So Today I'm 32 Years Old

So today I'm apparently 32 years old. I kind of already thought I was 32, so it doesn't really come as much of a surprise. I think somewhere halfway into 31, I decided I was 32. It's hard to keep it straight once you start getting above 21.

The three new photographs of me in this post were taken by my friend and book photographer, Amy Tripple.

I love birthdays. I know some people dread them and don't like to celebrate; however, I definitely feel they are a day to be celebrated no matter your age. I have always felt like I was many, many years older than I really am. And I truly look at age as simply a number. But if I am looking at it in terms of age, I feel quite proud of all that I have achieved at the age of 32. If the next 32 years look anything like the first, I am excited for the ride!

So since I'm writing about my birthday, I thought I would share 32 things about myself. Some are kind of personal, some are things you might already know, but here we go..........

1. My favorite food is shrimp followed closely by pasta and bread.
2. I am very domestic. Would definitely choose spending time indoors rather than out and I feel a sense of pride being able to make our house a home.
3. I am not a night person. I usually head to bed around 10:00PM.
4. I don't do well during the day without coffee. Coffee with just a little bit of milk. No sugar.
5. My toenails are painted fushia-y pink right now.
6. I like reality telelvision. I am fascinated by how some of these people live. Like can't believe that it's even real (and it probably isn't......but I still pretend).
7. I prefer red wine to white wine.
8. We have three children and I truly cannot decide if we should have a fourth. I had a miscarriage in between Savannah and Matilda and it has changed the way I view pregnancy.
9. I had postpartum depression after the birth my oldest and was treated for it through my second and third children's births. The itty bitty baby phase is always a tough one for me. But I am completely fine now. Yay!
10. My parents got divorced when I was 19. My mom is remarried (to Pepo.....who we love) living in Texas and my dad has retired to the tuscany region of Italy. I wish they all lived closer.
11. My mom is my best friend.
12. I need my creative space to be organized before I create. And then it looks like a bomb exploded when I'm finished. It's a vicious cycle. Organize. Clean. Create. Repeat.
13. I love writing my blog, but work very hard to balance at all. I do my best, but it is hard and I do get overwhelmed.
14. I am passionate about most things in my life......family, home, business......pretty much everything.
15. I am Catholic. I believe in God. And He has become more and more my rock as I get older. I find myself communicating with Him often.
16. My brother lives in Boulder, CO and is a professional chef. I miss him.
17. I have short hair, but I used to have really long hair. And I just got highlights for the first time ever a few months ago.
18. As much as we love our cottage home, we are hoping to move in a couple years. The hubby and I are ready for a new adventure!
19. I am very sensitive and get my feelings hurt easily.
20. I am really enjoying my children getting older. The conversations we are able to have are such special moments to me. Although, I still enjoy rocking my baby and singing to him each night before he goes to sleep.
21. My favorite movie is 'You've Got Mail'. No it's nothing super deep or intellectual, but I think it is so sweet and I love Meg Ryan's life during that movie and the love story involved.
22. I married my high school sweetheart and he is pretty darn awesome. We have been together since I was 17.
23. I don't really like baths. I prefer showers.
24. I love spending time with friends. I am definitely a people person.
25. I do not like when people rearrange things in my house. A place for everything and everything in it's place.......that's a good motto.
26. I thought I was going to grow up and be a broadway star. I spent my whole childhood training for it.
27. I went to Cincinnati College Conservatory of Music and majored in Musical Theater. Then reality hit and I moved to Chicago, IL and got a degree from DePaul University in Finance. I decided stability and family life was more important than stardom. But I can still belt out a tune.
28. I used to work in commercial banking and real estate prior to having children.
29. I try my best to have positive energy and encourage others.
30. I love my life. I know people don't always love to hear you say that. It seems as though, they would prefer to hear the negative. But it's true. So there, I said it......I love my life.
31. I am by no means perfect. I just try to do the best that I can every day. And when I mess up, I always say I'm sorry.
32. I work very hard. Every. Single. Day.

So there's 32 things about me.....good, bad, boring, ect. But I don't always have the opportunity to come on here and talk personally with you, so I thought maybe those things would show you a little bit more about the woman behind this blog.

This past weekend I got to go out to dinner with my husband and kids, got to sleep in a little bit, they brought me some beautiful flowers (that you maybe have seen over on Instagram -@thecottagemama) and take a nap. This mama is pretty happy, so I'll say that having a birthday on a Monday isn't so bad since you have the whole weekend before to celebrate.

