Princess Carnival Theme

Sugar Pea is always into parties. Whether it's hers or a friend, she really wants to make birthday's special. For her fifth, we were in Georgia for the last graduating sibling of momma pea and because the grandparents couldn't make the trip for her big party in Texas, we decided that Sugar could have two parties this year. We will talk about the Star Wars themed party after this one...I just wanted to showcase her Princess Carnival Theme first.

Starting to plan this party got me stumped and this was not usual when it came to not doing the typical "what's in style" party themes. I originally wanted to do 5 different invitations honoring each of the original five princesses...then the guest list (with pre-k school and church and family and friends) grew to over 70 invites, I realized how crazy that was. When I'm making things for other people (like invitations or menus) that's ONE part of a party. When you're the planner AND the creator, things start to make their way away from "important". This is the last big party until 10. Milestones are a BIG deal to this family.

I'll start with the shout outs to my awesome party "team"! Kim and her team at Glory Of Zion have an awesome set up in Solomon's Porch. If you need a space to have a wedding, party, or meeting, this is it! Sarah Tucker did the photography. I love this girl. She seriously is on my top 5 list of favorite photographer. At this time, she is not taking new clients as she works her way through school. I'm so blessed to have her!! The balloon guy - let me just tell you that I was SHOCKED the first time we saw him at the Egg and I. Ray, of Blue Collar Balloons, is not your typical "here's your doggy" balloon animal guy. He's a genius balloon art creator. Along with him, we had an amazing face painter that did everyone's face in some amazing characters. Everything else, was done by yours truly.

Here's the first line up:

The invitation

All of the signs had a very Pink Princess Carnival feel to them. Each guest signed a ticket for Sugar's Scrapbook that my grandma made her (it's tradition). The menus and signage were all made by More Peas, Please. The cake drape was as well. The boxes were made by MPP too and had a ring pop in each box. Each booth featured a sign dedicated to each of the original 5 princesses complete with photos of each time Sugar met them. This family is a bunch of Disney Lovers so it was hard to choose just one photo from each of our trips. She loves all of the princesses and exudes qualities from each of them.

At the Belle Booth, the kids made stained glass roses. It was contact paper, a cut out rose (by More Peas, Please), and red tissue paper. The engineering print for Cinderella was printed at Staples. The shoe was cut out by MPP. The centerpieces on the tables were ticket wrapped containers. We also had little stools that a friend wrapped in Pink Tulle and we used more pink and tickets to accent them. This was Sugar's balloon choice! The top right corner was Ariel's Go Fishing booth prizes. The crabs and fish were cut out by More Peas, Please. Snow White's booth was "bobbing for apples" where they popped a balloon to get their prize. The prize at Aurora/Sleeping Beauty's booth was decorating a cookie either blue of pink. Since Flora and Meriweather couldn't decide which color to make Aurora's gown, the kids didn't have to choose for their cookies either.

Last is all the food. Yes, I went all out on request here. The cake was naked because Sugar still doesn't like...well..um...Sugar. She despises frosting. The cake pops were pink for the guests along with pink popcorn, pink funnel cakes, and pink & blue cotton candy on a ferris wheel that I found on Zulily! Sugar loves her friends. This little chick with her is one of our favorite littles. She is so sweet! Chick loves Rapunzel right now and she had a Rapunzel balloon from Ray - it had a braid people. A balloon braid. I also made a slideshow of Sugar's first 5 years and here we are watching it together - and there she is on her first birthday (on the TV). Then lastly blowing out her candles.

My Little Sugar Pea is five. I cannot believe it. She has accomplished more than I ever have already and I'm so proud to be her momma. She was so happy to celebrate her birthday (twice) and be wearing her favorite color...duh...pink. We all had a BLAST celebrating her milestone birthday. We have something big planned for the next few years (just has a family of 4) so stay tuned until 10 for her!!!

Do you have a party that you would like to have featured where you used our products? Please email Ashley about 10-15 photos to MorePeasPlease@yahoo.com. Be as detailed as possible and include any recognition to businesses that you have used along with their websites. Whether it's Facebook, Twitter or www. If you have any questions, please contact us. We love designing new things!

Champagne Themed Thirtieth Birthday Party

"Friends are the family we choose for ourselves." ~Edna Buchanan

So my Chick Pea was going to turn the big three-oh. That's good because she doesn't look a day over 22. Her SIL (you may know her as a writer) and I planned one awesome dinner party with games and a photo area. I have never done a dinner party because I always needed a reason. Well, good thing that's what Chick wanted because I was SO ready with ideas. She wasn't allowed to know about anything with the party. She knew what the invites looked like, and that it was a "fancy dinner", but that's it. This was so hard because she is my go-to gal and when I want to gush about stuff, she's the one I go to....so I didn't talk to her for like a month.

