My Favorite Grown Up Parties

Back again linking up with Andrea for Show and Tell, this time we're talking about throwing grown up parties. Honestly I haven't thrown much of those...because kids... but I do love me a good party. I actually did a post on how to throw a party,you can find that here. Sometimes knowing where to start can be overwhelming...so I break it down in 5 steps. Easy, peasy.




A few years ago my sister turned 40 so I threw her a surprise party, which didn't turn out to be a surprise because she's nosy and always has to know everything and didn't want the surprise part. But in any case, we threw her a Fiesta party because why not? Hired a taco guy, and I made a bazillion tissue paper flowers.

I found colored buckets and made small arrangements in them. They turned out super cute for center pieces.

No fiesta party is compelte without a taco guy right? If you re in the LA area, give this guy a call, he was amazing, and had the BEST tacos...plus he brought a ton of condiments to put on it, so we didn't have to get anything else!

If you re in the LA area, give this guy a call, he was amazing, and had the BEST tacos...plus he brought a ton of condiments to put on it, so we didn't have to get anything else!

For all of the details, click here.

The other grown up party I threw was a Tiffany's themed one. It was super fun, and again I made something with tissue paper, but this time they were those pom poms...super easy and much cheaper to make than buying the Martha Stewart ones. Speaking of which I should update that one...those pictures in that post are pretty awful. It was one of my first posts, and clearly I had no idea what I was doing. Amazing how far I have come since then.

These are my favorite pictures from that shower. I love that the center pieces are so simple but really fit the theme.

And such a cute drink table.

 

Putting food on different levels makes it look fancy...and that's what we're all about right? We found random boxes to put under each thing.

 

Click here to see the full details of the Tiffany's Themed Bridal Shower.

 

Linking up here

Favorite Sourthern California Park

Hello foxy friends! I'm back with the California moms talking about our favorite parks.

There are so many parks to go to, but the one my kids repeatedly love to go to is called Dinosaur Park. Here's the story behind the park:

So cool right? They have this big dinosaur at the beginning for the kids to climb on, which gives me heart palpitations but the kids love it. Excuse me while my heart might explode and my palms get sweaty.

The park itself is pretty big, so I'm going to concentrate on the park structure part of the park. It is broken down into three sections.  The first section is on the bottom, and has some sand for the kids to play in and has these turtles that spout water when you click on these buttons off to the side. It's so fun for the kids for those hot summer days.

You can tell that the buttons are well loved.

The second section on the bottom is a smaller playground for the little toddlers in your life. The one thing I don't like about it, the ramp to get to the slide is super steep and has no grip to it, so the newly walking kids (which it's made for) need help getting up.

The top section has a playground for bigger kids and the swings. My kids love playing on this, and that slide over there is actually pretty scary for me, but the kids love it and can go up and down for forever.

The park is a great place to picnic too. The grounds are kept up really nicely, I know a lot of people hold parties on the bench areas and sometimes even rent bounce houses. This is also where Baby Fox plays baseball, there are three fields, one little league field and two bigger kid fields. Plus there is a huge soccer area where several games are played at a time during soccer season. There is always something going on and/or something to watch.

Do you have a go to park in your area? There are so many to choose from around us, they really built this community around parks and bike/jogging paths. When we moved here we had no idea all that existed and we are so glad that we did!

Now go check out some of the other California mom's and see where their favorite parks are!

 

 

 

 

Jenny @ Princess Turned Mom

Whitney @ Work It Mommy 

Justine @ Little Dove Blog

Linking up here



Friday Favorites #113

Happy Friday Foxy Friends, as you read this we are probably driving to Vegas to visit my brother and my Sister-In-Law. Hopefully there is no traffic and all goes well, fingers crossed! In case you didn't know the drive from where I live to Vegas is full of NOTHING, like desert wasteland...not much to look at. Let's get started with our Friday Favorites:

Did post much this week, just wasn't feeling it, and we had such a busy weekend that there was no time to get anything done ahead of time like there normally is.

