My baby girl is 2

We had a big birthday party this weekend for Monkey. Our parents, my brother and Scooby (my nephew) all came down to celebrate with us. We kept things pretty low key and as inexpensive as possible.

Monkey loves Elmo, so I decided to go with an Elmo themed party.

I kept decorations at a minimum - just enough to say. I got the streamers and balloons at Dollar Tree. It ran about $10, including the red napkins, 2 party hats and pack of party horns I picked up. The Elmo "Happy Birthday" banner was a "splurge" from IParty ($3.50ish). I had originally picked up some Elmo party horns and Elmo party hats, but I'll be returning them when I found fun red ones at the Dollar Tree. Red was enough Elmo themed for me for the price difference - and Monkey had fun either way.

I bought a Wilton Elmo cake pan at JoAnn's with a 40% off coupon. I picked up a tube of black frosting at the same time because I didn't think I'd be able to get frosting black enough on my own. I used Duncan Hines Butter Recipe Golden (what? I'm ready to pop a kid out - shortcuts shortcuts shortcuts!). It's your basic yellow cake but calls for butter instead of oil and for box cake, it's unbelievably tasty. I used a full batter and half of another (the remaining was made into cupcakes and tossed in the freezer - without frosting - for later consumption). I made buttercream frosting from scratch and used crayon candles on the edge of the base - and for her to blow out (because Elmo loves his crayons!).

I'm pretty pleased with how it turned out. And Monkey was thrilled! (I need to invest in a nice cake platter - I have a great round one, but this obviously didn't fit).

Lunch was a turkey that's been in our freezer since T received it for Christmas at work. Turkey isn't exactly a summer time food in my mind, so to keep it from feeling like a Thanksgiving dinner, my Mom made a potato and egg salad, I threw together a veggie packed pasta salad and T pulled some corn on the cob from last fall out of the freezer. Simple and quite a bit more summery than mashed potatoes and gravy.

A couple months ago, we found Elmo Live in the Target sales flyer for half price. At $30, we decided we couldn't pass it up (we never would have paid full price because that's just highway robbery). I will say this is the absolute most annoying toy in our house, but she loves it so it's worth it. I've never heard so many squeals as I did when she was opening it. T couldn't get him out of the box fast enough. hehe

And because filling the kids with cake wasn't enough, we went on an outing to Treworgy Orchards for ice cream and the petting zoo later in the day. Twigs is one of our absolute favorite places and I was very glad to finally get to share the fun with my parents, brother - and most importantly, Scooby!

Monkey's actual birthday was on Tuesday. We saved a small Elmo themed gift to give her on the actual day - a Beta fish named Dorothy (Elmo's goldfish is Dorothy - we went for a Beta because they're so low maintenance). T pulled a few of the extra cup cakes out of the freezer and I had saved a small amount of extra frosting so we blew out candles again last night. We then took another trip to Twigs for more ice cream and playing with the goats to have a special family celebration. (I paid for all that sugar when trying to get her to bed last night! haha).

It's so fun to watch her grow and learn, but she's not my itty bitty baby anymore.

What a very bitter sweet moment.