The theme was Champagne. She LOVES champagne so we started thinking of things and searching pinterest....this was VERY hard. Partly because apparently Pinterest thought we wanted to throw a "Great Gatsby" party. No. We just wanted to celebrate. We start with the invites made by More Peas, Please (along with ALL signage seen). These were glitter paper complete with a custom champagne label that had her birth year and place on it. Words on the back.

Next the details. I ordered corks from Amazon to use as place card holders. The same glitter paper was the backing to a bubble border design that I then used on the Menus and signs. The table was set in the middle with Chick at the head. On the table were champagne bottles that I Mod Podged glitter on. (GLITTER EVERYWHERE). Then I bought silk flowers to go inside of them. We had the party at Solomon's Porch at Glory Of Zion. (This place is perfect for weddings to meetings to birthday parties). The Staff there is amazing and came up with an AWESOME Menu. That night we had a very "tuscan" themed menu and it was SO good. The steak was perfect, the alfredo was awesome, the desserts were amazing. I could go on and on about the food, but I am not a foodie blogger so back to the details. The balloons were to mimic bubble hanging all around. The "Bubbly Bar" was awesome with our own little bar tender!

Here's the Dessert table with the Strawberry Champagne cake pops. If I could eat only one thing before I die, it would be those cake pops. We had wine, champagne, beer and gelato. Tiramisu and plain vanilla cake pops as well. As a gift, we had everyone sign the champagne bottle to the birthday girl so she could drink it and savor the memory of her thirtieth even longer than just that night. Her parents are very well known at our church and they prayed a blessing over her just before dinner. We are so blessing to have Chick's family in our lives. Her sweetness and great ability to put a smile on anyone's face is awesome. We also made a photo backdrop where we took photos throughout the night.

Here's Chick with her hubby. They're so cute!! Shortly before this we played a slideshow I put together of her 30 years on Earth. Her mom helped so much with providing photos!

These ladies are so much fun to be with. Her SIL even drove up from Houston for the party! We played a game shortly after dinner and I believe this was the most fun King Pea and I have had in a LONG time. It's nice to be home. This makes it far more fun!

Do you have a party that you would like to have featured where you used our products? Please email Ashley about 10-15 photos to MorePeasPlease@yahoo.com. Be as detailed as possible and include any recognition to businesses that you have used along with their websites. Whether it's Facebook, Twitter or www. If you have any questions, please contact us. We love designing new things!

Another Mickey Mouse Theme

Well, as things heat up here in Texas (after our mass amounts of rain that flooded a lot of our state), we are going back to a birthday party of my littlest nephew. His second birthday ended up being Mickey Mouse Clubhouse inspired with more emphasis on Mickey Mouse. He calls Mickey "Hot Dog". It's funnier because that's what his older brother called him at that age too! My SIL had a lot of ideas and we got a lot of them accomplished which is always good - even more so since she works from 7pm-7am as a NICU nurse.

They had one of the cutest print off invitations with his photo and it was very colorful. I think she got them at Walmart. Or someplace like that. All of the paper goods and photos were done by More Peas, Please. Again, MPP isn't the photography side of our company - that's ALL Snap Pea Imaging & Design, but because it's family, I always take photos for family.

Let's start with the details of the party:

The banner that says "Happy Birthday" had a Toodles in the middle of the words. The Door sign with arrows "Come Inside, It's Fun Inside" personalized with the birthday boy's name on Mickey in the middle. Next, I had my contact at Disneyland find Mickey's gloves and because we couldn't make the "Handy Helper" we made the "Glove Balloon" instead. A HUGE thank you to Nik and Lesia (or Uncle Nik and Auntie Lesia as Sugar and Sweet call them!). You guys saved me once again. The head cutouts are the perfect addition to the scrapbook that my grandma made for him. Everyone signs with a little note to him so that he can read them all later. The other banners made (with the topiary) are the gloves, pants, and shoes. Those banners are my new favorite. It was awesome to see them flanking the spiral crepe paper. The food tents I cannot take credit for. We found those on Etsy from Heart & Craftsy. One thing I have learned is it takes me more time to create things like that, than to just buy them. Of course I did add the words, print and fold them...but I didn't design those. The thing that momma wanted for nephew was the cups with the white buttons on them to mimic Mickey's pants. They were actually button cut outs, not just circles.