Tuesday: What it's like to be adopted
Wednesday: More Spring Floral
Thursday: How to make an Under The Sea Backdrop

I'm also back this week with another hair tutorial. This time I'm showing you how I do my top knot...which I pretty much always reserve for when my hair is really dirty and I probably should have washed it the night before but was too lazy, haha.

I'm joining Desiree, Stefanie, Justine and Whitney for their new link up called A Year Of Color. Each month they want us to showcase the color of the month, however you want to represent that. This month is pastels. I love Spring because the flowers are blooming and the previous owners were obsessed with roses and put every color rose in our garden. I was so sad when we redid our backyard and had to get rid of a bunch, although they tried to keep as many as they could.

This smells so lovely, my allergies don't like it, but my eyes certainly do.

We have some more that weren't quite blooming yet, or they were almost dying so I caught it at the wrong time, but I'm so happy that the former owners took so much time to take care of these gorgeous rose bushes.

We took the kids to the Carlsbad Flower Fields on Saturday and then LEGOLAND, long day, but super fun. Here are some of the pictures, I won't bombard you, even though I want to.

The kids did great...with a lot of fruit snack bribes, each year it seems to get slightly easier...fingers crossed for next year.

I promised myself that I was going to take more pictures at Easter but my cousin was in the hospital so my mom, sister and I went to see her and visit, making us 3 hours late for Easter. But the Mr. brought the kids and they had a blast...I haven't seen any photographic evidence of this though.

We did get this gem of a picture though...I think this might be my only Easter dinner picture, oops!

Perhaps next week I will share some more Easter morning stuff, I'm tired and want to go to bed right now, haha, priorities.

Cutest little baby video...Baby Fox used to do the same thing, it was my favorite part of getting him up in the morning. If you're in a bad mood, just watch this video, you can't not smile.

This is me right now...haha! Anyone else?

Linking up here

Under The Sea Backdrop

Happy Thursday, today is my last day of work this week, woo hoo! Seems like this week lasted forever, anyone else? I'm going to go ahead and blame an Easter hangover. I decided today is the day that I am finally getting around to tell you how I made Mini Fox's Ariel under the sea background from her birthday party last September.  

*Some of the links are affiliate links and I will  either receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you click on it or if you make a purchase from one of these links, I may also receive a commission on the sale of the product. By purchasing through Foxy's Domestic Side, you're helping me to continue creating fun things for this space.

 

I had bought this bulletin board paper for a super hero backdrop a few years ago, crazy that was a few years ago. I pretty much have been using that paper for all of my backdrops the last couple of years, check the different ones out here and here. I realized that the back side of the paper was white, so I knew I could use that for my under the sea back drop. I always start with a plastic tablecloth. Do not get the 99 Cent or Dollar Tree ones, I tried that and they pretty much ripped the first time I tried to lay them down. Spring for the Party City ones, they are thicker and are easier to work with. Okay let's get started.

What You'll Need:

Plastic Table Cloth from Party City, color of your choice (I started with the 99 cent store one and they are too thin)

Bulletin Board Paper 

Spray Paint (I used Pink, Purple, and Dark Green)

Fish/Sea Horse (You can cut these out freehand or use a Cricut Explore or Silhouette Portrait)

Birthday Banner
Things to Decorate the Banner with (I used my Cricut for this and also bought some from Party City, like this and then I took the pictures off the end of the streamer)
Spray Adhesive

Can you tell Party City is my friend. I also buy a lot of things from Oriental Trading company, if they have free shipping, they are the same price as Party City, so if I can save myself a trip, I use them.

Directions:

Step 1: 

I decided that I wanted Pink and Purple coral and some green seaweed on my background. I layed out the Bulletin Paper, white side up, on the garage floor. I did two of these, one for the purple and pink and one for the green. I didn't know how much seaweed I would need and how many mistakes I was going to make so I wanted to have more than enough.

