LiLYPaLooZa!

 

These two things you should know:

I LOVE my Lily-bug.

I LOVE to plan her birthday parties down to the last minute detail.

 

Lily turned FOUR on July 4th and we turned her favorite thing in the world into a ‘golden birthday’ party theme.  This kid is never without her iPod touch…(I received it for my birthday last year and have been slowly UNCHECKING all my old favorite songs to make room for Lily’s growing playlist and feature length movie collection… but such is motherhood.)

She is always dressing up and performing for us.  In the last few months, she has really broadened her pop-music horizons and found a few favorites outside of the Taylor Swift  catalog.  Therefore, we took a sampling of her newest  favorites made some c.d. invitations and VIP passes…

and thus created a fictitious music festival in our backyard.

 

We transformed our house into ‘backstage’…  our backporch into ‘center stage’… our laundry room into the concession stand.

Lily and I are both big fans of concession stand fare. The concession stand had popcorn, pickles, nachos and drinks.

The VIP snacks were supposed to be what the stars requested: Selena Gomez “Who Says” I can’t eat fruit candy, Lisa Loeb “Jenny Jenkins” juice, Lemonade Mouth “Mel’s Organic Lemonade”, Miley Cyrus “Party (in the USA)” tray, Grace Potter “Tangled” twizzlers, Carrie Underwood “Ever Ever After” Fairytale fruit kebabs, Taylor Swift “Speak Now” soda.

I love how Grace asked, “So did you like email or text them to find out what they wanted?”

 

To combine a little of all of Lily’s favorite things…

All VIPs got to have access to a stocked dressing room… professional hair and makeup (aka my hairdresser friend doling out eyeshadow and glitter spray)… decorate a guitar… bling out their microphone and then sing their little hearts out.

Being Lily’s cousin/BFF,  poor Lukie B. had to come to this uber-girly event as the only boy guest… but I must say he took it like a champ. 

The VIP bags (per Lily’s request) had colored fake braid hair clips, a souvenir t-shirt, lemon slice rings, fake microphone to use, and candy.

 

My lemon slice rainbow cake was the ugliest cake in history… at least the topper was super cute.  Lily (the parrot) referred to it as ‘the rainbow disaster cake’ as she ate my first attempt from a discard pile with a spoon.  If I tell you I am making the cake for the next one… stage an intervention.

I am always so impressed by the generosity of our friends and family toward my kids.   She honestly loved EVERYTHING!

Our big surprise gift was this …

Shout out to Nana and Augie whose gift of the 2nd (overpriced) ticket allows ME to go too and not just drop the 4 year old off at the Erwin Center and say ‘HAVE FUN!’

(I may or may not be JUST as excited as she is.)

This was an EXTRA special birthday because the Minnesotans descended into our territory and braved the desertous heat all for little B-Bug. This was her first time to have her friends, 4 grandparents, 2 aunts, 2 uncles and all 6 cousins at her party! I hardly even saw Eli during the party thanks to these 3. Beankins LOVES his boy cousins… even though they covered his face with microphone jewels that I had to photoshop out of every picture!

I can’t believe our little bug is 4 years old.  She’s my favorite little girl in the entire world.

…On to planning next year’s party!