Sweetpea's Fourth Birthday

Her big day in pictures:

The birthday girl and her Daddy at the breakfast table.

We gave her a spiffy new house for her Sylvanian Families. Here
she is giving her dad directions on how to make the
lights work.

We visited Scratch Patch and they LOVED it!!

 I was planning to treat my flower-loving daughter to a beautiful garden-themed birthday party and have been pinning ideas like crazy (see my Garden Party board on Pinterest - click here!)

BUT

when I sat her down to start planning and making a guest list, she firmly told me that she wanted a 

tea party 

and that she wanted only to invite her two aunts and her grandmother. I was very surprised (and a little disappointed!), but then again, with such lovely, doting aunties and a grandmother who loves her to bits, it really made good sense to me! So I called them up (and snuck in an invitation for grandpa, too!), and we decided that everyone would be wearing a hat to the party. We got a little creative - and a tad silly - but I think our official party photo, taken by my husband, came out very nice indeed!!

The birthday girl was in her element, wearing her favourite hat with a flower pin and the pink ballet outfit that was one of her gifts.

Now, you need to know that her birthday is the day after New Year's and that here in the Western Cape that's a public holiday, and that between Christmas and New Year's it is already nearly impossible to find anything decent in the supermarkets. So the tea-time treats were a limited but lovely array of nibbles we were able to make with what we had in the house.

On the menu:

A pretty pink cake with sprinkles galore,

pearly marshmallows...

and dainty sunflower sandwiches and pink sugar cookies.

And her favourite gift by far? A set of plastic princess accessories!

Please note, though, that she wasn't the only belle of the ball: Look at this little cutie pie admiring her grandmother's pretty 'Fresh-from-the-Garden' hat!!

Happy birthday, Sweetpea!!

This is how we celebrate - Pentecost 2011

What a very special day we had as we celebrated the Birthday of the Church today!!

All week long we have been reading the story about Pentecost during family devotions. I had made a felt banner which we put up the day after Ascension Day, and we have been counting down the ten days that the disciples waited in Jerusalem after Jesus had gone to heaven. This morning we opened the last flap, to reveal a picture of people from different nationalities receiving the gift of the Holy Spirit on Pentecost Sunday!

And what would a birthday be without a party??

We made Tongues of Fire party hats...

and decorated yummy flame-yellow cupcakes with pretty, bright candles...

And in the living room we hung a circle of descending doves and flames to remind us of God's Holy Spirit being poured out. (You can find a tutorial for making the three-dimensional felt doves here. I made the flames out of felt too, attached it to ribbons of increasing length, and hung it all from an extra large, old embroidery hoop.).

Our guests were some lovely young people from our church who is in the middle of a Year of Spiritual Equipping through our church's Kingdom Pioneers program. This year we are blessed to have four students who are all from different nations: Malawi, Eritrea, Switzerland and South Africa.(Add to that my Australian husband...and we then had 5 different nations represented in our living room this morning!!) So they came over after church to celebrate with us...and we had such a good time that I completely forgot to take pictures!! We worshiped God together, then my husband read us the story of Pentecost from the Bible, and then each of us had a turn to say the Lord's Prayer in our own language - super special! May you and yours be blessed this week...

Sweetpea's third birthday

 My sweet daughter turned three the day after New Year's. This midsummer baby of mine awoke to a dreary, rainy, windy Sunday...in the middle of summer...after days and days of excruciating heat!! 

  It is a  tradition in our house for the birthday person to enjoy something utterly delicious and completely un-breakfast-y first thing on their special day, and since Sweetpea is the world's greatest cupcake lover....

We had her birthday party three days later...on the second day of a sweltering heat wave that hit the Cape that week!! Can you stand it?!

So...we had the air conditioning cranked up to the max inside, and then, when all the little guests had arrived, we ran outside to snap some pictures, sing the birthday song, blow...and blow...and blow out the candles, and cut the cake. 

That was about as much as any of us could stand and the frosting on that cake was melting..FAST!!, so we grabbed the bambinos and the eats and got ourselves back inside as quickly as we could! There we parked the children on the carpet for a birthday picnic while we all sat back and enjoyed the coolness! 

After we had recovered a bit, we braved the sun again for a quick splash in the blow-up pool, but they wilted pretty fast, and there were few complaints when we said it was time to go back in. I am happy to say that they then had a great play indoors and that Sweetpea was ecstatic to have all her buddies over!

. 

The balloons to the right of the banner exploded in the heat just as the first guests arrived...

I made the little Minnie Mouse Cake Topper  and she now loves playing with it!

I love you, my little book-lover, play-phone-chatterer, hugs-giver, belly-laugh-factory-on-legs!!

Thanks to my dear friends Georgia and Este for the gorgeous photographs! Check out more of Georgia's eye candy and crafts at Love and Lollipops!

Celebrating SPRING DAY Joyful Mama Style!

At around 17h30 yesterday afternoon I was busily preparing a hearty potato soup for supper. We had just returned from our afternoon walk-around-the-block and let me tell you, it was nippy, to say the least! As I was stirring the soup and dreamily thinking how I am looking forward to summer, it hit me that TODAY - Wednesday 1 September - IS SPRING DAY!!

I had listened to the weather forecast earlier and already knew that today was going to be even more miserable than yesterday, but oh, just the thought of Spring Day was so delicious that I knew I just had to do something to celebrate! The last time I had made a really special Celebration Breakfast for my dear ones, was on Resurrection Sunday in April  (you can click here to see how we celebrated that day, Joyful Mama style). That was in autumn, and now that winter is *theoretically if not visibly * on it's way out, it was high time I treated the Joyful Household to a merry little breakfast once again.

The thing was just that it was about an hour before supper, and by the time bathtime and bedtime was over, the shops would be closed. So I very casually asked The Dad if he minded watching the bambinos while I just dash off to the shop quickly. He agreed and I quietly and mysteriously slipped out to see what I could come up with in about 20 minutes!!

To make a long story short, here is what my family woke up to this morning:

Don't you just love love love that tissue paper pom-pom?! I whipped it up in about half an hour, thanks to instructions I found here. Will definitely be making more of these for future celebrations!

I bought the pretty vinyl table cloth from the plastics shop about 5 minutes before closing time!! I got two meters, so it is long enough to use on the picnic bench outside in summer, too!

Breakfast was our usual oats porridge, jazzed up with a kiwi and strawberry flower!

A little feathered friend was perched on the sugar bowl...

...and the children each got a special Spring Day drinking cup for their juice!

It was a hit!

Smiles all around!