Thanks so much for reading and have a great day!

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Mermaid Under the Sea 4th Birthday Party with Free Printable

Miss Matilda knew exactly what kind of birthday party she wanted this year........Mermaid Under the Sea. She said the birthday was for all mermaids, not just Ariel (the Little Mermaid), but that she could come too. She said all mermaids and sea creatures were welcome. She's an inclusive type of little girl.

Matilda's birthdays are always so fun because she is a July birthday (just like me), so we can have her parties outside! As I shared with you yesterday, we used her mermaid birthday outfit as a jumping off point for the party decor, but tried to stick with pink and blue as per the birthday girl's request.

The table decorations are my absolute favorite part! I love a good tablescape.

I had this old frame sitting in my studio that I bought for 25 cents at our local thrift shop. I used a piece of burlap that I already had around from when I made some Burlap Covered Lamp Shades a year or so ago. I taped the burlap to the back of the empty frame. Then I took a star fish that my mother-in-law had brought the kids back from the beach and hand sewed it around the center to the burlap. I love how this turned out. Rustic and beachy.........and less than $1.00!

I found a lot of the party decor at the Dollar Tree store. I bought a bunch of bags of glass beads that are meant to go inside of vases for the table. My intention was that they would look like sea glass. I bought some bags in aqua blue and some in a mixture of blues and greens.

I have about a gazillion mason jars around the house, so I grabbed one of my favorite blue ones and filled it with sand and some seas shells.

I took a hurricane vase that usually has pinecones inside it and filled it will sand and put more seashells on top. I purchased the bags of seashells also from the Dollar Tree store. Who knew they had so much beachy decor?

For the 'Welcome Mermaids' sign, I took an old school house chalkboard that I purchased several months ago at our local flea market and simply wrote the words on there with a blue chalk marker. The flowers and beads around the sign are leis that I purchased again at Dollar Tree and gave them to the ladies to wear at the party.

I also purchased 10 grass hula skirts from the dollar store and put them around the bottom of the table and hung them from the top of the canopy.

I made a simple and easy pennate banner with fabric from Matilda's birthday outfit. I didn't even finish the edges on the triangles, I thought if it frayed that it would add to the rustic, beachy feel. I attached the triangles to some rickrack trim I already had. This took me about 20 minutes to make, but I love how it incorporates the fabric into the look of the party.

These were little striped favor boxes with a seashell foam sticker added to the front of them that I used to serve pirates booty for the kids. It seems like all the kids love that stuff!

You can't have an under the sea party without fishies, right? For the food labels, I designed the main label on the computer, cut them out, backed them with some scrapbook paper and added a toothpick.

We called the pink lemonade 'Mermaid Juice'. It was a big hit.

My husband gave me a hard time about these because he said they looked like jello shots. But I found these little cups and just thought they were the perfect size for kids jello at a party. I filled the blue cups with blue raspberry jello and set them on top of brown sugar (to look like sand).

Here is the fruit that we served. I just called it 'Paradise Fruit Salad' because that sounded beachy and mermaid-like to me. The shell of the pineapple was kept together to use it as kind of a boat for the fruit salad. My mom (Grandma Jane) who was visiting from Texas helped me with this one. Isn't it pretty?

I was pretty excited about this little food project. We took two vanilla wafer cookies, spread strawberry frosting on each side and put a yogurt raisin in the middle to look like an oyster with a pearl inside. I just thought these were so cute. We also drew some lines with a blue frosting gel pen on top of the cookies to look kind of like a shell. So fun!

We served spinach dip and some different chips and called it 'Seaweed Dip'.

I made some rice krispie treats and cut them out in the shape of fish. Our little guy, Caspian, could not get enough of these!

We picked up some wraps from Costco and called them 'Seaweed Sprials'. You could definitely make these yourself, but sometimes I just like to make my life a little easier and go with a few store-bought items.

The girls picked out these chocolate gold coins at the party store. They chose pink and blue and one orange one for the birthday girl. I told them to count out 30 to put in their bag. When I gave them to the cashier and told him I didn't know exactly how many they got........it turns out 30 turned into 73. Oh well.......we are rich in chocolate around here!

