"Pillie" Birthday Party

Two years ago I was out celebrating my birthday with my husband and parents and I was about 40 weeks pregnant. My little boy was due the next day but he decided that he wanted to be mommy's birthday present. Going through that much pain on my birthday was so worth it. All that fear and pain faded away once I saw that perfect little boy in my arms. Now every year I get to celebrate the greatest birthday present I've ever been blessed with.




This year since we are closer to family, they were all able to help us celebrate. We had a wonderful party and I am so glad they were all able to be here. As I shared here, my son's favorite book is The Very Hungry Caterpillar. We have to read it every night. He calls it "the pillie". I asked my sister to make his cake and gave her the inspiration from pinterest: Very Hungry Caterpillar Cake. She did a wonderful job, as always! 

She is amazing , am I right?

I decided I wanted to serve foods from the book too, so I found some free printables and used them to label the food. I made sausage balls, bought an apple and cheese tray, pickles, strawberries and I used cherry pop tarts and cut them to look like pie slices. 

I used a straw to poke a hole in the food to look like the caterpillar ate through some of it.

I put the painting from my He was a beautiful butterfly! blog post on the serving table.

We also had ice cream cones to enjoy after the cake.

 Everyone seemed to enjoy the party and the birthday boy was happy to spend time with his family. 

Here's Zaine with his daddy, aren't they handsome?

My sister also made a seperate cake just for me, here's the inside of it:

So awesome and colorful!

I am overwhelmed by the amount of love we received over our birthday weekend. It was amazing and unforgettable. We were really blessed with the greatest family and friends and I can't thank God enough for them all. 

As always, from my family to yours, Blessings and love.

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He was a beautiful butterfly!

In just a week my son will be turning two... How is this even possible??? Could it have really been two years since I was laying in that hospital on my BIRTHDAY giving birth to him? Yep, those years have gone by in a flash because of everything that went on. We moved from Florida to Tennessee when he was just a month old. When we got there we stayed with dear friends of ours until we could find a house to rent. We were lucky to find a house just five minutes away from their house. That friend of mine also gave birth to an adorable little girl, which became my little man's favorite person. Now that we've moved away from them, he misses her. (He always says her name when he sees a baby.)



So anyway, Zaine Joseph will be two on Saturday and I will be 26. Let me tell ya, giving birth on your birthday isn't exactly "fun"...but because of that my son and I have this bond that I can't explain. We have the same nature and just so many of the same mannerisms. He is just the sweetest fun-loving boy, spend some time with him and I bet you will be laughing your head off and begging him for a hug. He has many favorites when it comes to shows and movies he loves to watch but the first book he memorized was The Very Hungry Caterpillar. Every night before bed he would bring me the book and ask me to read "The Pillie". That first line of the book where it says "One Sunday morning the warm sun came up and...", he would always shout excitedly "POP!". Cutest thing ever...

So, since I will never have a birthday again (lol), I will be planning every party around what he is interested in. I found so many cute ideas for a Very Hungry Caterpillar party on pinterest. I made a banner and I'm going to have all the food from the book and my wonderful sister is making a caterpillar cake. I decided I wanted to paint a sign with the butterfly, so I grabbed a 8x10 canvas and got the book for reference.

Here's the picture from the book that I used for reference.

This is the rough beginning of my butterfly. Not so pretty...

More progress, looking more like the one in the book now.

Progress shot, for comparison 

The completed butterfly:

The completed painting with the book

Ta-da! Finished!

This will be used as decoration at the birthday party and afterward I'll be hanging it in the kids' playroom.

Painting this made me want to paint a whole series of literary paintings. I'm thinking that'll be a project for the near future, keep an eye out on my Etsy for them! 

As always, from my family to yours, 

Blessings and love

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