a dr who grown up birthday party (hosted by bluff cove olive oil).

saturday night we FINALLY got around to officially celebrating my birthday. i say FINALLY not because the party was scheduled for a week after my actual birthday, but because ive kind of wanted to throw this party for, i dont know, about two years. 

i wanted to throw myself a birthday party. a fancy birthday party. for grown ups. with wine and cheese (but mostly just cheese) and tiny desserts and one heck of a theme. oh, and costumes. because a grown up wine and cheese party just isnt complete without costumes. 

like i said, id been mulling over ideas for this party for a long, long, long time. things just werent really right around my last two birthdays to pull it off. but this year, the stars and planets perfectly aligned so that when my mom asked me last month what i wanted to do for my birthday, i knew. 

we were going to throw the best damn dr who themed cheese party that was ever thrown. 

(assuming it wasnt the only dr who themed cheese party that was ever thrown, which it very well may have been)

within minutes i had basically all of the details worked out, what we would eat, drink, wear, etc., but what i didnt have immediately was a location. our apartment was DEFINITELY out because its tiny and gross and ugly, and my moms house is cool but, you know, every party ever is at my moms house. but then something amazing happened: the incredible jessica over at bluff cove olive oil generously offered to let us use the shop for the party. 

and it. was. perfect. 

I'm sure having a party at a store sounds totally weird and impractical but since bluff cove is a food store, it was already perfectly equipped: plenty of tables and chairs, multiple places to sit, and millions of olive oils and vinegars on which to base the menu. 

oh, and the stores already super cute, so i barely had to decorate. which was awesome because you probably know by now that decorating is NOT my thing. aside from the food (which in my opinion is the MOST important and attractive part of a partys ambiance), all i did for decor was display some dr who themed prints by nan lawson (that i bought at renegade):

and some homemade weeping angels so that everyone could be terrified (ill be posting a tutorial for these very soon):

(plus roses because i needed flowers AND WHAT FLOWER IS MORE APPROPRIATE THAN ROSES?!?!?!)

and then there were the costumes. ive realized recently that were slowly turning into one of those elaborate family cosplay families, which on the one hand is kind of embarrassing and makes it difficult to make friends with normal people (because its still widely believed that cosplay is for children/weirdos), but on the other hand, its super awesome. anyway, james dressed up as the war doctor, partly because hes the only doctor with a beard and partly because thats the doctor he relates too the most (correct me if im wrong, james, if you end up reading this), and i dressed as (bespectacled, hair inaccurate) clara oswald, because "impossible girl"? yeah, thats me. (even if clara is definitely not my most favorite companion). i think our outfits came out pretty great:

especially james. especially because the ONLY part of the outfit we bought/made were the gaiters. but my pride in our outfits was paled in comparison to the TINIEST. ROSE. TYLER. EVER:

but of course, as soon as i start feeling really good about our costumes, my friends shannon and stacie (cosplayers extaordinaire and purveyors of fine screen printed goods) showed up... and... well:

but enough about aesthetics. lets get to the important part. the food. 

my budget for the party was basically "whatever money i got for my birthday", and since almost everything we needed could be rounded up between stuff my mom and i already had. i spent basically that entire budget on cheese:

fifteen different varieties, to be exact (thanks trader joes!). all labeled with tiny little flags (thanks target $1 section!):

now, obviously i would have been thoroughly satisfied with just having cheese and crackers, but since there would be other people involved (some of which are lactose intolerant), we also had hummus, bread, fruit, olives, etc:

and to make sure that we took FULL advantage of being in a store full of flavored olive oil, we set up a little popcorn bar. with plain popcorn so that everyone could make their own special flavor (though mine will always and forever be truffle):

and in addition to the cheap peach wine and whisky (plus assorted beverages our friends that dont have such juvenile taste in alcohol brought) we stocked WAY up on mineral water to make vinegar sodas. remind me to do a post about vinegar sodas. because if you dont know about vinegar sodas you are missing out. 

and for dessert, we (obviously) had fish custard:

(pudding topped with swedish fish)

and adipose:

(freakishly huge marshmallows with faces)

it was a great party. so great, in fact, that i totally forgot about how i had set up my tripod (and even remembered to bring my shutter remote!) to take pictures of everyone that came. we were just all having such a great time that it really didnt make sense to interrupt several hours of this:

for pictures, you know? 

