Mia's Barbie Party ♥

Another party done and dusted!  It was wonderful, special times with family and friends.

The Barbie cake was very special indeed. Every little girl should have a doll dress cake for at least one birthday in their lives, right?  Mia asked for this...  and mom-in-law, sister-in-law, and myself made it!  Very pleased with our handiwork. I'll stick to my day job though. ;-)

Oumi and Skoonsus made the bottom round cake and decorated it.  Oumi and myself did the dress part, making turns to do the buttercream piping, and then I did the final touch of adding the little edible pearls.  Mia was super impressed and very happy with her cake!

 We decorated the entrance onto the patio with a shiny black "curtain", and I cut out Barbie silhouettes and stuck them up all over.

 Birthday girl waiting for her guests. ♥

Jump jump fun!

Our garden was transformed into a pink and black Barbie party, looked so pretty!

I decorated the party packs with ribbon, pearl stickers and cut out the Barbie silhouette pic.

Mom-in-law made the party favours - pink scarves with Barbie silhouette on for the girls, and a plain black scarf for the little boys!

Blowing out her candles ♥

The photobooth activity was a big hit, the kids loved it!

The big people enjoyed it too, hehe ;-) 

Fun was had by all!
xx

Happy 5th Birthday Mia Jill

This sweet sunshine child of mine turned 5 today!

She had an absolute blast.  From waking up to balloons in her room, opening prezzies, eating cake for breakfast - to taking cupcakes to school and having friends and family come visit in the afternoon for more cake.  She ended the day with her favourite meal - bacon and pasta.

My sweetheart, you make my heart so happy.  I'm so grateful that you're mine.  Happy 5th Birthday!  I love you forever. ♥

And what fun that this isn't the end of the celebrations yet - her party is on Saturday!
xx

Recent milestones

These two sweethearts...  they sure are lil busy bodies, developing and growing in leaps and bounds, physically, mentally, emotionally.

There's a wonderful, special bond between these two already, oh gosh, moments that my heart skips a beat, when they sit together peacefully, when they make each other laugh, when they watch and copy each other, when their faces fill up with joy when they see each other. Bless.

I pray that this bond between them will continue growing and that they will always find this kind of  happiness, peace, contentment and love in each other, for their whole lives.

I wanted to share a couple of milestones that I've been meaning to blog about individually, but thought to put them all together into one post.

All about Mia-Mooi

Mia's become so tall and slender suddenly! Even her face, no more babyish features, pure lil girl now.
She's becoming a lot more daring with climbing jungle gyms, previously she'd always been very weary and careful.
Physically I love how energetic she is.  She jumps on the trampoline every day, showing me "tricks", some of them quite good gymnastic type moves!
She even makes somersaults by herself now.

She recognizes numbers very well now, and loves pointing all numbers out to me that she sees anywhere, house numbers, speed limits, etc.
She colours inside the lines, mostly, and is starting to draw people in more detail, and uses the correct colours for things like blue sky, green grass.
She has an amazing memory.  She recalls happenings from years ago, she retells school lessons, she memorizes words of songs and lines from movies.
Her favourite toys are her Barbie dolls, and playing games on her tablet.  She loves books still too.

All about Ella-Bella

Almost 17 months old, and just becoming such a cute lil person with her own interests, will and personality.
She started walking, officially, at 15.5 months.  She loves walking, never crawls anymore now, can squat to pick things up, and stands up perfectly. Balances herself quite well when she catches a wobble or steps over something that's in her way.

Officially, she doesn't sleep through the night yet, but we've enjoyed a couple of blissful nights where she did sleep through, so she can do it - now to just do it every night!
She has 12 teeth, and all 4 eye teeth are busy cutting simultaneously at the moment.
She doesn't say many words yet, but babbles a lot, which I'm sure will form proper words soon.  She loves shouting something that sounds like, "it's there!"
She loves shoes! She loves to have shoes on, and loves to bring us our shoes - even if we're already wearing shoes.
Her favourite toy is her dudu bunny, she's really very attached to it!  We have one that stays in her cot, and a "downstairs one" that she drags around everywhere with her and gets super dirty.  Luckily she doesn't mind that it's a different, cleaner, softer one in her bed!
She's fearless, and more adventurous than her big sister.

Sweethearts. I'm madly in love with you.
xx

Countdown to Mia's 5th Birthday!

Mia turns 5 in a week!

I made a birthday countdown for her.  She chose a Barbie theme for her party this year, so I cut out a couple of the Barbie silhouette pictures and wrote the number of days left, in the middle of it.  Then I stuck them to decorated pegs and put them on a round cardboard.  Easy peasy and Mia was so happy with it!  It's the first thing she does every morning, take a peg off.

We started the countdown at 15 sleeps to go.

Today, only 6 sleeps to go!

Party planning is in full swing, for the weekend after her birthday.  Really excited about the pink and black colour scheme, think it's going to look so pretty.

My sister designed the beautiful invitation:

What fun, yay!
xx

Rainy weekend play-dough fun

It's been a rainy, overcast and chilly weekend.  Mia's not impressed at having to wear winter clothes again, or at having to be indoors all the time!

We made some play-dough, using a tried-and-tested recipe that I posted about a while ago - it really is a perfect playdough texture - it's a little bit of a schlep to make, but definitely worth it.

The girlies loved it - Ella wasn't too keen on the texture at first, but after a while was happily picking pieces off and presenting them to me. Mia also made me lots of "pasta" and "biscuits".

We played with this both days of the weekend, a fun activity for all - mommy included! ;-)

Birthday Traditions

I love creating special moments and memories for my family.  One way of doing this, is having specific traditions for special occasions, such as birthdays and Christmas time.  I did a post about our Christmas traditions here, but haven't done a b'day one yet, and now that Mia's birthday month has arrived and it's on my mind, I thought to share our birthday traditions too.

Here's my Birthday Traditions board on Pinterest from where I have sourced quite a lot of inspiration!

I make a countdown calendar of sorts, the last two years I started about 10 days before her birthday, with stickers on her wall that she could remove.

I do a "yearly interview" with Mia - here's her 3 year-old interview and here's the 4 year-old interview.  I just love this and can't wait to start with Ella, probably also only when she turns 3.  I put these into a file with a birthday photo.  I love thinking of us looking through these files together one day!

Each year I buy a beautiful birthday card for the birthday girl, and write a love letter to her in it.  I seal it, and put it away in her memory box.

Birthday girl wakes up to balloons in her room.  This is just so much fun - as much for me, having to hide the helium balloons from them the night before, and then creeping into the room to put the balloons there, and then waiting for them to wake up in the morning and hear the pure excitement when they see the balloons!

Opening prezzies on our bed, all together.

Cupcakes for breakfast! With candles, of course.

Special tea party or dinner with family members that live nearby.

Take lots of photos with the birthday girl.

We do a yearly family photoshoot with Karin Meiring, I just love doing this, because it's so seldom that we get piccies of all four of us together.

Some more traditions I haven't started yet but would love to:

Paint a special picture each year and label it with their age
Measure their height each year - need to get a nice chart to do this!

What birthday traditions do you have?
xx

Hello, September!

September is my favourite month.  Something about all the light green leaves appearing on the trees, the flower blossoms everywhere, and shedding all the winter layers of clothing, just brings out such a feeling of happiness, anticipation, peace and excitement!

I have lots on my to-do list...  including things like finalising all the party preparation for Mia's 5th birthday celebration, house spring cleaning, researching a few options of new products to add to my salon - and off course continuing the battle of losing some weight.  Speaking of which, have a squiz at this post where I was featured in a fellow blogger's Mommy Weight Loss Series!

xx