright. :) We had her friend party on Saturday. We invited 12 girls (some from church and some from school), and 8 were able to come. It was a full house!

The red, pink, and hearts theme resulted in awesome Valentines clearance purchases for party favors and supplies... I didn't really realize I'd get that benefit, until I went out party shopping a few days after Valentines and was like "oh awesome! 75-90 percent off!" haha. :)

Emma and I hand sewed little invites - idea from HERE

Favor bags... tweaked an idea from HERE





Cute cupcake idea

Party activities~

Roll a Lovebug - we split them into two groups and gave each group a dice...





Made heart leis and heart rings...



Then we split them into two groups again and Ben manned the darts and I was in charge of "heart-a-stack"...








The most popular activity was playing "Don't Break My Heart!"... It was so funny to watch the girls get sooo into it. I was laughing. You have a 'game board' with different colored hearts on it and you place one candy on each. Then one person leaves the room while the rest of the group chooses a heart to be the 'secret heart'. Then the person comes back and slowly picks one candy off a heart at a time in hopes that they can eat through the whole board before choosing the 'secret heart'. If they grab the candy off the secret one, then everyone yells "Don't break my heart!", and their turn is over. We gave everyone a chance to play and they just LOVED it. Isn't it always the case that the simplest activity is the most popular? I would definitely play this again for another holiday or party - you can imagine that the theme of the board and the phrase you yell out could be easily swapped...




Cupcake time!




Presents! Emma's friends brought the nicest gifts... Emma's been going through each item one at a time and just enjoying everything...


Hooray for a successful party! It was fun. This weekend was "hosting" weekend, I guess, 'cause on Sunday we had Ben's family over for a belated President's Day themed dinner. Ben made a traditional shepherd's pie (a popular colonial food... he piped on the mashed potatoes and everything... he's the best). I made apple pie and I even made the crust... it's been far far too long since I've made a full-on homemade pie. I really should do it more often!

Pie crust recipe and Apple pie recipe

Aunt Emily captured a couple cute photos of Becca and Claire... I love that Becca is giving her cute lovely smile, and Claire's profile is just so sweet.