and with all that said, i just want to take a minute to say HUGE thank yous to everyone who helped make this magical party happened: especially my mom and james for helping with all the prep and shopping, and jessica at bluff cove for letting us use the shop, but also to all the friends (old and new) and family that came to hang out, the friends and family that couldnt make it but still took the time to make me feel super special. 25 has been pretty great so far. 

weekly wishes #7 and the true meaning of poverty luxe.

so, today is the first day of school week. and if you arent able to tell, i am completely phoning it in this week and not feeling guilty about it because guess whos waking up at 5 to go to whittier and back ten times this week? this lady. who also has to go to work on tuesday night after going to whittier and back twice? this lady. who is totally freaking out because james was home all last week (no paycheck) and has school this week (also no paycheck)? this lady. 

so as far as weekly wishes are concerned, my only wish this week is that i dont have a catastrophic meltdown about how tired and miserable and stressed out i am this week. and thats a very lofty wish. 

but anyway, last weeks wishes:

1. finish alices thank you notes. um... i ordered them. oh! and i made the envelopes. so, progress was made, i just havent actually finished. 

2. get some more work done on my knitting patterns. DONE!!!! ok, well, one of them is done. and one more is being tested and one more is being written and things are looking great in knitting pattern land. 

and.... thats all ive got as far as weekly wishes is concerned. 

HOWEVER!!! because i have been asked a few times recently, im going to take a minute to elaborate a little bit on what the poverty luxe lifestyle is all about. this is actually perfect timing because i happened to stumble across the perfect illustration today. 

so, if i were to boil it all down into just one sentence, by "poverty luxe" i mean "taking something totally janky and ghetto and turning it into something pretentious and unreasonable".

for example: friday afternoon i was alerted by a good friend that a local grocery store was throwing away giant fairytale pumpkins (you know, those really pretty really expensive ones). so obviously we picked up a few and then today we spent basically the whole afternoon chopping:

roasting:

and pureeing:

free trash pumpkin (btw, ONE large fairytale pumpkin yeilds approximately 6 quarts of pumpkin puree, so, im not entirely sure whats going to happen to the other two pumpkins) into totally fancy all natural homemade pumpkin puree for all my holiday baking this year (and probably next year and the year after that too). 

and that, my friends. is the true meaning of poverty luxe. 

hope youre having a better week than i am right now!

our halloween.

yeah, i know im like, the ONLY blogger on earth that hasnt already done their family halloween post yet. but better late than never, right?

see, last week when i made all my plans for this week, i um.... forgot to account for halloween being right in the middle of it. also, our day was extremely busy. 

because when i asked alice what she wanted to do for halloween, her answer was "in halloween, go jack skellingtons house". and how can you say no to that? so we did:

(p.s. can i take a minute to brag about how my toddler has impeccable taste in movies? this totally makes up for that weird owl city phase she went through as a newborn)

alice also asked to go on the teacups, which i flat out refuse to ever do ever and was hoping shed just grow up not noticing. but james took her, and she LOVED it:

and, um, just a little bit of insider disneyland expert advice here, halloween is by far THE BEST DAY OF THE YEAR TO GO TO DISNEYLAND. why? because contrary to popular expectation, the park is EMPTY. seriously. no lines for anything. not even haunted mansion (although the line to take pictures with jack skellington was about 45 minutes long, but thats literally the only thing). freaking indiana jones had a TEN MINUTE standby wait (it averages around 40, and it takes roughly ten minutes just to walk from the entrance to the loading dock). 

after we did a few disneyland things, alice specifically asked to go home and take a nap. im serious. shes the weirdest. so we did, and then james and i changed into outfits that better coordinated with alices lumpy space princess costume (james is the ice king and im marceline the vampire queen if you cant tell):

heres some more detail of her costume:

the dress is the same one from her birthday party, which i made, despite the fact that it was totally beyond my skill level and i had to pretty much re-write the pattern and i made it out of woven cotton instead of jersey and it took a million hours and maybe made me cry a few times. and we decided to paint the star on alices forehead because 1. we knew alice wouldnt keep a headband on, and 2. when i tried to do it with makeup it came right off. twice. 

and after i got satisfactory costume pictures we trick or treated on my moms street for a few minutes before going to our churchs reformation day party (which if youre not familiar with reformation day, its a holiday celebrating the protestant reformation which usually involves sausage, beer, and lots and lots of "diet of worms" puns), where alice ate approximately seven hundred gummy worms :

because, you know. diet of worms. 

now at that point we were all exhausted and totally could have called it a day. but of course we didnt. we went to the after party hang out at our friends house so that alice could play with her friends some more and burn off all that candy and sleep in for us. 