For this part there is no right and wrong. I used 1/3 of the paper for green, 1/3 for pink and 1/3 for purple. I knew I wanted it to not be solid but spec-illy, hence the spray paint, it seemed like it would be more authentic. I randomly started spraying away, trying to not make it uniform, but thicker with spray paint in some parts but not others.

The marbling that you see, is me just spraying parts of the paper more than others. There really is no right or wrong to do this.

I knew I only wanted a few corals so I was only going to do at most 2 of each color.

Let dry, this took about 15 minutes.

Step 2:

Here is where your inner OCD cannot come out. You just have to cut (because I knew I spray painted way more then I need I had some liberty to make mistakes to see what worked. I probably cut about 20 or so seaweeds but only used 13. I randomly cut out the seaweed in tall strips, making sure that they weren't the same height, because we all know seaweed is not uniform. I knew I wanted some with leaves and some without, so the ones without leaves I made a little thicker and the ones with leaves a little bit thinner. I also cut out leaves, just randomly, no stencil, just cut leaf-ish shapes. In the end you are your own worst critic and most people won't know if the leaves aren't uniform.

Of course I thought I had taken more pictures, but for the life of me can't find them...anywhere. So annoying. So you're going to have to imagine it. I looked up some cartoon seaweed and coral reef on the internet and tried to copy that.

I did cut some and put them down on the blue background to see if I needed to go taller or shorter on the next seaweeds.

Step 3:

I did try to use a glue stick, then wet glue (like Elmer's) but those didn't work, that's how I ended up with the spray adhesive, because everyone has that laying around right? I did spray outside on the grass, one because the smell is pretty strong and because the strips were so thin I didn't want spray adhesive all over my floors.

Note: Use some gloves if you don't want to be picking off glue from your fingers. I made that mistake and it took forever to clean up the glue off my hands, then when I went back to finish I used some of my gloves I have for handling food to finish (I buy mine from Costco), it was a little trickier because the paper would want to stick to the gloves, but it worked out better to have a little more trouble placing them then to have to clean off glue from my hands.

Step 4:

Finish off by putting the fish/sea horses or any other finishing decorations you want. Then hang on the wall. I almost always use blue painters tape. It does take several layers, but I know that it will stay and it won't ruin the wall paint when I take down the backdrop.

That's it, pretty easy,  between using the cricut to cut out the shapes and the banner, it took me about 3.5 hours to complete. 2 hours to complete the cutouts (including the birthday banner and all of the fish/sea horses and sand dollars and star fish) and another 1.5 to complete the spray painting/cutting/gluing.

If you want to see more of the party details, click here.

Linking up here

Black Floral Cold Shoulder + A Top Knot

Happy hump day Foxy Friends! I hope you are having a great week and you're not suffering too much from an Easter candy hangover. In full disclosure I went to Target on Monday and bought a bunch of Easter candy on sale...yep I'm that person who dragged to kids to Target to get candy...and I walked out of there only having spent $15, win in my book!


Today I'm sharing the same pattern in a different style, because when you find a dress you like you buy different things in the same pattern right? I can't find my exact dress, but this and this are the same pattern.

You guys I think this is the best I've ever done a braided crown. I think it was a total fluke, but it looked so good it was hard to take it out...you know how it is, when you get something so perfect and then it just hurts to take it out...

The lipstick is two Kylie lip kits mixed together and I can't for the life of me remember the combination I used. I want to say I mixed Valentine with Maliboo.  But don't quote me on that one.

Even the back came out good, usually I cut the braid weird up my head or something, but not this time...now if only I could do this again.

I didn't record how to do this hair style, I think this one would be hard for me to do, since it never comes out the same way twice. I thought I would do as many easy hair styles that I know before I start trying to break down the harder ones. So this time it's how I do my top knots. Super simple and works for when you're on day 3-5 hair...and just want to go one more day before having to wash it. We've all been there right?

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