birthday mornings.

so…. regardless if my kids have a friend-birthday-party or a family birthday party, we always have a family birthday morning.

and, birthday mornings are a big deal at our house. from the minute our kiddos wake up, we celebrate…

peek behind the cake: see that blue blob? kj requested blue crepes and bacon for breakfast!

we called them smurf crepes.

sela woke up early and tip-toed in to our room. she whispered to me

mom, don’t feel bad. i’m not going to snuggle with you this morning because i’m going to wake up kj with birthday snuggles…

right then. my heart melted just a bit.

we spoiled our handsome ten year old with ten gifts.

the first eight were fun, small, practical things – and then the last two were the big surprises:

new baseball catcher’s gear and a new bike! he’s been begging for a bike with gears! look at the shock on his face, it was so fun!!!

today was good. so good i get all weepy when i look at these pictures. kj called the shots all day – we went to his sisters soccer game {and played catch while there}, had lunch at his restaurant of choice, played games with him throughout the afternoon, he went to the baseball park with husband in his new catcher’s gear for practice, at 8pm he requested ice cream at a local ice cream shop, so we obliged. and now he’s still on is computer playing games.  it’s been all about him today.

i don’t have the words to describe how good my sons heart is. it may even drive his daddy a little crazy he’s so sensitive and sweet. but boy oh boy, it melts his momma’s heart. he kisses me, all the time. he tells me, you are so cute mom! you are looking fyne today mom! the sweetest words, all the time. he still leaves the dug-out in the middle of a baseball game to come over and kiss his little sister on the top of her head. he gets all choked up every time he talks to us about anything that affects him emotionally. he is a gentleman. he loves scouts. he loves sports. he likes all games, but especially chess. he’s an avid video-gamer. he will defend what he believes in. he’s ridiculously good with technology and fixes things around the house for me. he’s a very good friend. he adapts easily without complaint to almost every situation. the kid has been in three elementary schools and makes friends instantly. sorry for the ramble – my boy has a heart of gold. and i love every bit of it.

dude. in a nutshell, birthday mornings rock. and my son is ten.

{photos by me, Jane Rhodes}

Posted in birthdays, husband, kiana, KJ, myla, parties, party plans, sela | 7 Comments »

a glow-in-the-dark sports party

my son kj requests birthday parties that are true to his interests. when he was two he asked for a choo-choo party, he turned three surrounded by family and his passion for baseball had began, his fourth birthday party was one of my best-planned-parties ever and this is the only picture i have to share! (he loved the movie “cars”, husband built a homemade race track, the guests all made race cars out of potatoes, with pit passes etc. we raced all afternoon – it was so cute – maybe i’ll scan photos in one day since it was pre-blogging), he loved transformers when he was five, in a galaxy far far away KJ turned six years old, when he was seven his obsession with the military began, at eight years old we indulged in his love for video games, last year we celebrated with a neon influence…

and this year, for his tenth birthday, he said he wanted a glow-in-the-dark sports party. he follows in his dad’s sports-loving-ways.  i used a simple invite that was emailed out via evite.  we celebrated with all of the fourth grade boys from his school and because the party was going to be held at an event/kids academy, there wasn’t much else i had to plan {bonus!}. so, i focused on making a couple of details extra special and enjoyed the simpleness of not having to be in charge of anything else!

for the party – the kids were each given a white glow sports tee, glow necklaces, and painted their faces with glow paint. for seventy-five minutes they played glow-in-the-dark dodgeball, football, had a fort-building competition, then had a battle from those forts in the dark, obstacle courses, and much more! to say they had fun would be an understatement.  i couldn’t stop smiling, and i was just observing.

this boy of mine is such an original gem. he is so sweet, incredibly thoughtful, 100% boy, and becoming a young man/gentleman that i am so proud of. definitely a glowing light.

***

party details:

glow-in-the-dark-hat: i used the party hat template linked to here, and colored it with a glow-in-the-dark marker. it was so bright!
for the “10″ sign: used the same marker on felt fabric.
to download & print the “happy birthday” water bottle labels, click here. print on full page labels, and cut.
to download & print the “glowing thank you” labels, click here. print on full page labels, and cut. i used brown wax paper sandwich bags which can be found at whole foods market.
for the cake toppers, i used water balloons, filled them with tiny glow in the dark sticks and when the lights were off – each child had a glow-in-the-dark balloon on their chocolate texas cake!

***

this weekend we will have our traditional family breakfast party, and i’ll sulk in the fact that my kids are growing up.

{all photos and party plans by me, Jane Rhodes. labels designed by lovely lindsay for seejaneblog}

Posted in birthdays, KJ, parties, party plans, Uncategorized | 2 Comments »

Ribbon Bar :: for girl athletes!

last night we hosted our first high school team dinner because kiana is now on the freshman softball team!!! we are so excited. i wanted to do something special for the dinner since we were the first team dinner kicking off the season.

i have always been a fan of ribbons at the end of braids and tied to the tops of ponytails for sporty girls – i think it’s the perfect detail. so, i went to Jo-Ann’s fabric store, and stocked up on my favorite red & black ribbons, the local school colors. i displayed the ribbons as the center piece for dinner, and had scissors to cut the ribbons and coordinating gift bags for the girls to use. each girl chose what ribbons she liked, and everyone took home a bag of ribbons home for this season. it was a total hit. {ha! pun.}

i really like the team dinners tradition. all of the sports teams at our high school have dinner together at different family homes who volunteer to feed the athletes the night before every game. this is totally new to us – does your local high school or high school teenagers do this? it’s a great way to unite the team, and a good way for parents to get to know the kids you are cheering for more personally.

good luck WHS girls softball teams!!!

