Leslie's Little Smittles: January 2012

Last night someone said the phrase I hear a lot, A messy house is a happy house(or something of that nature). That phrase drives me NUTS! It seems people think that a CLEAN house is an UNHAPPY house. That those who have clean houses spend all their days cleaning things up and keeping their home clean. That they don't have time for anything else and a clean home is their #1 priority. Hear this. You DON'T have to compromise a tidy house to be able to play with your littles and keep folks happy. In fact, I'd go so far to say that a nicely organized house is a happy house. You can quote that once your house is organized and your family is, indeed happy.
NOW, what I'm saying is take how ever long it takes to get your home in GOOD working order. I'd say it'll probably take about a day per room, maybe less. Once there is a place for everything and everything is in it's place cleaning the house usually takes no more than an hour a week and that's for a nice deep clean. I'd bet that the family whose home is not tidy spend more time than that simply looking for sock matches, homework, and library books under all the piles of unfolded clean laundry piled on the couch you haven't seen since the your baby was born, 5 years ago...
I'm not trying to be harsh or point a finger at those who enjoy their messy homes. I just want my readers to know that you can have both a nice tidy home AND still have time to teach and play with your children. Even more time, if you ask me.
Want tips on how to do it?
Stick around. They're coming up...

Today we celebrated Bubby's second birthday with a construction party. Below are pictures! It was SO cute!!

The Invitation(with our personal information marked out.)

A lot of times people ask about where I get the invitations made. I always make them myself. I usually just google for images until I find one that I think will work well for what I'm needing. I don't have any cool programs for making them. I just use Microsoft Publisher.

**UPDATE** It has been brought to my attention that this specific invitation design was originally made by a lovely company who specializes in BEAUTIFUL invitations called Paper So Pretty. I had no idea that I was ripping off someone's hard work as I simply googled for an image, saved the blank image to my computer, and entered the information I wanted to enter. I'm truly sorry to the original designer, and highly recommend you contact them for all your invitation needs!

I found an adorable tool font that I used for the Banner and Thank You Notes on the goodie bags. Lots of times you can google the type font you are looking for by simply tying in "Tool Font." I've found all sorts of cool fonts this way. You can ALWAYS find them for free too.

OK, so here are the actual party pictures...

This was our first time to have balloons at a party. Probably our last. They are a big expense and don't last very long. Isaiah asked for them though, so we splurged. I thought they looked really cute, but Manly sure did have a hard time trying to keep them from flying away. We got the cones from Oriental Trading. They were pretty cheap, and I thought we'd be able to use them for other things in the future. The kids have had a lot of fun playing with them!

Bubby standing with his "baa-booooons!"

The front door. This wreath took us longer than just about anything else did. This was 100 feet of cord wrapped around my grapevine wreath. It was HEAVY! I thought it was cute though. I made the center sign using publisher.

A close up of the wreath.

The entryway. Each child got a hard hat(which I got at Oriental trading) with the Smittle Construction Company logo on it. I just used a sheet of labels and put one on each hat.

I got a huge roll of caution tape at Lowes for cheaper than I found a tiny roll at the party store. I think it was $4 and I still have a ton of it I can use another time or sell on ebay or something.

Manly made me all the signs. I wrote down what I wanted them to say and he free handed all of them. Thanks, Manly. They looked cute!

The Living Room. We used tools from our garage. I was a little worried about the ladder, but no one tried to climb it, so it worked out great.

We laid out tractors and road signs from Bubby's toys around the house as decorations.

I got a bunch of butcher paper from the tables at our MOPS Christmas Party, so I used some on the guest bathroom door to make a port-a-potty! HAHAHAHA! It looked hysterical! I snagged the waste management sign with google then added "port-a-potty" in publisher.

I thought this was funny! It's like a flagger sign, but with balloons instead. Another Manly creation. He's good at making my crazy ideas come true!

The goodie bag station. The bags had candy in them and there were suckers on the outside. I got them at Oriental Trading for really cheap! They were so so cute! The kids all really liked them. We used brown bags to look like Construction crew brown bag lunches. Scotty came up with the idea of putting the suckers on the outside with duct tape.

They were cute. I should have made the labels bigger, but it turned out OK.

This is the school room.

Livi put this construction puzzle together because she thought it would be a good decoration that the little kids could put together if they wanted to. She's so sweet!

More mini decor.

He has a LOT of tractors. Ha!

The drink station. We borrowed these jugs from our church and I made the simple signs with publisher. The cups had labels that matched the hats and the front door.

The baby table.

The food table! It turned out really cute.

My 2 year old!

My sweet BIG boy! He looked so so grown up! BOOO!

Sweet Boy!

Easiest food prep EVER. Seriously. It looked SO cute, but was so so simple. I bought a small bag of peanut butter cups and a big bag of chocolate animal crackers(because they were cheaper than getting a bunch of oreos.) We put them into a gallon sized ziplock, then rolled over them with a rolling pin. Once it was dirt-like we just sprinkled it on the table. Olivia had a good time helping with this part. We just put the tractors and road signs on the table around it with the other food.

The Safety cones were Nacho bugles. I HATE those things, but they really did look like safety cones.

The utility poles were pretzel rods.

Muddy Bricks were brownies.

Whoppers for boulders.

Dirt Cake in the dump truck for fill dirt.

It looked so cute and everyone really liked it.

A close-up of the "dirt."

The gravel or in this case pop corn.

A side view.

An up-close picture of the food table sign. SO SO cute!!

Such a special picture. This is Manly praying his traditional Birthday Blessing over Bubby. I love the look on Bubby's face.

Daddy and Bubby while we were singing "Happy Birthday"

He was so cute smiling while we sang.

Blowing out his candle.

Eating all his food.

There aren't a lot of pictures after this because trying to get pictures while all the people are running around is TOUGH! I stole some of these from my mom who got several more candid shots than I did.