Our Family Tradition...

My youngest one woke up to a room filled with colorful balloons all over the ceiling on his 4th birthday this year. This have somehow became a little family tradition now. I started doing this when my older one turned 4. I surrounded his bed with helium balloons tied to little matchbox cars all around him. He was obsessed with the Cars Movie back then and that's what I tied them to. It was like all of his cars holding a balloon celebrating with him when he woke up.

This year, the night before Cooper's birthday, I decorated his room with helium balloons all over the ceiling so that when he opened his big eyes, he would see ALL the balloons right above his bed up on the ceiling. I sneaked into his room and taped streamers on his door and hung up the felt birthday banner I made him. So that morning, he woke up to a room filled LOVE.

I love birthdays. I love seeing their happy little faces when they wake up. I love balloons. And I love celebrating every occasion. And I will continue this little family tradition year after year until they are sick of their mommy sneaking into their room at night.

I snapped a few quick shots that early morning, at exactly 7:47.am, the exact time Cooper was born... just 4 years ago in 2007.

Happy 4th Birthday my dearest little one.

Now stop growing up so fast already.

Happy 4th Birthday Cooper

There is a reason why we've been so quiet around here... besides filling orders and photo shoots. We were busy preparing for a very important kid's birthday party for the past few weeks.

This party is for my very special boy, Cooper. As you might have read in a previous post, Cooper is a very strong, tough and very brave kid who has gone through SO much this past year. Last summer in July 2010, he was diagnosed with Leukemia ALL. And since then, he has been going through chemo and is doing well right now. I am grateful to share that he is in remission now. But chemo treatment continues throughout the next few years of his life as he head towards 100% recovery.

So as you can see, for a 3 year old kid that has gone through this much in life, don't you think he deserves the BIGGEST, GREATEST and most FABULOUS party in the whole wide world? That's exactly what I thought too. This year, Cooper told me, "I want a Lego Ninja'Go party Mommy". Well, your wish is granted my dear. And off I went with my creative brain.

As a photographer and graphic designer mommy, its my job to work my magic to make this Lego Ninja'Go party a fun and very memorable one for him. So I started to brainstorm.... searched online...designed... searched online some more for inspiration and browsed on my favorite site, Pinterest for more party ideas. Feel free to check out my boards here.

During my search for creative party ideas, I came across Swanky Chic Fete's Facebook page, which had lots of great party planning ideas and more. I emailed the owner and asked for some guidance and told her about my party planning dilemma. Lili, who is the creative owner of Swanky Chic Fete was so generous with her time, she offered to create a custom inspirational board for Cooper's party. You can see her blog post about that here.

With her kind heart, she naturally reached out to a few of her favorite vendors to help me plan this party for Cooper. A few bakery generously donated some beautiful cookies and cake pops to Cooper's party to help me make his day extra special. Thank you so much for helping me out with the party planning guys. It means SO much to us!

In order to stay green to our earth and to also make things more convenient for a busy mommy like me, I sent off our invite thru Evite, with an image of Cooper and his favorite Lego Ninja'Gos.

Our little birthday ninja shows off his new Lego Ninja'Go t-shirt that I designed for him to wear for his very special day. Oh, I love iron-on transfers :)

Lego Ninja'Go T-Shirt:
I grabbed the artwork of the little characters directly from the Lego Ninja'Go website. They were mainly from the free wallpaper downloads since those images are much larger, and it gives you pretty good resolutions. I designed and printed them onto Iron-On transfer paper from my own Epson printer. Then I cut out the design and Daddy helped to iron them onto brand new white Hane's undershirt that we got from Target.

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The Lego Ninja'Go party turned out FABULOUS! (besides the windy weather from outside, which kept blowing away all our decors and food) But most importantly, Cooper had SUCH a great time. He was all ninja'ed out by the end of the party. He even told me his "high" from that day was the "BIG jumpy house". (Yeah, it was all worth the rental.) And his second favorite he said, was the birthday banner that I made him, which were Lego Ninja'Go posters that I printed out from their website. I printed them onto 8.5x11 paper and string them together to make a Lego Ninja'Go banner. That banner is now hanging in his bedroom and he loves it.

Our main course was, yup, you guessed it, PANDA EXPRESS, why? Not because Mommy was lazy to cook but because PANDA EXPRESS is actually Cooper's FAVORITE, FAVORITE place to eat and all he ask for is "mein mein" (aka. noodles) every day.

