Happy 2nd Birthday to my little Elmo!

Lucas's birthday was actually last month, but I was busy hanging out next to my toilet, so I didn't post about it. Fortunately, I did manage to pull myself together long enough to celebrate my little man turning two!

Shirt by The Tiny Closet. Adorableness by Lucas.

Also, it has come to my attention that some people don't know this: if you sign your child up for the free Toys R Us Birthday Club, you get a $3 store gift certificate for their birthday every year, plus they get a free balloon and birthday crown when you bring them in to the store. Tra la!

Lucas really loves Elmo, so we did an Elmo-themed birthday party. For the record, if you search Pinterest for "Elmo Birthday Party," you will find approximately 90 billion ideas. Good old Pinterest. So I can't claim all of these ideas as my own. Thanks, creative people of the world!

My friends Sarah and Rebekah of Sarahbelle's Cupcakes made these delicious cupcakes. (They're the same ones who made the cupcakes for Lucas's necktie and bowtie party last year.)

Chocolate peanut butter, Oreo, and funfetti cupcakes. And my grandparents' wedding picture.

I had seen a really cute idea to make an Elmo fruit tray (on Pinterest, of course,) so I left some fruit and a tray with Dan's mom while I went to the store, and I came back to this:

How stinkin' cute is that?? I was very impressed! 
We served it with fruit dip (half strawberry yogurt, half  Cool Whip,)
and after the party started, the fruit was gone in under 30 minutes.

My mom and Dan's mom also hung up streamers and other decorations while I was at the store.

I wasn't really feeling up to making a ton of food, so we just ordered lots and lots (and lots) of pizza.

The Elmo plates and napkins are from Party City.

I found this "Place the nose on Elmo" game at Party City.

All of the kids got stickers as prizes, so Lucas is decorating the game with his prize stickers.

My favorite part was the treat bags.

In case you don't have the "Elmo's World" theme song memorized (lucky you,) one of the lines says "Elmo loves his goldfish, his crayon too." So I made little tags that said "Elmo loves his goldfish, his crayon too... Lucas loves that he got to share his birthday fun with you!" (I did actually come up with that part myself. High five, Bethany!) I got the treat bags from Party City, and inside each bag we put a bag of Goldfish crackers, a box of crayons, and a little notebook with an Elmo sticker on the cover.

And of course, there was my little man's adorable Elmo shirt!

I bought it here. Oh, how I love Etsy!

So, there you have it. Lucas's Elmo birthday party! Feel free to borrow any of these ideas, since I borrowed most of them from other people anyway. :)

A Very Toddler Christmas

I actually set up our Christmas tree before Thanksgiving (don't judge me,) but I didn't get it decorated until my parents came to visit for Thanksgiving and helped with the lights and ornaments. My ultimate Christmas dream is to have a Christmas tree in every room in our house, so I look for more trees every year, and last year I picked up this pre-lit artificial tree at a rummage sale for (I think) $10.

(Not-so-quick story about the tree: When I plugged it in last year, half of the strands of lights on the tree were buzzing, and while I don't know much about electricity, I figured that was a bad sign. So I got the bright idea of only taking off the light strands that were buzzing and leaving the rest on, and then I left the half-lit tree plugged in while I went to get a snack, and then I smelled burning plastic, and the plug of the plugged-in strands of lights had melted completely onto the floor leaving only the metal prongs still in the plug, so I almost burned my house down with a Christmas tree. And then this year, the nonprofit Electrical Safety Foundation International contacted me and asked if they could send me some stuff [like LED lights that don't get as hot as regular Christmas lights] to help me decorate for Christmas safely, and while I'm fairly certain that nobody ratted me out about the whole used pre-lit artificial tree incident, it seemed like eerily appropriate help for someone who apparently lacks common sense for safe decorating. You can check out some of their safe decorating tips here. They don't specifically say anything about not using strands of lights that buzz loudly, but you probably already know not to do that...) 

The only reason I'm posting this picture is that Dan gave me the letters that say "LOVE" for my birthday.
They're made out of rolled-up magazine pages. Which has nothing to do with this post.

ANYWAY, I set up the tree (with new, safer lights) this year, and I knew that it would be difficult for Lucas to resist playing with it. Like everybody else, I had seen an idea on Pinterest to make a tree and ornaments out of felt for your toddler to decorate over and over. So the same day I set up our big tree, I put up a felt tree I made for Lucas (I attached it to the wall with sticky tack - you know, the blue stuff you used to put your Jonathan Taylor Thomas posters on your wall when you were 13), and told him about 500 times that the big tree was "Mommy's tree" and the little tree was "Lucas's tree." So far, giving him his own tree has (mostly) distracted him from mine. He's only taken two ornaments off of it, which seems pretty good.

I actually moved it to a different spot on our house right after I took this picture.
In case you were wondering. Which you weren't. 

I used the same strategy with the nativity scene by setting up a toy nativity scene for him right next to mine. Other than me having to rescue one of my sheep from him twice, he has pretty much left my nativity scene alone in favor of his more brightly colored one.

So there are some of our lovely Christmas decorations. All together now: Ooo! Ahh!

Do you have any tips for toddler-friendly Christmas decorations? If so, please share (or link) in the comments!