Sierra turns 7 with a Littlest Pet Shop Party

You might say I went a little overboard with this party but not a humongous amount of pictures to prove it.

Sierra was talking about this petshop birthday for almost a full year so there was lots of time to pull together ideas and make this an affordable birthday party even though pet shops are so pricey new.

I made the invitation by setting up a couple of her petshops, taking a photo and printing it out on regular printer paper so I could just write the details inside.

You might say I went a little overboard with this party but I don't have the usual amount of pictures to show for it.

Here Sierra is opening her presents from us on her actual birthday a few days before the party. She got a box full of pet shops and their accessories...

 

With a little help from Kijiji (and our friend Liz's parents who picked a large lot of pet shops up in Sarnia for me) I scored big time with an LPS jet plane Sierra wanted for Christmas last year but it was no where to be found.

Now for the party... while we waited for everyone to arrive the girls all jumped on the trampoline. It was a crazy free for all but they had so much fun as they are never allowed to have so many people jumping at one time!

Then we started our crafts. First the girls each got to alter two pets by adding nail polish and gems. Sierra has been waiting for this activity for weeks! It was a huge hit with all the girls and they were very creative with their ideas. One girl even made hers so scary she scared herself with it and screamed!!! It took a few minutes to figure out why she was so freaked out.

Sierra altering her cat

Aayla altering her piggie pet

Next it was time to make the pets their new homes. I used plastic cups hot glued to a paper plate with a doorway cut out of the cup. We also added an umbrella to the top of each house so they could have a patio on top.

Sierra and a couple friends making their pet shop houses

Masterpieces in the works

Sierra's finished house and altered pets

All the girls were so busy and concentrating so much on their projects that we spent over an hour and a half completing them! The party flew by.

There was barely enough time for presents and cake.

Daddy carries out the cake

Close up of the Oreo Ice Cream cake with 7 new pet shop pets

Ready, set, wish!

For the treat bags I made the girls all necklaces with a combination on new beads as well as vintage beads from necklaces I had been collecting for this purpose. I think they turned out so pretty.

I also made soaps for the treat bags. Each soap had either a frog, turtle, fish or dragonfly in it.

Each gift bag also included a pet they had to mane and adopt. It came with a certificate of adoption with a photo of the pet and a little write up about what their new pets likes and dislikes were. Somehow I didn't manage to get a photo of them or the gift bags all finished up. I was really bad with the picture taking unfortunately for this party.

All in all everyone seemed to have a great time and it was the most relaxing party I have held in a longggg time :)

Falling in love with Seadoos

Ians brother Gary brought up a couple seadoos one weekend...

Sierra having a blast wit uncle Gary

Ahhhh...no hands!

now is that a happy face???

Nana Diana and Ian

Aayla having a grand time...but likes it a wee bit slower then Sierra :)

Sierra with her Uncle Garys dog...

Well it didn't take long before we decided that we had to have some ourselves...I didn't think I'd enjoy the seadoos but...they sure are fun! Thanks to Kijijji we found a matching pair :)

Aayla and Sierra riding the new seadoos...couldn't wait for them to hit the water

Daddy and Aayla taking ours for a spin

Uncle Mark and Sandra

Uncle Mark and Charlie

Uncle Jay and Uncle Liz...lol

Josh water skiing

and knee boarding

Our neighbours

We still love the boat...

Out for a sunny spring day ride with Nana

Out on the neighbours boat having a blast!

"windy mama"

Tina our neighbour with Sierra and Kodey

Triple trouble

Cheers to the coming summer and making many more memories!

Sitting by the dock of the river....

Finally it's warming up and we are making summer plans! This weekend it's time to put the dock in and get the boat in the water! It will be so nice to have the boat right in the back yard and we won't have to pay launch fees all summer.

A lot of the wood was rotten so Ian had to dig down and add a face board to strengthen it to hold the dock. Next year we will be upgrading this whole area but for this summer we needed a quick fix.

Mark came over to give Ian a hand.

Now to get the dock in the water. We bought ours at Costco.

Then it was time to launch the boat and bring it home!

Ian relaxing with a book down on the dock

We are glad to have "MS BIAS" at home.

Why did we name our boat "Ms Bias"? The Ms stands for Meadow Spilchen my daughter, the BIAS is for Brooke, Ian, Aayla and Sierra.

And we are so happy to have her sitting in the water at our dock...now let the summer fun begin!

Preparing the Garden

Neither Ian nor I have green thumbs but we really like the idea of growing some of our own food so we are building a garden!!!

Wasaga Beach is built on sand so we had to build a raised bed.

Our bed is made form a 4X12 cedar box that Ian built and it is notched together. We have so many trees on our property we picked the sunniest spot in the yard in hopes of success!

We filled it with a mix of soil, manure and peat moss.

The extra soil we used to cover the barren yard in hopes of grass this summer...(the photo beside show some grass starting but it took a lot of tries to get the yard full of grass)

We planted some seeds... while we waited for warmer weather to arrive.

And while we waited for them to grow we did a few activities to learn about the growing process.
We read the book Planting a Rainbow by Lois Ehlert . We learned about all the different colours that grow in a garden and made this diagram of the flower parts with tissue paper and paint. The rainbow petals formed a color wheel flower.

We also made mathematical flower gardens. I gave the girls a number on each stem and they had to draw that many petals on the stem. Then they added some finger printed bugs to help their gardens grow.

Aayla's garden picture

Sierra's garden picture...i love the spider in the web!

Now we just wait for the sun to arrive so we can plant the seedlings when they sprout.