Party Progress

Hello all!
So my laptop is acting pretty wonky because I have yet to put all of my old work onto our hard drive. I know I know its soo bad of me!! To bring me to my point, I used iPhoto to tweak the photos a bit so the colors are a little off today (especially in the invite photo).  I usually only need to brighten them because I often take pictures with horrible lighting!

I just wanted to give a little peek of the invite I created for Little's second birthday.  I wanted the invite to match the party, simple and sweet.  I really only handed out invites to grandparents and the rest of the  family was pretty much word of mouth, like I said its a very small party.  The big number two is a DIY I'm working on for the party table or the door (haven't decided).  I just wanted to show a little progress  and a couple of cute pictures of my Little.

LOOK at that curl, I want to throw a party just for that one curl alone!! When you have a kid who's hair grows slower than grass you get excited for these things! I just want to cut it off and keep it in my purse!!! But I won't, Ill leave it be. Promise.

On a very special note: Today is my parents 15th wedding anniversary!! Math off a bit? Well 15 years ago Papaw and Gramma (who was just called Mama then) got married and we got the best Dad we could ever ask for!! Thank you to both Papaw and Gramma for giving us an amazing childhood.  At this very moment they are off on a road trip to celebrate like the youngins they are!!

8 more days till the birthday party... scramble mode ON!
<3 Mama Chuca

Weekend Smiles

We are looking at a pretty great weekend ahead:
Today Dada went on his deep sea fishing trip that Little and I "gave" him for Fathers day and he'll be gone all day.  So Little and I will be hanging out with Squish and Tia Linda.  Saturday night Dada and I will be heading to a good friends birthday celebration, we're gonna have a little grown up time together!  And Sunday Im hoping to take Little to see the movie Brave.  Gramma took Squish last Saturday to see it as sort of a girls day and they loved it.  Im definitely looking forward to our full weekend ahead and Im going to leave a few links to enjoy.

Thinking this would make the perfect gift for Little's birthday.  We like to give him something extra special!

If you haven't heard about the Disney/Pixar movie Brave, please go watch the trailer now! (Im sure you've heard of it though!)

I am a huge fan of Baby Gap and Im loving this new collection.  At first I thought it would be super hard to dress a boy but I LOVE IT!

This blog has finally convinced me to move forward with my red jeans idea.  The idea: take my old pair of light gray jeans and dye them red! It sounds pretty easy and I can hit 2 birds with one stone; try the DIY and have red jeans! (I hate that saying!)

Im finally doing it! Im going to open an Etsy store!  Im going to start small with selling invitations Ive designed (and all things invitation related) then move on to bigger things.  Its very scary and thrilling at the same time!! Ill have a full scoop in a later post.

Looking forward to big fun this weekend with more smiles like the one above!
<3 Mama Chuca

7 DIYs

via

via

via

via

via

via

via

We had an awesome weekend in these parts. We relaxed at Grammas on Friday, celebrated Squishy's Dads birthday on Saturday and Sunday we took our Little to see Madagascar 3!! Madagascar 3 was awesome btw!

But today I wanted to share 7 DIY's Im dying to take on! 

1. I love this special felt party hat for the birthday boy! I think I can do a cute Brown Bear hat for Little. 

2. For Little's 1st birthday party Dada and I made Little a special t-shirt to wear. It was the first time we ever worked with an iron on and I think it came out pretty good.  I just love the idea of a really cute simple tee for Little to wear to show off the awesomeness of turning 2.  Hopefully I can try and recreate this with ink instead of the iron on!!

3. These terrariums are sooo adorable!  This might actually be a Dada & Little project now that I think about it, but Im sooo excited to show these off around his room. 

4. As I was looking around the web and (mostly) Pinterest for baby shower games I came across this awesome activity for the party!  A simple and darling wish list written by guests for the new baby girl. 

5. I also happened to come across this DIY for cute table settings.  Not only are they made of baby jars but they most definitely fit into our "theme".  Its a very loose theme of "paper flowers", did I mention this?  The soon to be mama is an artist and I wanted to give her baby shower a little twist. Hopefully it turns out half as good as it looks in my head, this seldom happens!

6.  I live in Texas and it is hot pretty much 90% of the year but I can't help but love scarves.  I LOVE SCARVES!! Maybe I could find a lightweight fabric so I can look cute and not sweat buckets!

7.  If you've never heard of the blog My Cakies please finish this post and head on over immediately!! I love Rubyellens style, beautiful little girls and I always love her DIY's.  Her fabric wrapped necklace is just what I need because Im totally into the chunky statement necklace trend right now!

When I tackle these awesome DIYs I will report back here asap! I also wanted to share this picture Gramma sent me today.  Why is it so darling?!?

<3 Mama Chuca

Birthday Inspiration

Little will be 2 soon!!  Well July 24 he will be 2, but that still leaves me little time to plan a Little party! (see what I did there)  Last year we gave Little a "Where the Wild Things Are" birthday party and it turned out great.  This year we decided to give him a  Brown Bear Brown Bear birthday party, it has been his favorite book for quite some time. So much so, that we have to hide it sometimes ( I know were horrible!) so we can take a break, we literally know it by heart over here!!  Im so excited about this theme because there are so much possibilities, I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to this special event!!
We decided that we were going to make it a little smaller than the first birthday party, so it will be just family and a couple of close friends.  A small backyard barbecue will do for our Littles big day, its everything he loves; family, being outside, cake, friends and water games! I think its better smaller so I can make the gift bags for the kiddies that much more special and I can try to do as much DIY as I can!!

For eats:

via

via

We LOVE cupcakes, so we will have a lot of them (in all the animal colors) for our guests in place of the cake.  We will still have a small cake for Littles big #2 candle and for him to eat all on his own however he wants, after all it is his birthday.  We will also have an awesome lunch/dinner...(Linner?) of bbq and some sides.  We will provide fruit and veggie trays as well, yes people will be full and happy! 