Here's the birthday boy. He did not want to eat his cake (second year in a row) and to be honest, Sugar Pea doesn't eat cake. Only in the last year has she eaten some, but Momma Pea has to scrape off the icing (aka, eat the icing). Here's the cupcake cake, his cake, him with his grandma, and the table of food complete with most of his toys used as decorations. We are Mickey Lovers through and through. It was such a FUN time. Below are the guests that had fun too!

Do you have a party that you would like to have featured where you used our products? Please email Ashley about 10-15 photos to MorePeasPlease@yahoo.com. Be as detailed as possible and include any recognition to businesses that you have used along with their websites. Whether it's Facebook, Twitter or www. If you have any questions, please contact us. We love designing new things!

Alice in Wonderland Tea Party Theme

So a little business chat for a minute. We have closed our Etsy page down for a while. It just wasn't generating much. We are solely on Facebook and Pinterest now. {Pinterest more for the ideas, Facebook more for the ordering.} Spread the word!! The faster we reach our next milestone, the faster we can have another give away and we do have A LOT of things stored up for that!!

Back to the topic. Sweet Pea wanted a Tea Party theme for her third birthday party. Actually she wanted to go to Disney World again (and I would too if I had slept through most of it). However, we're not millionaires so we decided to add a Disney flare to our party. The details are what makes this Type-A Momma Pea get the chills.

To planning we went and I was SO happy with everything. We ended up using Solomon's Porch at our church this year. They have an AMAZING team there (shout out to Kim and the crew for EVERYTHING you did to make this day THE most special day EVER!). I came in with the ideas and they put them to life. Which is why I'm even more excited for the next few blog posts that involve them. We used Solomon's Porch for my bestie's 30th birthday and we are using it for Sugar Pea's 5th birthday (Princess Carnival theme and you can BET there's Disney in that one too!).

You do not have to be a "member" of our church to use this space. It is available for rental! Just contact Kim at the link above.

Photography was done by the one and only Jessica Catalano of Aish Photography. If you're in the area and need a photographer, go to her. She is one of my most favorite photographers!

This party started with the invitation. I bought the file from Miss Kate's Cuttables (and currently I do not make these to sell because they are VERY intense to make and piece together - however, it's my child and I loved every moment of using their file). Here's the invitation:

Now, the food was very "tea party" themed. The Decor was more than I expected. The Cake Pops were ADORABLE. The Cake was the MOST...just...I can't put into words how thrilled I was. Sugar would have eaten it all, but it would have taken about 3 years to finish it! Here's some Detail Shots and I'll go through to show things that we did in the Pod {our office} and what things were of the master minds at Solomon's Porch.

Here's the Cake pops that are shaped like tea pots; the cookies that are made into tea cups; petit fours to represent what Alice eats before opening the door; The cake - also shaped like a tea pot; the photos hanging behind the cake were engineer prints from Staples (I had the photo rights to print these from our time at Disneyland and Disney World. There were other photos of Sugar with Alice over the course of the last 3 years of visits); The watch I found at Hot Topic {seriously}; The "carrots" are stuffed with Egg Salad (so good and they were SUPER cute); Grape Jam near the mouse to calm him.

This was Sweet's seat at the head of the LONG table with the lanterns to mimic the tea party in the movie. We also had the movie playing on the TV's.

The Straws had the phrase "Drink Me" to go along with the petit fours; The arrows on the doors were inspired by the movie signs too; There's Sugar blowing out her candles, eating and having "Happy Birthday" sung to her. I also had my mom and step-dad on the phone to witness it. Of course we made all the signs. I don't have pictures of the Menu and Dessert Menu, but here you'll see the "sign a tea cup for her scrapbook". We made the tea cups too for the guests to sign - Big Sister Sugar Pea had to be the first to sign!

The guests got to each paint their own tea cup that I purchased and had fired at Marynell's Craft Attack. Marynell is absolutely one of the sweetest people I've ever met. The kids LOVED their finished product and we gave it back to them with a thank you not as well!

Here is Sweet with big sister Sugar who was dressed as the White Rabbit. I found Sweet's costume online at Target in the Clearance - yes. Save that money for the party! Sugar had on a yellow shirt (and there was supposed to be a red sweater that was delayed in mailing) with a blue skirt and gray leggings. They had SO much fun. It was by far my most favorite party for them. I cannot wait until the next one. I always love doing them!

Do you have a party that you would like to have featured where you used our products? Please email Ashley about 10-15 photos to MorePeasPlease@yahoo.com. Be as detailed as possible and include any recognition to businesses that you have used along with their websites. Whether it's Facebook, Twitter or www. If you have any questions, please contact us. We love designing new things!

