Polka Dot Party

I started this post yesterday.  Before The Incident.  This is the incident I'm referring to.

Deep breath.  It won't be cold and dark and wet and slushy forever.

And hair does grow.  Eventually.

Anyhoo.

We celebrated Isabelle's fourth birthday with family this past weekend...and boy, was she excited!  I always feel like I'm repeating myself, but I'll share again that we celebrate Isabelle's December birthday party in January. 

I was keeping things easy peasy for this party- I didn't even have a theme (gasp, I know!), though one sort of evolved all on its own.  A couple of months ago I picked up some adorable {cheap} paper goods from the Christmas Tree Shop, a large discount store, and then proceeded to dump store them in the basement and promptly forget about them.

I made Isabelle a beautiful dress for her birthday last year, but then spotted a butterfly one on clearance at Gymboree and couldn't resist, especially since that did fit her theme for her party.  The one I made kind of swallowed her up, too, so I wasn't heartbroken about waiting until she got a bit bigger.  I put it in a "special" storage box and completely forgot about it.  Are you noticing a trend here?  (I did find it in time for her to wear to my sweet sister-in-law's Baby Shower earlier this month.  Whew.)

Hah, just this very minute I remembered thinking about making a farm animal cake, or cupcakes rather, from a tutorial I read about in a magazine over the summer...what can I say?  Two birthdays within two weeks of Christmas, and then Christmas and New Year's...my mind is a bit, er, frazzled about now.  Needless to say, there were no adorable piggy, cow, or chick cupcakes, but...

 I love how spring-y and pretty this turned out!
(yes, I know the cake plate doesn't match...guess I need to hint a little louder about the white pedestal one I've had my eye on....)

Then I remembered the goodies in the dungeon...

Look at that!  Pretty polka dots in all the same colors!  Yippee!  :)

And for the birthday girl's attire....

If you read the post about the baby shower, then you saw it already, kinda...

this is Side One

Here's Side Two...

More pretty polka dots!
(I think I'll do a mini-tutorial about the reversible dress soon- so easy & cute!)

I also kept "dinner" simple (it was 4:30 in the afternoon)- I think all this winter hibernating is making me just plain lazy!

~On the Menu~

     Popcorn chicken

     Pizza rolls

     Polish Kielbasa (Lite)

     A tray of various cheeses & crackers, plus some grapes and clementines

     Tropical Fizz in the fancy punch bowl

I put out a small dish of party toothpicks and everyone simply grabbed what they wanted- it was great, low-mess, and simple!  It tasted good, too! 

Isabelle was dying to get to her presents so we let her choose: cake first, or presents first.  "Presents!"  No hesitation whatsoever!  The girl speaks her mind....love that!  {sometimes}

She was even gracious enough to let me take her picture beforehand.  This is what she did, no prompting- nothing!  I think I'm a little bit nervous about that!

Now it's time for presents!

the entire fami-razzi were taking pics, and she loved every minute of it!

Happy Birthday, Sweet Isabelle!

She did it!  One at a time, stopping to smile after each one...it was cute!

Working so hard to cut that cake...

...so she can eat it!

Yummy!

Thanks, everyone, for a great celebration!