Maira's 5th Birthday

My little baby girl isn't quite so little anymore. Five just seems so much older than 3 or 4 - she's not a toddler or even a preschooler anymore. She's more than ready for kindergarten and can't wait to start in September. She's a funny, kind, smart, friendly little girl who loves to dance like crazy and her list of what she wants to be when she grows up includes being a mermaid, a princess, a candy seller, or a candy taster.

On the morning of her birthday, she woke up to a bed full of balloons, which we always do for our kids on their birthday.

Then we got dressed and I took her to Build a Bear. She'd never been there before and she had a blast picking out a special bear and its outfit. She ended up with a turquoise bear sporting a sparkly red outfit with sparkly red heels. Very...colourful. We both had a lot of fun there.

That evening, we had family over to celebrate her birthday. Her choice for our meal was pizza and she let me choose what kind of cake to bake, as long as it was pretty. I copied (sort of) the cake here, which I found through (of course) Pinterest.

With my sister Jill's family over, we had 9 kids (if you count Shae as a kid) in the house so after supper, we put on Toy Story 3 so we could have a few minutes of peace.

Jess decided to take a picture of me the night before, making the decorations for her pink birthday party. I really enjoy making birthdays special for my kids but yeah, it IS a lot of work...

For her friend party, she wanted to do a Pinkalicious themed party. We got the idea while browsing through Pinterest together. We didn't use just one website but combined ideas from a whole bunch of them. Who knew it would be such a popular theme for a birthday party? But it's one of Maira's favourite books and she does love the colour pink so it was a perfect choice.

Pinkalicious is the story of a little girl who loves pink and one day, she eats so many pink cupcakes that she turns pink - her skin, hair, everything. She's delighted but her mother rushes her to the doctor who proclaims that the only cure for rare and acute pinkititis is a steady diet of green food. So, we took that storyline and ran with it.

For starters, instead of a birthday cake, we had pink cupcakes, of course. And we had a very pink lunch. I even added food colouring to homemade bread and made pink peanut butter and jam sandwiches for the main course. There was also pink lemonade, pink candies, jello jigglers, and strawberry ice cream.

We played pink games like Pass the Pink (hot potato), read a few pinkalicious stories, and they all had their nails painted pink and we applied pink tattooes to their cheeks or hands.

We also did a photo shoot so we could photoshop their pictures and print them off so it looked like they had eaten so much pink at the party that they turned pink too.

We gave each guest a photo of herself, all pinkified, and then I gave them their treat bags, which were green, and were full of green treats, to cure any pinkititis they might have acquired at the party.

And finally, here are a few shots from the photo shoot that don't have to do with the party but are too cute not to put up.

A boy and his dog.

Down Dog.