which, of course... she didnt. 

so that was our halloween. what did you do?

and dont forget to stay tuned for tomorrow because i have a VERY exciting shop announcement!!!

alices first birthday party.

so, all this talk (and work) about alices second birthday party has had me thinking about alices first birthday party, and totally piling on the mom-guilt because... um... i didnt do anything with those pictures (i dont think i even i put any on facebook). so i figured now was as good a time as any to share them with all you kind folks. 

we had alices first birthday at wilderness park, which is a super cute miniature forest right in the middle of redondo beach that my family went to a lot when i was a kid and if i remember correctly there have been multiple family birthdays over the years.

this is what alice looked like (at the time i thought she was so big, but now she looks SO tiny!):

fun fact: she still has that bear, he is NOT nearly that attractive anymore...

since alice was, you know, ONE, we just had a small morning gathering with homemade cookies and cupcakes and a vague "woodland animals" theme:

yeah... piping those cookies was quite an ordeal. 

i didnt do a whole lot for decorations, all the tablecloths were vintage from my collection at home, but i did make a cute scalloped bunting to hang in the trees:

while people were still arriving we took our christmas card picture:

 and once everyone was there we went straight to cake (since alice had maybe two hours of party in her before being due for a meltdown):

which was funny because alice wasnt all that into the cupcake. she really just wanted to finger paint with the frosting. 

then we opened presents, which was hilarious because alices favorite parts were all the cards, which she called "books":

and the money she got in a couple of her gifts:

it really never occurred to me that a one year old would want cards and money for her birthday, but she was really into those. alice is just weird, i guess. 

and thats really it, after gifts we cleaned up and went home for naptime. the end. 

and NOWWWW its time to really get serious about getting ready for her second birthday party....

fall goals.

so i just realized its been like, three weeks since i did my summer goal recap, and i still havent posted my fall goal list yet. i just want to clarify right now that its not because i havent made any (actually, the list was finished and i started working on things a while ago), its just that, i dont know, i had some more exciting things to talk about in my blogging queue. if youll pardon my tardiness, without any further ado, here are my fall goals:

for alice:

1. start actually, seriously potty training. ive been putting this off for so long (alice actually used the potty the first time around christmas) because i didnt want to pressure her before she was ready. well now shes almost two and showing very definite readiness (like politely asking me for a new diaper when she needs one) and i guess i cant really put it off any longer. even though i know this is totally necessary and will make things a lot easier later (with the added bonus of not having to buy diapers anymore!) im really not looking forward to the process, so wish me luck. 

2. have a totally awesome birthday party. so maybe im not so excited about potty training, but i am BEYOND stoked about alices birthday party! her favorite cartoon is adventure time, so weve made that the theme, and right now my mind is literally spinning with ideas and projects for the party, so i cant wait to share the pictures with you!

for me:

1. improve blog/shop workflow and organization. ive actually already been working on this one all month, but thats my big project right now. after conquering productivity in the housework department, i really feel like its really time to tackle productivity in the work department. i started by getting a month-at-a-glance calendar, to queue out my posts for each week, and currently im working on designating weekly "work time". im sure this sounds really boring and dull, but i for one, am having a fantastic time figuring this all out. 

2. try 5 new recipes. i am definitely a creature of habit, and it does not take long for us to get stuck in a dinner rut, so im really pushing myself this fall to break out of that. i just tried my first new recipe, which youll hear about later this week, so now i just need to figure out four more new things to try. 

3. actually plan something fun for my birthday. ok, so i dont know if you know this, but my birthday is six days after alices. so obviously all my birthday energy and resources are pretty spent by time mine rolls around. as of right now im totally clueless as to what i want to do (plus theres the added challenge that none of my friends are friends with each other), but i have to do something cool this year. 

for the family:

1. give family bible study another try. i was really bummed that we couldnt make it stick over the summer, so were trying again. we noticed this week that dinner time works better for us than morning or bedtime, so now we just need to settle on our day(s?) of the week and actually stick to it. 

2. have some friends over for dinner! i love dinner parties, and for one reason or another (the extra free time weeks are never the same as the extra grocery money weeks), we havent done it in a loooooong time. and we need to fix that. who wants to come over for dinner?

so thats what im working on this fall, what about you? id love to hear about your plans and goals for the next few months!

p.s. dont forget to check out my guest post and enter to win a $40 poverty luxe shop credit over at 91 dash!