{pictures by me, Jane Rhodes}

Posted in hosting, parties, party plans | 4 Comments »

Easter table setting :: for kids + free placemats printable

are you hosting an Easter breakfast, brunch, lunch, or dinner this weekend? if so, do you have plans for a kids table? if you answered yes to both of those questions, here are my ideas for you:

we plan on having a simple {cereal, eggs, and bacon} Easter breakfast, tending to our traditional festivities, and then we are dining out for Easter dinner. because our mornings can be crazy when six of us are all getting ready in our sunday best, i want to make breakfast special, and memorable for the holiday, but easy. a good combination, right?

for some time now i’ve wanted to create a custom placemat that could be used all year long. so, i chose the classic dots game and a leaf design that i can’t get enough of lately! both of these designs could be adapted to any holiday, birthday, or everyday meal use!

i printed the placemats on white and brown kraft paper card stock to get two different looks. i adore both of them, and can’t decide which i like best! the white placemats underneath the floral splashes of color is beautiful, and i love the brown underneath white dishes, clean and simple. which do you like best???

to download the paper placemats, click on these links:

dots placemat here.

leaf garland placemat here.

i recommend printing the placemats on card stock. if you do print & use the placemats, i would love to see a picture of your event or pretty tables! regardless of if you celebrate Easter, i hope you are planning a weekend filled with your passions and those you love. i don’t practice my faith exactly like my parents practiced theirs and i greatly respect and learn from friends who practice different faiths than mine, and yet we all make opportunities this time of year to create meaningful celebrations with our families and our children. make every day uniquely yours. i encourage you to soak up all that spring has to offer, it is not an ordinary season – it is an exceptional one.  happy hosting, friends! xo.

also:  i hope to get one more {super cute & EASY} DIY Easter basket tutorial post up soon!

also, also: i posted an Easter basket fillers roundup of goodies on instagram, follow @see_jane to check it out!

***

table details:

plates from anthropologie, hobnail tumblers from anthropologie, white bowls here, mini bunny surprise balls from meri meri, flowers: ranunculus, if you do not want to make mini origami bunnies – you can find lots right here on etsy, fluorescent colored pencils found here.

{photos & styling by Jane Rhodes, placemat graphics designed by Lovely Lindsay for seejaneblog}

Posted in easter, free downloads, free stuff, holidays, hosting, parties, party plans | 12 Comments »

easter egg decorating party + free easter invitation printable

regardless of the presence or type of faith in one’s life, i feel Easter simply represents spring, and life. arriving appropriately when things are hatching and blooming and green is finally awakening under blankets of melting snow. it just seems right… to celebrate life and to include family and friends in those celebrations.

we are not seeing the signs of spring here in new england {yet}, since we woke up to a fresh six inches of snow this morning. {ugghhh…} however, we are still starting our spring traditions and this year with something new – an easter egg decorating party!

we invited a dozen mommas + their kiddos to join us for an evening of egg decorating and dinner. open-house style.

keeping the color theme simple and modern, i printed the invitations on brown kraft paper and i used a white gel pen to fill-in all the important party information:

* you can download and print the happy easter invitation here! *

i fell in love with these bunny jars, so i made them to deliver with the invitations. only, i didn’t get them all delivered before the party, so we also handed them out at our party as ‘thank you for coming!’ treats. you can find the bunny jar tutorial here. i used schleich wild rabbits for our bunnies.

for the easter eggs, i wanted something simple & modern this year. we used sharpie markers, paint markers and puffy paint. i absolutely love how the white paint markers turned out on the brown eggs. easily my all-time favorite easter eggs!

i needed something for each guest to place their finished eggs in so the eggs could travel home safely. our local whole foods market uses these tan bowls in their salad/food bar area, i’m not sure if every whole foods market uses these or not. they are typically not for sale but i inquired with the deli if i could purchase 50 of them, and they allowed me to. {yay!} we filled the bowls with natural grass {also from whole foods market}, i liked the simple-natural look.

i was so impressed with how creative everyone was! look at these:

this was such a fun evening, i love holidays and the Life that rises to the surface because of them. the balance of simple and extraordinary.

happy spring friends! i really hope it’s warming up where you live. xo

{photos and styling by me, Jane Beckner Rhodes. easter invitation designed by Lovely Lindsay for seejaneblog.}

Posted in create something, easter, easter eggs, free downloads, parties, party plans | 42 Comments »

happy fifteen.

i don’t even know where to begin.
and so i sit here, just staring at the screen, wanting so badly to be able to take this storm of feelings and find words that are worthy.