Another Minnie Mouse Theme

A good friend of mine wanted to throw her daughter a Minnie Mouse themed party and since we had everything left over from Sugar's party, I told her I would help in any way I could. Our Chick Pea's mean the World to us. Without them, we wouldn't have any entertainment. We love all of our Chick's.

I just wanted to do a quick blog post of her version of the Minnie Mouse party. She is VERY talented and sewed her daughter's dress (that was amazingly cute), made her cake, and a lot of the extras for the party. 

Here you will see the banner More Peas, Please made. Instead of spelling out on each individual pennant "HAPPY BIRTHDAY JUBILEE", we did one big middle piece with the famous mouse gloves and the silhouette's of the head. Chick made the cake that looked like a flower, while MPP made the cake topper. She also made Lemon Tartlet's that looked like flowers with pearls. There were a bunch of other treats (hot diggity dog's, pretzel rods, etc). You'll note the topiaries that I forgot at Sugar's party (bad mommy).

Here's a close up of the topiary, cake and the rest of the decor that was at the party. The blessing bows are a favorite additive of ours - we had to add them to the scrapbook that my grandma made for her. There was also the giant Minnie Mouse that said "Welcome to Jubilee's Clubhouse" made by More Peas, Please.

Chick added a "Pin the bow on Minnie" game. It was super cute! There's a look at the dress she made too.

I let baby chick use my ears. What's Minnie without sparkles and of course her ears. Chick also had a face painting for the kiddos. It was funny!!

Here's Sugar Pea and Sweet Pea with their Chick Pea. I cannot believe how big they are all getting. It is so sweet to have friends like this and to be home! Sweet is only 7 months older than her Chick Pea friend. 

Do you have a party that you would like to have featured where you used our products? Please email Ashley about 10-15 photos to MorePeasPlease@yahoo.com. Be as detailed as possible and include any recognition to businesses that you have used along with their websites. Whether it's Facebook, Twitter or www. If you have any questions, please contact us. We love designing new things!

Monkey Themed Baby Shower

Much of our year is just celebrating. When we moved back to Texas, we knew we would make friends. 2014 was a busy year of babies!! Our neighbors across from us were expecting their second child, first girl. As soon as we could, we jumped on the idea of throwing a baby shower for them. We did a couple's shower. Really it was a family shower. We totally had a blast. She was doing a girl monkey in the bedroom {since they did a boy monkey in their son's room}.

More Peas, Please made the invites and the other paper items you see around. They wanted Mexican food, so we did a taco bar. It worked out better to set everything in the kitchen instead of taking away the table. This way everyone could sit down and enjoy each other. We even got to have a few of our other neighbors over that we had not had a chance to really hang out with.

Here you will see the leaf garland (also used in the zoo theme party), our "Adopt a Monkey" section (these were the gifts for the children that attended the shower) and the presents (of course girl themed)! These were by far the most creative cake pops from NV Cupcakes. The banana bunches were vanilla flavored (absolutely great!) and the Monkey heads were chocolate with pink sparkle cheeks and bows. Some had the pink binky's. 

Mommy and Daddy were very happy to have everyone there to celebrate! They got a lot of amazing gifts and some homemade ones too. 

To have two pregnant ladies due this close together, we wanted to make sure they were comfy and no one went into labor!! What a shower that would have been.

Our awesome helpers (who are also our neighbors). These are probably THE single most loved people in the world. They're awesome friends!!

Do you have a party that you would like to have featured where you used our products? Please email Ashley about 10-15 photos to MorePeasPlease@yahoo.com. Be as detailed as possible and include any recognition to businesses that you have used along with their websites. Whether it's Facebook, Twitter or www. If you have any questions, please contact us. We love designing new things!

Zoo Themed Birthday Party

My nephew is probably the best little boy you will meet. He has done so much from two to three that I can't even keep track of how much has changed. Partially because Sweet (our youngest) is 3 months younger than him so it's hard to keep them straight. For his third birthday party, he wanted a zoo theme because he LOVES going to the zoo and LOVES elephants. I helped my SIL with the signs and decorations. Below you'll find the fun photos of the things that she found on Oriental Trading and the awesome cake she got! If I didn't end up sick, I would have eaten it all. I guess that's ok though, because his birthday is always near Hanukkah and Christmas for us. Too many pounds already. HA!

Here's a collage of the Cakes (both for the guests and his personal cake), drink station (with Shamu on top), the elephant shaped ham and turkey, and the signs for the food {Made by More Peas, Please}. My SIL found the animals at Oriental Trading and the little animals for the cakes were at Wal-Mart (I believe).

More food and another animal with the food menu for the dessert section.

