Happy 5th Birthday Carly!

It is even hard for me to write that without feeling a lump in my throat. This birthday has been a little different than birthdays in the past. Although I was feeling the same excitement outwardly expressed by Carly, I was also harboring some uneasiness, sadness I guess you could say. Now I know that feeling that everyone talks about,..."I don't want my son/daughter to grow up." I guess that's where I am.

I don't want to say goodbye to my sweet little innocent, adorable, compliant, little girl who wakes up smiling, who loves her brother and likes to be his "Mommy" when his real Mommy isn't around. The little girl who loves to dress up and act like a princess, and who retreats to my shoe closet anytime she passes to put on her favorite pair of my black and white pumps. The little girl who could spend hours playing with her dolls in her dollhouse, or strolling them around the house in the stroller, or preparing meals for them at the kitchen set. The little girl who spontaneously stops conversation or breaks silence by stating that she loves me, ..."Mommy, I love you. I love you so much." The little girl with a great sense of humor who loves to laugh and whose laughter is contagious. The little girl who "reads" chapter books with such enthusiasm and who loves to look at picture books and be read to. The little girl who loves to snuggle and have her hair played with, or her back scratched. The little girl who loves to sing and thinks nothing of singing along, in soprano, to any song she hears (usually with her own made-up words). The little girl who loves to have her nails and/or toes polished. The little girl who has the determination and drive to teach herself to swim and ride her bike without training wheels. The little girl who is eager to learn to read and write and go to school. My little girl...I hope you NEVER change!

On a happier note, we celebrated Carly's birthday on Sunday with a few of her closest friends. I had originally planned on just hosting a plain 'ole, simple party with no theme and some traditional brithday party games (yep...really)but after some internet searching for inspiration, I fell in love with the Baking Party on One Charming Party's website. I purchased their Party Plan, for only $6, which included everything from invitations to decorations to menus, and even included printables. As I typically do, I used their material as a springboard, and went to work designing my own Baking Party using some of their ideas and some of my own. I couldn't have been happier with the results.

I used the color scheme from OCP and made these tissue paper pom poms to hang around the house along with balloons, the Happy Birthday banner and the cupcake liner garland from OCP.

Each girl received an apron and chef's hat

and got to work rolling out the dough and using their cupcake cookie cutters to cut out cookies.

While they cookies were baking, we played "Pin the birthday hat on Carly". Then it was time to frost and decorate the cookies...

The finished products...aren't they beautiful?

We concluded with the pinata and enjoying cupcakes made and decorated by the birthday girl!

and every guest was sent home with a box of the cookies along with the cookie dough recipe (courtesy of my mom)

What a great party! Thanks, Sally, for acting as the photographer! Thank you Sara and Brittany from One Charming Party for the inspiration and for coming through at the last minute with the pdf of my recipe, and most importantly, Thank You Carly for being the sweetest little girl anyone could ever ask for. Happy Birthday my sweet little girl!