I also made a special felt birthday banner for him. As I was hanging it up, I told him "Cooper, Mommy made this for you, do you like it?" He looks at it and then says to me, "I yoove it, it makes me happy". Aww, sweet one, you just made those few nights of hard work ALL worth it just by telling me that.

Happy 4th Birthday little Cooper. I can't wait to celebrate 100 more birthdays with you... year after year after year. And Mommy will try to make it even better and better year after year.... for both you and your Big Bro.

Here are a few highlights from our ninja party!


Birthday Banner:
The felt banner was made by hand....yes, I cut up all those letters one by one. And same for the flags. I bought squares sheets of felt from Walmart ($0.25) and fold it in half and cut them into triangles as one flag. I used a different color and cut up letters. I then glued the letters onto the flag. I used wooden clips to clip each one in between and hung it all on a yarn. It was a great backdrop to use for taking photos.

Ninja Power Water Bottles:
I made "Ninja Power" labels in Illustrator and cut them up and replaced all the ArrowHead water bottle labels. It was a fun idea for the kids, as they all wanted to drink them thinking it will give them, um... Ninja Power! The grown-ups were impressed by how fun it made all the water looked. It's so easy to put on. You can use my water bottle design if you're throwing your child a Ninja party too. I'm including my free printable here for you to DOWNLOAD HERE.


Jello:
(Jay-llo, as I labeled this one because one of the Lego Ninja's name is "Jay", he is the blue one)
The jello took 2 days to make. Day 1 we poured in the red color, Cooper made these actually. he helped to pour them into all the cups. Then, the next day, we did "blue" and then we put it back into the fridge. That's it. On party day, its all ready to serve for all the kids.

Cake:
We ordered this Ninja cake from Baskin Robin. Inside was Rainbow Sherbet ice cream with white cake. I had an idea of what I want, something simple but very ninja. So I searched online and found this ninja cupcake image and told them to just make it into a big ice cream cake. To my surprise, they did a pretty good job on this. I was very happy and impressed!

Rice Krispy Sushi:
I found this fun sushi idea on Pinterest. It's made with gummy fish and fruit roll-ups. So easy and so cute, I had to try and make it. This one was a big hit. We were left with none at the end of the party.

Grapesicles:
I also found this great grapesicles idea on Pinterest as well (I told you I love this site). It looked easy enough to make. Cooper and I even did this together just a few days before his party. He loved helping me with it too. We sat together and put all the grapes through the skewer. Then we placed it all in a ziplock bag and freezed it until the day of the party.



These delicious and beautiful Lego cookies are made from Beth of Sunshine Bakes. She has this really cool Etsy store you need all should check out: www.etsy.com/shop/SunshineBakes Thank you Beth for making Cooper's birthday so special for him.




The birthday ninja LOVED the jumpy house. Can't you tell?


And a little sweet moment with one of his cousin, Nate.


And these ADORABLE cakepops? They are from Moms Killer Cakes & Cookies. They also have a fun Etsy shop online too. You must check them out: www.etsy.com/shop/MomsKillerCakes







Ninja Cupcakes:

My awesome sister-in-law, May, helped out by making ninja cupcakes for the party. She baked yellow cake as the face and then added the color icing on top. And then used a gel icing tube to make all the eyes and eyebrows. It turned out really beautiful and colorful. Thank you Auntie May!




Guessing Game:
We played "Guess how many lego pieces are in this jar?" I filled a jar with red, white and blue legos. I added in a few very special "golden" lego pieces in there as well for guessing. The kids gathered around and took a guess and wrote down their answers. Whoever guessed the closest to the right number, wins! Winner received a sweet gift. Yeah for Kaylee! (and her mommy too!)



Party Favors:
All the little guest went home with a fun goodie bag filled with asian rice crackers, 4 fortune cookies and a ninja toy! Chinese takeout box were purchased from Michaels. I designed a circle label with a Lego Ninja'go character on them which I found the artwork from the Lego website. It was cut out from the bigger wallpaper that you can download for free. I bought a 1.5" circle punch cutter and punched all those designs out one by one. It was pretty fun actually.

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Update: Thank you "How to cook that" for finding us and including our party ideas on your site for the "Best of the Web 2011". Yippy! We are honored to be a part of your page.