And the most popular party food.......the Shark gummies! The kids went nuts over these and they were a fun addition to the Mermaid Under the Sea Party.

How about some salt water taffy to go with the 'sea' theme?

Here is the pretty Little Mermaid birthday cake and here is what happened right before Miss M. blew out the candles......

Little brother had to put is three fingers in the cake.........do you see his finger marks in the picture above. That guys loves his sweets, so I guess he couldn't wait for cake. Oh brother.

Here is the birthday girl blowing out the candles on her cake!

Matilda has been asking for a bounce house for about 4 months now, so we decided to surprise her with one for her birthday. It was a present from my mom (Grandma Jane) and Pepo. You should have seen the look on the girls face when the folks delivered this and started blowing it up. They could not even contain themselves. It was a lot of fun and even I (and Daddy, Grandma and Pepo) did quite a bit of jumping the day before the party. Talk about a fun workout! And it was 'sea' themed........of course.

I made an easy appliqued shirt for Savannah to wear at the party as well. I didn't want to make her a full outfit since this was Matilda's special day, but she was really excited to have a little something mermaid to wear at the big party!

And in case you missed my other post about Matilda's Birthday Outfit........here is the big 4 year old on her birthday!

All and all it was such a great party and I had so much fun putting this together for little Matilda. Luckily my girls get just as into all of this as I do and love helping out! We gave the kids that came to the party a stuffed dolphin, a blue and silver hula hoop and a mermaid coloring / sticker book.

Here are some of the printable labels I made, if you want to download those for your own Mermaid Under the Sea party!

And here is a blank set if you want to add your own text for whatever fun party food you might have at your own child's party.

Again, Happy Birthday to my sweet little girl!

I'm so blessed to have these children and it is such a pleasure to get to spend this time making their birthdays as special as can be!

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Matilda's Mermaid Birthday Outfit

So as I mentioned before, Miss Matilda wanted a 'Mermaid Under the Sea' birthday party this year for her 4th birthday. Sounded good to me! I love all things nautical and beachy, so I thought this party would be pretty easy to pull off and it turns out that it was just that. I'll share the party details with you tomorrow, but for now, I wanted to share the little birthday party outfit I made for Matilda.

For me, every good party starts with fabric inspiration. Matilda wanted to focus on blue and pink since those are her two favorite colors. I have been so busy this summer that I did not have time to order any fabric for her dress, I had browsed around online, but hadn't found anything that was just right. So one Saturday afternoon I headed over to our local Joann's and just really hoped that they carried some type of mermaid fabric that I liked or that was the proper colors for the party. And low and behold, there was the perfect fabric........'Merry Mermaids'! I was so darn excited. It had kind of a salmon pink, but I was pretty sure we could make it work. Most importantly, I knew Miss M. would love it and I just thought the mermaids were darling. Plus it was 40% off......can't beat that!

When I brought the fabric home, I knew we needed some other prints to go with it. You know I can't just have one single print on an outfit. I started playing around in my fabric stash and found this great salmon pink from Art Gallery Fabrics to pull out the reddish pink in one of the mermaid's hair and then this multi-sized dot from one of Sandi Henderson's earlier lines pulled it all together.

I wanted to make a longer top for her party since we were surprising the girls with a bounce house. I thought jumping around in a dress might be a little difficult, but a top with leggings would work just great!

This top is a combination of two of my sewing patterns. The bodice is from the Charlotte Apron Dress and then I extended the strap piece to make it a knot style dress. The skirt is from the Miss Matilda Dress and Top cut at the top length, but with a 2" band of fabric added at the bottom. The bodice on the Charlotte dress is shorter than the Miss Matilda, so that's why I needed the extra added length.

As a side note, all the new patterns have arrived as printed patterns and are available in the shop.

I also used the side sash pieces (the shorter length for the top) from the Miss Matilda pattern, but cut them the same length, sewed them into the side of the bodice and had them tie in a bow in the back of the top.

The bodice is my favorite part since I got to play with trims and embellishing. Have I told you how much I love rickrack? Um......yeah, you already know. All the embellishing on the bodice was done prior to dress construction. I just drew out a curved pattern piece for the front. First I added the trim down the center, then added the outer rickrack and finally added the blue, tiny rickrack on top. So easy, but such a sweet detail.

I just absolutely love this little peanut! I can't believe she is 4 years old. I'm looking forward to sharing the details from her birthday party. She had a ball!

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