Lizzy's 9th B-day & Photo shoot

Happy, Happy Birthday to my sweet Lizzy Elizabeth. By the way, she prefers to be called "Elizabeth" now because she's so grown up. :) She turned 9 back on New Year's Eve. NINE! I can't get over that number. I think I may have a heart attack when she gets in the two-digits next year. She loves every bit of growing up but somehow manages to retain her lovely, sweet, inocence. She is so tender and caring of her friends and loves to explore, read and play with others. She amazes me every day and is getting quite the sence of humor, which I love. Here are bits of her super fun day. :)

It's not a "Shopping" birthday without a shopping bag birthday cake. :) Scroll all the way to the bottom to see the rest of the cake and her super fun photo shoot.

Still had the Christmas lights up on the pot rack so we added crete paper and balloons to suprise her and make her feel special when she woke up to her pancakes in the morning. :)

Another suprise that she woke up to. :)

Birthday tradition...Pancakes in the shapes of thier choosing.

So yummy with some homemade strawberry whipped creme.

Evidently, 'Justice' is the place to shop for 9 year-olds. :) All she wanted to do was go shopping for her b-day. {A girl after my own heart.}

More shopping...

Going out to lunch. Chinese, of course. :)

Making her wish. This is the sweet, inocent side of Lizzy Elizabeth that I was talking about. I hope she keeps that hope with her all her life.

"Bite. The. Cake!!!"

Movie night with the girls. Monte Carlo was the movie of choice.



Of course a photo shoot was in order. I was so excited to test out my new 35mm lens and create a new logo. I decided to go with the name 'Ali Lou Photography'; a combination of my two daughter's names. They are everything beautiful and lovely to me. (One of Lizzy's nicknames is Lizzy-Lou)
 I love to take photos of the kids every year around their birthday and incorporate whatever it is that they are interested that year. This year, we did a rock-star theme. While we were shopping, Lizzy just about died over this shirt. It was very much her style. When I held up this faux leather rocker jacket, she could hardly contain herself.

Oh my gosh I love this girl! Lemme tell ya, this was the funnest photoshoot I've ever done. We rocked out to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun."

Rock on, Lizzy. {I know, I know. This sign really means "I love you" but I couldn't correct her because it was too cute}

Peace.

This one just cracks me up. She's really into the song. haha.

Love me some black and whites. :)

This is her 'sassy face'.

More sassiness.

There's my sweet girl.

Valentine

Happy Belated Valentine's Day. :) I didn't get my computer back to be able to edit this photo until just recently but these pretty pears were too cute not to share. I found them in the grocery store on V-Day and just had to stage a photo with them. :)

Busy busy!

Wishing my nieghbors a Merry Christmas. :) No better way to do it than with homemade coconut cake bites.

Pumpkin Cinnamon Rolls...{Drool}

So...These are yummy. REALLY yummy.  Like, "I had 3 of them in the same day" yummy. I took this picture because they just looked so pretty fresh out of the oven. After I applied the icing...well..I just didn't get another picture...I decided to share so that all of you can share in the fantastic fall goodness as well.
Here's the recipie : http://www.ksl.com/index.php?nid=204&sid=17662360
I wasn't in LOVE with the icing so I thought the recipie below might work better. I haven't tried it yet so you'll have to let me know how it turned out. :)
 Icing:
Try this:
4 oz. cream cheese (totally room temp)
1/4 C. softened butter
1/4 C. Crisco
3 T milk
1/4 tsp pumpkin pie spice
*Beat all these together in a mixer until incorporated.
*Then slowly add:
 1 1/2 lbs. powdered sugar.
*After that is incorperated, add:
 2 teaspoons of GOOD vanilla
*Beat again.
* Grab a spoon and dig in!! Spread the icing on the cinnamon rolls and dig in. ;)

Carni Baby!!

