Movie Date Night

A few weeks ago I really wanted to shake up our routine.  We always try to do date nights, but we are very much in the habit of grabbing dinner and going to a movie and the end or coming home and just watching TV.  Well I wanted to do something a little different a few Fridays ago and it was so fun.  I wanted to stay in, but I still wanted it to be special and be a date night, so I planned a movie night in.  I told Eric that I would plan everything and he could wait and see. 

I told him he would be hearing from me later with a plan, so I sent him some texts to get it started. 

 

 

 

 

When he would reach the house he would see this message on the door and a top "secret" envelope welcoming him to his mission and leading him inside.  

 

Once inside he received instructions for the next step. 

He then followed arrows leading him to his next destination. 

 

The next message gave him instructions to get dressed and get ready.  I had laid out everything he needed in the other bathroom.  In the meantime I was in the bedroom finishing setting up and waiting for him to follow all the steps. 

He was then led tot he ipad for his next instructions 

 

After reading the ipad, if he had done all his mission correctly he would be able to enter.

 

 

I had made a fake canopy and hung it over our bed. I had got a cheap $5 movie from Walmart that we hadn't watched yet and got all of Erics favorite treats waiting for him. 

It was super silly and cheesy, but it was way fun.  It was great to do something so simple as just watch a movie, but it made it more exciting.  It was fun too to watch Eric be surprised at each thing.  I will certainly have to plan more evenings like this.

Surprise Party

A few weekends ago my sisters sister in law gave me a call to invite me to a surprise party she wanted to do for my sister.  I had just gotten off the phone with my sister to plan picking up my nephew!  She was getting ready for her surgery and was going to be in recovery for a few weeks.  They decided it would be best to have their baby with us since she wouldn't be able to lift anything and all that jazz.  So we set  up to meet them half way in San Antonio to pick him up on Sunday.  When I talked to Julia I asked if she wanted help with the part and we started planning. We decided to plan the surprise birthday party for Saturday.  I was super excited becasue now we could surprise her with the party, with us showing up early and they wouldn't have to drive the next day. 

Julia and I started planning right away and my first step with any party is to pick a theme.  we came up with  a bunch, but we decided on a Favorite Things theme.  We really wanted to do something to celebrate Mel so this theme worked perfectly.  We were able to do all her favorite foods, treats, and all the decorations were her favorite colors red, pink and yellow.

We had a week to get it together and luckily had lots of help from Mel's friend Ashley and from Stephen.  I got to work on an invitation that we could email out to everyone.   I ended up making a few just for good measure so we would have options.

Here is the first one I made.

the top says "Raindrops on roses and wiskers on kitten, brown paper packages tied up with string, these are a few of my favorie things.  Then for gifts we asked everyone else to bring their favorite things to share with Mel.

Here is the second one I made

some of it sifted when I saved it into a different format so dont mind that.  

And here is the one we actually used.

Top says "Brown paper packages tied up with strings these are a fw of Mels favorite things."  

I worked on the decorations throughout the week and Julia worked on getting all the food stuff together.  Eric and I left for Houston as soon as we got off of work on Friday.  The night before I was basicaly up all night.  Note to self, don't try to plan for a party the same time you are trying to get your house ready for a baby.  I had alot of preparations to get done in all areas of life, but luckily I goot it done.  We stayed at Jordan and Julias house Friday night, so Julia and I had some last minute time to go over everything for the party.  

They snuck out early the next morning to head to cypress to "hang out" with Me and Stephen. The story was that they would come watch the boys so Mel and Stephen could go on a date.  Eric and I got up and got to making all the food.  We packed everything up and headed to cypress.  While waiting for Mel and Stephen to leave the house we had to go on a crazy search for balloons.  After 3 stores and about 30 minutes of trying to fit all the balloons in our car, Mel and stephen FINALLY left the house.  We quickly head there to get stated setting up.

We  had the food table

The menu was built off of all her favorite foods. Grilled corn and avocado salad, pineapple and cherry fruit kaobs, pasta - torteliini skewers with pesto, alfredo and tomatoe sauce, spinach dip, stuffed mushrooms, mexican- mini tacos, rosas chips and queso, Dr. Pepper, and rasperry lemonade. 

I made the Happy birthday panner out of pretty paper and made some pinwheels and then cut the letters out on my silhouette machine. 

I found fabric that matched the exact pattern on the invitation, so I sewed some pannels for the back drop.

Ashley brought some pretty paper straws for the driks. 

The Ice cream bar - Her favorite dessert is Bluebell homemade vanilla icecream with chocolate chip cookies

I sewed the bunting banner that we had hanging on the ice cream bar

i made a ton of printables to match all of the decorations and invitation.  

The Gift table

The Picture Game

I got a bunch of pictures from Mel as a kid from  my Mom.  I hung them all on balloons and some had numbers on them.  There was a page where people had to guess how old she was in the coresponding picture.

Games

I had a table with brown paper packages tied up with string and each one had one of mels favorite things inside.  People had to take a guess at what it was.  The first person to get it righ got what was inside

We had her favorite movie, favorite musical artist, favorite candy, favorite lotion, and favorite candle smell.

here are some of our winners

We also had a  jar of her favorite candy, dark covered chocolate allmonds.  Everyone got a chance to guess how many were inside

julia was our winner. 

The last game we did was a trivia game to see how well everyone knew Mel.

I think the party was a huge success.  Everyone arrived and we passed out some party poppers.  We got the text that they were almost home and we all  hid. 

  

 Mel walked in and we all popped our poppers and
jumped out "surprise!"  

the kids loved the poppers too!

 

I loved that we were actually able to surpise Mel.  We had a lot of fun enjoying good food, chattng and playing some fun games.  We even had fun at the after party cleaning up!  Over all another very succesful party!