Ben Turns 3

You are smart. You are fresh. You have dimples for miles and baby blue eyes. Your favorite store is Barnes and Noble where you buy "the books with the hard toys." You love Peter Pan, Jake and the Pirates and all of your sisters princess books (which are in your room for bedtime reading). You steal daddy's eggs every time he makes them. You prefer your peanut butter in a bowl, with a spoon but then you stick your fingers in to eat it and leave the spoon clean.  You LOVE ice cream. You are always ready to go with me to run errands. You potty trained in a week and don't wear pull ups at night. You gave up your binky without a fight and switched to a big boy bed with NO issues.

You throw tantrums like a champion. You are stubborn as a bull. You love your friends from school . You call us in the morning to come get you and when we walk in, you ask if it's time to wake up, if we say yes, you pull up your pillow and grab the toys that you put under there every night and ask to go downstairs. You wipe away our kisses in a game of back and forth that has been going on for a year or more.Your sister is your favorite person on the planet and even if she denies it, she has loved you since day one. 

You like to dance, and you sing when you think no one is listening. You have every toy you've ever received in a private inventory in your brain. You wear your cowboy hat from Halloween 2 years ago all the time even though you wouldn't wear it on Halloween.

You have completed this team of Metcalfes and although we are counting down until your tantrums subside and we joke that we want to sell you. You make me smile a million times a day and I thank you for that.

Happy Birthday Buddy!

Frozen Birthday Party Food

It's all in the details and I had SO MUCH fun with this! Blue/White/Purple everything!

I searched Pinterest and found TONS of ideas and did almost all of them. They all were SUPER EASY and lots of fun.

For Katie's bday at school I hand piped individual snowflakes out of melted chocolate to put on top of the cupcakes. You have to make sure the temperature of the chocolate is just right otherwise this is hard to do - once you get the hang of it though - Super easy and the kids loved them.

 I went to the Dollar Store - Bought some White Fudge covered FLIPZ - melted blue candy melts and drizzled them all over the Flipz - then sprinkled a little blue sugar for some extra sparkle. The girls LOVED THESE!

 I painted all the white plastic glasses from the Dollar store and put blue punch out (Hawaiian Punch) It was a HUGE HIT as well.

 Dipped Pretzel rods in candy melt  and a little blue sugar.

 Cheated and bought pre-colored frosting - then mixed it with white frosting to make it a little lighter - piped it on and then finished with snowflake sprinkles.

 The Painted cups with the blue jello in it.

 Had the kids help hand dip marshmallows in  - you guessed it - candy melt and blue sugar:) Then we dipped lollipop sticks in chocolate and stabbed the marshmallows to make lollipops.

 Fruits, veggies and little Kristoff Ice bites (blue jello jigglers cut into cubes- I put them in mini snowflake cupcake liners and passed them around butler style)

The centerpiece is a bunch of blue/purple/white stuff I bought during Christmas Clearance from the craft store

Somehow, Linda was able to find a baker that ACTUALLY had the Frozen cake decorator kit! Huge hit with the ladies!

I mean, seriously - Anna and Elsa sang happy birthday to them - it was AWESOME

We made a candy bar and let the girls pick 5 things each to take home - it was total chaos for a bit - but in the end, worked perfectly as I had to distract them from the princesses leaving the house:)

We also had snowflake sugar cookies with white icing which were DELICIOUS.

Looking back, we should have had less sugar but it was just ALL SO MUCH FUN and so pretty - you can't really make carrots blue and sparkly right???

Frozen Birthday Extravaganza

Frozen has by far, become the most popular Disney Movie in this house and I'm sure almost every other house with a little girl in America. How do I know this, because when we went to buy Decorations for Katie and Mia's party - there were none to be found ANYWHERE - a full 6 weeks before their party. Sold out in stores, online - up to the distribution level. We signed up for mailing lists to find out when stuff would be available - but were only able to score HUGE Mylar balloons and a pretty adorable Birthday banner online. Unfortunately, we had to pay above market prices for them - but we more than made up for it with ALL the other decorating and details we made!

I hope you enjoy - this was a blast to prep for and execute and I'm kinda super sad it's all over.

I'll split this into 2 posts - Food and Decorations:) 

The Teeny Tiny Birthday banner that we made a little bigger by surrounding it with balloons and streamers.

Christmas Lights, the snowflake overhang and a spiral of paper snowflakes.

The girls doing exactly what the princesses asked  - getting ready to learn a dance to Let It Go!

A balloon curtain that said - I'm a decoration - but I also mean, Please do not go upstairs:)

 Made the kids help with an assembly line to make the favor bags
Which included handmade snowflake hair clips, personalized pencils that said Do You Want To Build A Snowman, notebooks, pencil sharpeners, balloons.

Snowflake hair clips made out of felt.

 I made this curtain out of 3 plastic tablecloths. Laid on the floor - Put weights on them to hold it down, then cut strips and braided them. It could have been more even but I was feeling lazy that day. We just put it in Katie's room since we have to have Benny's birthday next and the colors are all wrong:)

 Paper chains made out of streamers and foam snowflakes glued to yarn hung from the middle of the room.

 Clear plastic dollar store cups, painted with snow swirls

 streamers and snowflakes everywhere

 6 plus foot long runner for the ceiling with snowflakes dangling down

 The Birthday Girls waiting for their guests

 Foam Crown decorating

 A special viewing of the movie in the background

 Super Duper Surprise Guests!

 She had just told him that she thought the princesses got their with Magic

 There was a sing a long, they read them a story, they taught them a dance and they gave the Birthday Girls a Coronation ceremony so they are REAL princesses now.
There were 26 kids here and they all did everything Anna and Elsa asked them to immediately. It was amazing.

 We put out a candy bar and let the girls pick 5 things each to make sure everyone got something and, also to NOT send them home with TOO much sugar. It got a little crazy at the end because one of the princesses came back to get their equipment and I FREAKED out because I didn't want the girls to see her out of costume so I started yelling about getting candy bags for the candy bar - it worked - attention was on me and the princess made her escape undetected!

A much needed, very deserved glass of wine at the end of the party for the party moms!

I seriously had the most fun ever with this party and the girls seemed to REALLY like it - so in the end - WIN WIN!

We DID IT! - We bought a house!

It was a bit of a rocky process - but we did it! I got my couches, the seller didn't leave anything weird behind (I was looking for like, moldy cheese in cabinets or something weird)

Funny things that happened

1. Apparently my name come sin about 20 different versions - Ana Inigo, Ana M Inigo, Ana Metcalfe, and so on and so on - so I had to sign 3 pages of alias signatures saying they were all, in fact, me;)
2. I won the credit score contest - my numbers were always just a little big higher which is vindication from when Dave and I took a psych course together in college and he did better than me without doing ANY of the reading.

It's ours and it's AMAZING. We were going to move slowly, but between the two of us, have already moved like 1/3 or our stuff (mostly kid stuff) so we are just gonna hire movers on Thursday and be done with it:) The kids love the house and we already met some neighbors (2 little girls right next door - 6 and 3 and they already spent yesterday afternoon playing with Katie.

We already painted the kids rooms (pics later) and have been eating there camp out style which the kids LOVE!!!!

We plan to finish moving furniture on Thursday and sleeping over for the first night.

So excited and so in love and so happy!

That's all I have time for... more pics later:)