Last weekend I had the pleasure of throwing a baby shower (with the help of my SIL, Lia) in honor of my other SIL, Emily. :) We had a great time...right up until a HUMUNGO windstorm showed up and started ripping everything down including huge branches from the tree. And even then...we had a blast running around trying to take everything down and go inside. It was the quickest clean-up in the history of baby showers, I'm sure. :) The theme was "Vintage carnival" and I wish I had a never-ending party budget but alas...all good things must come to an end. :) I wish that I could have bought that cool vintage-looking popcorn machine and rented that Cotton Candy maker and then added that cool golden raffle-spinner to the tab.  Arial Dancers and Flame eaters would've been great too...ya know...IF there was no budget.
These pictures are in no particular order...because I hate  am not fond of Blogger's picture-loading method and I find it extremely frustrating to put them all in order. :)
Let's start with the invites, shall we?? These were done by my wonderfully gracious and super-oober talented sister, Crystal Carlson with http://www.crystalruby.com/. This is the the version that I sent to the photo shop in a 5x7 then cut in half and mailed as "tickets" for the carnival. So fun.




Black Forest Cupcakes



My Kiddos loved the Photo Booth. I found this amazingly perfect red & creme ticking stripe fabric at Wal-Mart of all places. I just got 2 yards of fabric, stretched it over and staple-gunned it to some extra plywood that my hubby had...in fact...my hubby is so awesome that he actually stretched and tapled it FOR me. Aren't you jelous of my hubby??







Black Forest Cake. I went rustic because I wanted that 'Vintage' feel. The sign was made by digging this piece of wood that I already had from an earlier craft that never got finished out of my craft stuff. It was actually already painted the colors that I wanted so I simply printed a font off my computer, cut them out and glued them to the sign. I also grabbed some gold paint that I had in my craft stash and roughly outlined the letters then added flourishes around the edges.



This is my SIL's backyard. it was a great size and location. We used lots of ladder-back chairs and the photo booth is just around the corner. It's hard to see all of the mason jars in the picture but they really did make an impact in person.




Bubble Gum everywhere. I loved the color that they provided. They were put in baby jars because...well...it's a baby shower. :)




I was so thrilled when I found these popcorn bags at my local Kitchen supply store.




Me with the Lady of the Hour. Love her. K, so this is NOT a flattering picture of me but it was so fun taking it! :)





The 'BIG BROTHER"!!






Photo Booth Props: Hats, clown noses, paper mustaches & bow ties on skewers, chalkboard, chalk.

 


"Guess the Girth" booth. A new twist on an age-old baby shower game. The same process for the "Tickets" sign at the Dessert Table was basically repeated for this sign except that I had to start from scratch. I had my hubby cut the sign out of MDF then I found leftover paint in the colors that I needed (just a lucky coincidence) and painted away.  Then I attatched the paper letters and added some gold detail.

 


I wanted the games to be baby-inspired. My Lizzy came up with this one. It was a hoot. I got these beautiful wooden spools from my local Electrical Supply store. I offered to pay for them but they just gave them to me. :)





Aaaaand...back to the food. Caramel Apples...need I say more? It's been way too long since I've had one. I picked the smallest apples that I could find then found these corn skewers in the produce section at Wal-Mart. They were so cute. I made them simple and rustic to go with the vintage theme. 




Loved the dark glass bottles. In retrospect, this would've been a good opportunity to put a lovely little clever message to the little peanut on here instead of just the boring "Old Fashioned Root Beer".  Everything is better in retrospect. :)




The dessert table minus the Churros. They were still in the oven.




Again with no Churros but now you can see the banner. ;)





Can't do "Carnival" without doing Nachos. I know it's not "dessert" but it is "yummy". ;)





Oh look the Churros made it. :) They should have been put in a cute container but oh well. The guests were eating by now and the light was getting bad.




Makes you hungry, huh? I totally want another Churro right now.




"Ambiance Lighting" :) Just Mason Jars that I wired and hung from the fence with tea lights from the dollar store!




I just added this picture because it was funny. ;) Don't worry...it's just root beer.





 


My sweet niece made these plus a pretty blue on for me. Super fun.




We invited these boys to the party to help us eat the food and to provide us some entertainment. ;)




This was what the party looked like after we all ran for cover from the wind storm. :)