Dinosaur Birthday Party, Take 2

We threw another birthday party for my 5-year-old, although this time it was hosted at my mom's house for our extended family members. We used the same dinosaur theme, but the kiddo decided that, instead of the dinosaur hoodie from last week, he wanted to wear his new Superman shirt (on sale from GAP Kids) because he wanted something with a cape. My kind of guy. :-)

It was a little easier this second time around because my mom took care of the food while my husband took care of decorations and I took care of the kids' activities. Being a little older than last week's guests, the kids here spent most of their time decorating paper dinosaurs and playing games on smartphones, my child included. My nieces are really artistic and made some great-looking dinosaurs (I'm sorry I didn't take photos before they took them home).

For the cake, my brother and sister-in-law baked a couple dozen "green velvet" cupcakes with cream-cheese frosting. They were really delicious and looked amazing when he blew out his dinosaur candles. What a fun idea. There was ice cream to accompany the cupcakes, and one family actually brought a chocolate cake from a grocery store as a present, so we had plenty of sweets for the birthday. My son had so much fun.

Below are bonus photos of my gorgeous twin nephews. They're humongous at only 5.5 months old (one is 20 lbs already!). They're such troopers. They took a nap together in the portable crib in the midst of the loud party. It was so adorable. I can't wait until they start crawling and walking and talking. They're going to be a hoot, and I can tell they'll melt MANY more hearts than just their loving auntie's.

xo, Gladys

Colors of Spring

pickled radishes | party balloons
Fluevog sandals (recently sold) | mandarin oranges from our CSA box

Lately I've been surrounded by spring colors -- a welcome reminder of the new season ahead.

xo, Gladys

Recipe: Pickled Radishes

Pickled pink! Takuan radishes

I recently pickled a bunch of radishes that were languishing in my fridge. We get a CSA farm box every week, and we had a run of radishes at the beginning of the year. I'm not fond of raw radishes in salads and whatnot, but I do like them pickled. I found an easy recipe to pickle radishes from one of the food blogs I follow, The Domestic Man. (It's so simple, I won't reproduce it here; just click through.) It's a recipe to make the Japanese dish takuan using daikon radishes, but I only had smaller, pink/purple-centered radishes on hand. It turned out pretty well, and that color is spectacular; I definitely didn't need to add turmeric for coloring at all (I didn't have any in my pantry, anyway). The only thing I would change is to decrease the salt by a quarter or so. I like my radishes more tart and sweet than salty. When I go to Japanese and Korean restaurants, I really enjoy eating the pickled appetizers that they sometimes serve before the main dish. This can be eaten as the side to an entree or as a snack. And it's pretty healthful as well. Enjoy!

xo, Gladys

Dinosaur Birthday Party

We had a fun party for my son's 5th birthday over the weekend. I scoured the Internets and particularly Pinterest to find some ideas for kids' activities. The three that we implemented were 1) decorating paper dinosaurs using empty paper towel rolls, 2) a dinosaur dig for these cool-looking dino skeletons, and 3) a dinosaur egg hunt (which was a cross between an Easter egg hunt and a scavenger hunt: each kid got a picture of the specific egg s/he was supposed to find). The last two ideas were found here.

The kids enjoyed themselves a lot, and the parents were great. The parents said they really liked all of the activities, which basically means we were on the same wavelength. :-) I think each of the activities struck a good balance between structured time and unstructured creativity, and it was easy to flow from the paper crafting to eating the buffet lunch, then to the egg hunt and dino dig, then to playing on the climber or hanging out at the sandbox with the beach shovels. This gave us time to defrost the ice cream cake a bit before singing happy birthday and blowing out candles.

Just a fraction of the decorations (sadly, I didn't have the presence of mind to take photos right before people started arriving.)

My husband took care of all the food and photography while I served as the point person for the guests and oversaw the activities. Some of the parents helped as we moved along from activity to activity, so it was fun for me as well since I could watch and laugh with them as the kids did their thing.

It was such a gorgeous day -- sunny and partly cloudy, warm, and with very little wind (the last of which is almost a miracle here) -- that at least half the party was set outdoors. If the weather had been inclement, we could have done all of the activities inside the house. I was really happy, however, that the kids were able to play on the new climber.

On the hunt

Action shot

More action

Taking stock of their egg treats

Digging for fossils

My husband did a fantastic job with the decorations both indoors and out, and it turned out perfectly.

Yummy ice cream cake from Cold Stone Creamery, although we did the dinosaur decorations ourselves since they don't have a dinosaur theme for their cakes.

You can see the cool dinosaur mouth on the arm of the kiddo's hoodie.

Two of my favorite ladies

This was the first time we threw such a structured birthday party. It was almost like throwing a baby shower. Usually our friends just come over and we chat and eat while the kids run around and go crazy over the toys and games in the house. Sometimes, like last year, there's a piñata. But I did it differently this time because I also invited a couple of the kiddo's classmates, and I wanted to make sure there wasn't a lot of downtime for the "new" parents to get bored. It's hard to know how two different groups of friends will mix together. Since these two families were super-prompt to arrive (while our seasoned friends were over a half hour late and some of them more than that -- we're pretty casual as a group), I had the chance to talk with the moms while my husband talked with the dad that came, and he and I both really enjoyed our respective chats. These parents were also really helpful, and they were able to talk quite a bit with our family friends after they arrived. I'm glad that my son has made friends at school whose parents are great people, too.

xo, Gladys

New Haircut

In anticipation of my son's upcoming birthday party, my three-person family all got haircuts. Here's mine. If you've seen some of my past outfit posts, I'm sure this cut looks familiar. I was soooooo happy to get rid of the length, which was already past my shoulder blades. My friends saw my new cut the other day and said they had no idea how long my hair had gotten -- well, because it was always up in a ponytail or messy bun! And I got some very nice compliments from other moms at my son's school. :-)

Aside from ponytails, I honestly don't know what to do with longer hair on a daily basis. I had visions of putting it in pin curls and other kinds of vintage hairdos, but I simply didn't -- and still don't -- have the time to do all of that. And I've learned something about myself, which is that I don't want to take the extra time, after all. I like my hair to look presentable with little effort, the way it is with this tried-and-true style. Besides, a cut like this would look cute with swing dresses, too.

I love how my hair stylist Natalie does my hair. Plus she's magic with a round brush and blow dryer. Ah, so glad that I once again have a legitimate style to my hair.

xo, Gladys