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!

Today’s post is brought to you by my friend Shelley. I met Shelley when we lived in Florida because our husbands worked together. She and her husband, Tommy, have three kids who are around the same ages as our kids.

Every year I look forward to seeing Shelley’s Elf on the Shelf, Zippy, in my Facebook feed because she has some great ideas. Ideas I can actually use. I like the idea of the elf being a fun holiday tradition, but I am not the kind of mom who is going to spend an hour hot gluing miniature marshmallows together to build our elf an igloo. Don’t worry, neither is Shelley.  

These are not those stupid “Let’s pour glitter everywhere so mom has to clean it up later” ideas,  nor are they the “It took me an hour and a half to rig that elf to the vaulted ceiling with fishing twine” ideas that we see all over Pinterest. I’m talking about cute, simple, but creative ideas that average moms like me (moms who are tired at the end of the day and don’t want to spend a bunch of time and energy on an elf) can and probably maybe will actually do.

Most of these ideas take less than two minutes and don’t make a huge mess. If you are looking for easy Elf on the Shelf ideas, you have come to the right place.

Thank you Shelley!! (And thank you for allowing me to steal all these pictures from your Facebook page.)

Elf playing cards

Elf Reading a book

Elf on a date

Elf in a “snowglobe” (under a glass)

Walking the dog

With just a few (clean) undies in the tree

Fishing (I appreciate that we are just using toys we already have here, not trying to reinvent the wheel-or the fishing rod.)

Just hanging around

Shelley says,

“I try to do two things-(1) use stuff the kids have. I don’t go over and beyond-I’ve never bought things just for Zippy. I simply scan the room and grab something that’s laying around. And (2) I try to make some stagings purposeful. For example, when Tony remembered to brush his teeth last year with no reminders (which was a big deal back then) Zippy wrote a “great job” note in toothpaste on the mirror. Tonight they will each be receiving a “progress report” because our younger son has been making some poor choices at school and I’m hoping a note from Santa, reminding him to be good in school, will help straighten him up.“

Thanks again, Shelley!

I can’t wait to see what you do with your elf this year!

(Turns out I didn’t have to wait long. Right after I finished this post, Shelley put this picture up on her Facebook feed.) 

Still in the Holiday Spirit?

Check out my tutorials for easy and adorable ornaments and my secret for getting monogrammed, designer stockings for less than ten bucks.

We have finished decorating for Christmas. (We always wait until the weekend after Thanksgiving.)

The stockings are hung by the chimney with care…you know the rest.

I love this wreath I bought from a friend at our Mom N Me craft fair.

My sister’s childhood BFF, Natalie, was helping to clean out a relative’s house, and when they found this train she thought of Nicholas. It’s the first thing he runs to in the morning and he is still playing with it when we have to drag him off to bed. It’s also the perfect size for under the Christmas tree.

Speaking of the Christmas tree, have you seen my tutorials for snowman keepsake and applesauce ornaments yet?

I’m soooooo happy we were able to finish our fireplace mantle before the holidays. 

This is the first year we’ve been able to hang our stockings by a fireplace. 

Psst…Want to hear a secret about our monogrammed stockings? I only bought one of them (Penelope’s) from Pottery Barn Kids.

The rest I bought from one of my favorite websites, Uglysofa.com, that sells what they call “Brand X” (rhymes with “Snottery Yarn,” mentioned above) overstocks and returns at amazing prices. 

They always have a ton of “Brand X” stockings for less than ten bucks. A lot of them are monogrammed, but they only have common names. The monogramming is included in the price. They didn’t have Penelope last year, so I ordered her one to match from PBK. Truth be told, I was a little disappointed that the monogram on her expensive one wasn’t as thick as the others. I was expecting her monogram to be the same as Nicholas’. They also have what they call “recession stockings,” like our Santa on the left, that have the white cuff cut off because a name was misspelled or something. They don’t match exactly with the others, but you can get them personalized for free if you have a less common name.

This is not a sponsored post, I just really like that website, especially around the holidays, and I wanted to share it with you. Although, I have to warn you that my friend Lauren ordered stockings from Ugly Sofa last year and the monograms were crooked. Look at the photo carefully before you order. The photo is the exact stocking you are ordering.  

Are your holiday decorations up? Did you put them up before or after Thanksgiving? (If you say before, I’m not sure we can still be friends, but I’ll give you a free pass just this once since Thanksgiving came so late this year.)