For the decor, she wanted a sign just like that above. The stickers were found at JoAnn's and MPP cut out the letters along with painting the "X" over the word "NOT".

More Peas, Please cut out the leaf garland that was hung with the streamers to create a tree. The monkey was hung near the tiger hiding high up on the movie shelf. Of course animal print balloons were added near the present section. 

Here is my big boy nephew! The cups were from Oriental Trading and used for the children to put their drinks in (as a souvenir). The banner was made by MPP complete with his favorite animal in the middle, and elephant. The hat he was wearing, we found at Wal-Mart at the last minute. He was SO excited to wear the hat. This boy has always loved cake. The last photo shows him enjoying it.

Do you have a party that you would like featured where you used our products? Please email Ashley about 10 -15 photos at MorePeasPlease@yahoo.com Be as detailed as possible and include any recognition to businesses along with their websites. Whether it's Facebook, www, or Twitter. If you also have any questions, please contact us! We love designing new things!

A Wedding: as told by the Matron of Honor

Wow! It's been busy for sure these last few months. In August, my best friend of 16 years got married. Sweet and Sugar were asked to be flower girls...I was the Matron-of-Honor. A title I worked at for over 15 years to earn. You might remember the Monograms and Margaritas Bridal Shower I threw back in February for the Chick Pea, that was the first of many celebrations for the couple. We attended 2 of their 5 showers (mainly because of location differences). The bride asked if More Peas, Please would do some things for the wedding - of course we did! Below you will find a few photos of the work we did for the wedding along with the photos of my girls. It was truly a blessing to be a part of such an event and an amazing celebration.

From my perspective, there was a lot to do that a lot of MOH's don't know about. My job was a little different due to the fact that I had children that were in the wedding. To put it into bullet points would be imaginable because not every MOH will have the same integrity or values as I do. That being said, there's one thing that you should understand of being a bridesmaid, MOH, or even the parents of the flower girl: You were asked to be apart of a very special day - it is not about you, your needs or your wants. Ever. Don't give out more information than need be. If you checked the app and it says it's going to rain, don't tell the bride. Tell the pastor. If grandma is missing, don't tell the bride. Find the Mother and tell her - or go find grandma and tell the bride that you have to go to the restroom. If the flower girl picks apart the flower ball to give flowers out to the guests, just laugh and say you're grateful that she's giving. Those are not the things that the couple needs to deal with.

Here's the classic dress hanging up before we put our dresses on (this is my dress, Sweet and Sugar's dresses)

We had previously discussed her family doing a Something old, new, borrowed and blue, but knew that they probably wouldn't, so I did it for her. Something Old: We had our BFF music CD from 2000 (I believe that was the year I got in trouble and couldn't go to homecoming, so she came over instead of going as well and we made the CD). I put the music on a playlist in my phone and we listened to it before we left the hotel. Something New: I got her a new necklace with her First initial "L". Something Blue: I found a card I had gotten when I married my husband (10 years ago) about how to pray for your husband. I shrunk it down so it was manageable. Something borrowed: My wedding ring from the day I married my husband.

The Michigan Shaped table numbers and the back were all done by More Peas. These were the exact shape and style for the invites to the rehearsal dinner. The wedding colors were purple and green so the state was purple and the little heart was green (over Detroit where they got married).

These were the Table Assignment cards we did. These were then stuck to a giant mirror that the bride found on craigslist! Each table assignment is double backed in Purple and Green with matching purple type.

There were so many other things that we did and don't have photos to, but you can find a lot of product photos on our Facebook.

The more fun aspects of the wedding included a bunch of "usies"; Sweet and Sugar were dancing a lot and playing the band's instruments; I had to give a speech that I knew if I looked at the bride I would cry...and I did; the girls were waiting so much to see the bride - it was like a character meal at Disney! Here's my family! The headbands all of the flower girls wore are by My Props Rock (and yes, she rocks)! I felt so glamorous. False eyelashes, fake tan, hair all done...mommy's don't get to do that often!

The girls playing WITH the band...

We are just missing the 3 flower girls and the ring bearer here...but for 20 people, this is amazing!

I cannot stress enough how much being apart of something like this means. We were blessed beyond belief to be there at the beginning of something that meant so much to two people. The girls love their auntie and miss her all of the time. Once my mom moves here, we probably won't see much of her, but thank God for Facebook! That's our saving grace of knowing what's going on. 

As a Matron of Honor, I learned that having an "in" with friends is part of being able to help. If it wasn't for my friends' support (that have businesses), the details wouldn't have been there. It is truly a blessing to have people in my life that help out just as we help others! Thank you all!