my baby girl turned fifteen years old yesterday.

for starters, we had our traditional family celebration pre-breakfast…

we are following a new trend to have a tower of donuts in place of a cake… for now, our kiddos seem to love it. {and it saves time!}

party favors for the younger siblings…

yesterday was a really rough day emotionally. and while i can only say so much about mothers, daughters, and teenagers in this space. more specifically: me and my teenage daughter. i will say, life can present the most unexpected challenges.

i’m looking through the pictures from her birthday, and i’m sitting here all kinds of weepy. i continue to think about the little bundle of brown skin and dark curly hair that was in my arms fifteen years ago. thinking about how my girl was the cutest-chubbiest of all chubby babies, and how she is the most incredibly beautiful young woman today. cue more tears.

we started our day with the family party, we woke up extra early to get out the door and have breakfast at one of our favorite local restaurants.

then… i picked her up after school and made an unexpected stop by pinkberry on the way home. secretly, i had planned a surprise yogurt bash with her girlfriends, family, and some family friends —

my favorite moment? that split second she looked up at her dad and smiled at his puckered face donning pink glasses:

going with the “pink” theme, the bash included confetti + pink party totes filled with pink party favors:

fun idea:

the night before this bash i was trying to create a “cake” topper that was not a candle and could be used in the yogurt when i thought of using pipe cleaners!

ta-da:

there is more i’d like to say, but i am emotionally drained.

the weekend is almost underway, our thick snow is slowly melting, and we have a mini-massachusetts road trip planned for tomorrow. do you have any idea what that means? country music, baby. we’ll be singing our way across the open roads. do you have any plans?

happy weekend!

p.s. 38 days till the Red Sox opening game. you knew that, right?

*****

party details:

pictures can make things look pretty and more time-consuming than they are. really, this entire day was very simple to put together.

for the marquee light letters:

i used Danni’s tutorial here via oh hello friend. i skipped a couple of steps, i wasn’t trying to make perfect marquee letters for this party, i was simply trying to get the effect – quickly. i will probably go back and improve these letters now that the party is over and i ‘m thinking about hanging them in our play room.

so, if you check out her DIY post. i used the same 12″ cardboard letters. i found mine locally at Jo-Ann’s. i cut along the edge of the letters to remove one side with a knife, i didn’t use a ruler, and didn’t leave an edge. I skipped spray paint. i planned on using a string of circle bulb lights but after calling a dozen stores here in new england and driving to a half dozen others – i couldn’t find any. this was the day before kiana’s birthday, so there wasn’t time to have any shipped to me either. so, i used one strand of white christmas lights.

i marked the holes for spacing, used a drill to make those holes, and placed one light in each hole. that’s it!

i hid most of the wires behind the letters when “happy” was standing on display on the table. since my letters are not hanging, it was challenging to get them to stay balanced and stand up straight, so i used a few zots placed on the bottom of the letters to help them stand up on the table. afterwards, these peeled right off.

poof ball party favors here. my kids loved these, they are still playing with them! think: designer spit balls. there was a serious birthday battle! big papi causing the most raucous! ::wink::

white tissue garland, here.

wrapping paper found at paper source

polka-dot totes, pink nail files, pink face wipes, polka-dot compact mirror, and pink glasses found at Forever 21.

Posted in birthdays, husband, jane, kiana, myla, parties, party plans, sela | 4 Comments »

Baptism Brunch.

This past weekend, KJ was baptized. After the baptism, we had friends and family gather at our home for brunch. It was such a special celebration. By tradition, kids are baptized at age eight in the LDS religion. Because KJ is almost 10, he took lessons from the missionaries and made the decision to be baptized on his own, by his request. I adore his desire to be good, and cherish his genuine, pure heart.

To celebrate, I used a white on white theme to go along with the purity of the ceremony.  For brunch we served all of KJ’s favorites – white powdered donuts, a crepe bar with all the yummy sides, and lots of bacon.

If you watch Downton Abbey, then maybe you have seen the white buntings at a special celebration {i’m editing this, because after a reader comment i realized i’d written a SPOILER ALERT!!!  SO SORRY to anyone who hadn’t gotten that far in D.A!} – this was the inspiration for using as many white garlands as i could! The buntings I used can be found here on etsy, the quality is superb. These white buntings are not your everyday buntings, i can’t say enough about the quality!  they will be cherished keepsakes forever in our family.

I made my first trip to the Boston flower market to choose and arrange the flowers myself. Using these white mason jar flower vases also from etsy. Each female guest took a vase of flowers home as a thank you for coming gift.

I need to tell you… The night before the baptism and brunch, I had an epic female meltdown around midnight. I’ve been fighting a weird virus for the second time, and all my exhaustion hit at once. After screaming at my husband and promptly going to bed, husband stayed up till 3am making seventy crepes for the brunch. best. husband. EVER.

So it was… a group of people who all know and love KJ, with spiritual hearts we came together last weekend. celebrating my little man. and that he was, a young man. it brought my heart so much joy to see him proud of his decision. It was good…very good.

Posted in family life, kiana, KJ, myla, parties, party plans, sela | 18 Comments »