Look who is two!

Although we had her Smurf-themed birthday party earlier this month, today is Penny’s real birthday.

I hope I always remember you at this age and the way you…

go to bed late and wake up (very) early

already tell us when you have to go potty (except you say “off room,” your word for the bathroom) 

say “Welcome!” when you really mean “Thank you”

always try to sneak extra food to the dog

love baths

will not let me do anything with your hair

always have a crusty nose

kiss other people’s boo-boos

run to daddy with your arms out before he leaves in the morning, saying “Hug!”

think daddy is home every time you hear me open the garage door during the day

love string cheese and any other snack you are allowed to eat on the sofa

are infatuated with Dora the Explorer

use a singsong voice, tilt your head to the side, and smile when you say, “Noooo.”

are the only child in this house who does not care what color cup, bowl, plate, spoon, etc. I give you

have been singing Happy Birthday to yourself since last night.

Happy Birthday, Penelope Christine!

This year, for Penny’s birthday, I decided to do a Smurf-themed party as part of a campaign I am working on with Collective Bias for Tyson’s chicken.

My kids were first exposed to The Smurfs over the summer when the first Smurfs movie came to our local theater as the $1 Family Movie. Now that the Smurfs 2 is out on DVD, they have been asking to see it. I thought it would be fun to get the DVD for them and throw a “Smurfday” party for Penny. This turned out to be a great theme because it is hard to find ideas that work for children’s birthdays right around the holidays. (Her real birthday is five days after Christmas.) But because these decorations were blue and red, there were a lot of affordable options in the holiday section at Walmart and it didn’t look too “Christmas-y” once I put them together.

The worst part about having a child whose birthday is around the holidays is all of the extra shopping. I had to make an extra trip to the store in December, which is never fun, but I was able to find everything I needed, so it was relatively painless, as far as trips to Walmart in December with your children go.

We like to keep our birthday parties small, so we only invited one other family to celebrate with us. My dear friend Chrissy is Penny’s godmother and her children are about the same ages as our girls. They drove from out-of-state to spend the afternoon Smurfing it up together.

We used Tyson’s new batter-dipped chicken tenders to make miniature (Smurf-sized) chicken sliders on Hawaiian rolls. They are each made of one chicken nugget on a mini roll with bacon and cheese. I set out honey mustard and ranch dressing so that the kids could pick which kind they wanted.

They went over well.

We also served mini English muffin pizzas and some other red and white snacks (strawberries, cherry tomatoes, popcorn, and banana slices) to match the decorations.

I made those standing Smurf decorations by printing images I found online and gluing them onto a cereal box.

I used more strips of cardboard to make sort of a triangle in the back, so they could stand up.

Everyone got their own personalized cup. These came in packs of four for $1 and I just dew on them with a permanent marker. The drawings will wash of eventually, but they lasted through the party. 

Dessert was an adorable store-bought cake that I stuck some Smurf Mega Blocks on top of. (Can you believe that they just happened to have this polka dot cake in the bakery section of our grocery store and it matched my decorations perfectly! I still can’t get over it. I didn’t have to special order it. $8 well spent.)

We also had the options of red, white and blue Popsicles or these cake pops I made, which are supposed to resemble the mushroom houses that the smurfs live in. The originals from The Paper Pony, which I found via Pinterest, were much cuter. (That’s the same place I got the idea for the cardboard Smurfs.)

For favors, I made each child their own personalized Smurf hat. I’m pretty sure that was the first time I’ve used Puffy paint since 1993. It was a very simple sewing project, but it was fun. Since it was so easy, even Abby (who is 4 and a half) could help. She was very proud of herself!

And there’s the birthday girl in her hat!

We also gave out Smurf-themed Mega Blocks and blue Play-Doh favors.  

I love the way these take-out boxes turned out! The labels are from the Beauty and Brains Girls Etsy shop. They emailed me my custom order and I just had to print them out and glue them on the front of each box. Aren’t they seriously stinkin’ cute?!

We didn’t plan any games because the birthday girl is only turning two and that seemed too young to plan anything organized. It was totally fine because the kids had a blast just playing with each other and the train we have running around the bottom of the Christmas tree.

Eddie told me I had to be in at least one picture too. Obligatory mom shot:

Happy SMURFday Penny!

This post was sponsored by Collective Bias on behalf of Tyson’s chicken. All opinions are my own. 

Once upon a time, there was a frazzled mom sitting in front of a computer screen. She was home all day pulling her hair out, trying to raise a toddler with special needs and an infant who would not sleep. Oh, and she was pregnant. Again. Her husband’s job had him traveling for months at a time, so she spent a lot of lonely nights on the computer, seeking connection to the outside world via mommy blogs. She would have given anything to be able to meet those women inside the computer in real life. To laugh with them, share with them, ask them questions about how they took a hobby like writing and turned it into a career. She thought of starting a conference, but her blog was small and her connections were limited.

But her little blog grew. So did her children. And her connections to other bloggers grew too. Everything kept growing until one day she had a few thousand followers and several friends with much bigger networks than her own. They worked together and wrote a few books. Those books instantly shot up the charts and became best-sellers on Amazon and iTunes, because when women channel their creative energy and work together towards a common goal, amazing things happen. Some of her friends even landed on the NYT best-sellers list with their own books. By themselves. No big publishing houses needed.

That’s when she knew.

The conference she had wanted to plan for so long? They could really do this thing.

And they could do it well.

Because for the past several years, those “mommy bloggers” had been working together to support each other and they had reached further than they had ever dreamed. 

The emails from other women started coming.

“How can we do what you are doing?”

That group of friends had picked up secrets that they wanted to share. They wanted to be able to bless other people with the success they had seen.

A conference seemed like the perfect way to do it.

As I’m sure you have already figured out, the lady in the beginning of this story was me.

And this conference is real.

We’re calling it BlogU, which is short for The Blog University, and tickets go on sale in January.

We wanted to bring you a new kind of conference. Since building our tribe has felt like such a strong sisterhood, we decided to hold our conference at a women’s college. This also helps us keep costs down and it means that, if you are willing to stay with us in a renovated 19th century building that serves as a dorm on the campus of a gorgeous private university, your room and food costs are INCLUDED in your ticket price. That’s pretty much unheard of.

Also? We’re having a cupcake bar. And a cocktail party. And speakers like NYT best-selling author Karen from Baby Sideburns, and Bunmi from Honest Toddler, and Ilana from Mommy Shorts. (Her blog was a freakin’ Jeopardy question, for crying out loud!) And all of it is included in your ticket price.

It’s kind of a big deal.

June 6-8, 2014 in Baltimore at Notre Dame of Maryland University. Be there.

Check out the BlogU website.

I CANNOT WAIT to share this time with you in June!!!

Nicholas’ school district closed today for the very first snow day of the year. Abby’s preschool was open, but only for an hour and a half, so I decided to just keep her home, rather than chance the icy roads.

Our grass seed hasn’t come up yet, so there is a whole lot of mud hiding under this snow and our driveway is a solid sheet of ice. Since we can’t play outside, we brought the snow into the house.

We may or may not have already eaten all of those cookies we made yesterday.

Happy Snow Day!