 Party Decor:

via

via

via

via

These are just a few examples I've found that I really want to incorporate into this party! I love the idea of guests, young and old, wearing party hats in celebration.  I especially love the idea of the balloon carrying pictures, for one Little loves balloons and the another is Im really into picture banners from over the year.  This balloon banner will do the trick and be very interesting to look at!  Since there will be less guests, I think I want to make a photo booth to commemorate the occasion.  These seem to be really popular right now and Im jumping on board!!  The last photo is something I think Little would enjoy, he happens to have a couple of little animal figures that he keeps track of daily to play with.  I just think it would be so cute and really nice for Little to have his little friends help him celebrate his birthday as well.  Another thing that will be a major part of decorations, not pictured though, are balloons... a TON of balloons!! He will be in balloon heaven that day!

 For the kids:

via

via

via

via

Its amazing how much personality Little has and that he clearly has his own likes and dislikes. So right away I knew I wanted all his favorites to go in the kiddie bags!! Coloring and drawing is a pretty big favorite in our home and I love the idea of making our own colors for each of the kids (along with a notebook of course)!  IF that doesn't work then Ill be providing colors and little notebooks for each kiddo, I have this idea that they could say something like "Little Little what do you see?"...corny?? That third photo is actually a gift ball, each one of those goodies is wrapped in different layers of crape paper formed into a ball. This is an amazing idea because A. I could easily wrap Littles favs in it B. what kid doesn't want to unwrap a ball full of goodies and C. Little has a great fondness for Balls!!
The last photo is awesome because I could make ears of different animals from the book to place in the kiddie bags.  Brown Bear ears, blue horse ears, purple cat ears, white dog ears... and so on, I told you so many possibilities!

Im super excited!! Although our theme is the Brown Bear book, were thinking we are going to focus more on the colors of the animals for the decor of the party.  Since we live in Texas, ugh Texas heat in July, I will also have water games, water guns and a inflatable water slide (Little is going to LOVE it). I just know I will be adding to that little Pinterest board up until the week of the party, Pinterest is a curse sometimes ;). Ive already begun working on the invitations, SO CUTE, and soon I will begin the PINATA!! Hello?! its a party of course were gonna have a piñata... a brown bear piñata! This is one of my favorite parts of motherhood, creating super special days for my Little and relieving the excitement the day of.

<3 Mama Chuca

P.S. Follow me on Pinterest if you like, or you can view the rest of my Little's Brown Bear Birthday board!

we'll eat you up, we love you so

Yesterday I heard the very sad news that one of my favorite children's book authors/illustrators had died, Maurice Sendak.  He wrote one of my favorite books of all time "Where the Wild Things Are" and he has been an inspiration to me for as long as I can remember.  Sendak's way of writing a book for children is both terrifying and intriguing. I can only dream that I could someday have a similar response from any work that I do, be it art or written (although Ill have much better luck in art).   Above you'll see the pieces I've made inspired by Sendak's Wild Thing book.

The first one is also inspired by the "Keep Calm..." fad that has already disappeared, but I really loved the idea of this wild thing concept.  I made it yesterday as a small tribute to Sendak for his passing, I especially love that its pretty much a contradiction, in a way.  But its also pretty much the philosophy that I try to live by when raising my Little. I want him to "keep calm" by focusing on whats important and not letting small things get to him (at this age its when he can't get the bear shaped toy into the whole). But I also want him to "wild thing on"; he is always allowed to be himself, to be creative, to be outgoing, to be hilarious, to be crazy, to be a kid, to be silly, to be anything that resembles spirit or anything that somebody might interpret as "wild".

The second piece is the back and front of the baby shower invite I used when I was pregnant with my Little.  When I got pregnant I started collecting children's books because I knew I wanted to raise a reader, the way my mother raised me.  So when I bought the Wild Things book and started reading it over and over to my tiny Little in my tummy, I could always feel a flutter of kicks. Maybe it was my voice reading that encouraged the kicks, but I like to think it was because he was recognizing his story and then I realized I had a wild thing on my hands.  While my Little wild thing kicked away, I again became engrossed in the words and illustrations of this remarkable book.  So I decided that if a wild thing was coming, everyone should have a warning that he was on his way.  My mother was skeptical about my theme, but Little being her first grandchild she agreed (she has a special love for this little boy).

The third piece is an invitation for Littles first birthday party.  The first few months with Little had me doubting a wild thing nature, he was too calm and too sweet.  But I quickly learned that "few" was the operative word!  Yes that first year was filled with wild thing moments from morning to night, he was so excited all of the time and not to mention active!  He was definitely a handful! So naturally when it came to choosing a theme for his Big First Birthday Bash, "Where the Wild Things Are" was the obvious choice! Even Dada had to agree that we were raising a wild thing and he should have a party to celebrate it (or celebrate our surviving that first year).  So we came up with the idea but since I wanted a lot of DIY for this special birthday, Dada worked on the invitation and did a spectacular job (he's also a graphic designer!).  Maybe one day Ill "Rewind" here again and post of the pictures from that birthday (I even made wild thing piñata)!

That last picture is Little at 1 year old at his birthday party.  He is wearing his crown, after all he was king of all wild things that day!  He's also wearing a shirt that Dada and Mama designed and made for him to wear especially that day! (I should mention that was the first time we'd ever tried an iron on type thing)

Yes its true that Maurice Sendak wrote and illustrated a number of books beside "Where the wild things are", but this is the book that gave me the most inspiration and I wanted to share it.  Here are some of his other works that are sure to inspire anybody with a wild thing inside.

<3 Mama Chuca