I like holidays. It’s easy to get X out of bed when I pop into her room shouting “Happy Valentine’s day my little love bug!”

It was a busy morning of getting our outfits and hair just right, breakfast, packing a special lunch for X, and remembering all the Valentine’s when we walked out the door.

Breakfast was Pillsbury Grands cinnamon rolls with dyed pink icing.

This boy takes after me in his love for cinnamon rolls.

Yum.

I just ate the last one warmed over for breakfast today. Still awesome 3 days later.

X wore her “LOVE ONE ANOTHER” shirt from Justice.

Junky lighting in that picture of her….sorry about that.

Still in his pajamas here but he ended up wearing jeans and his white “dress” shirt that he had his pictures taken in.

I couldn’t resist making these CRUSH bottles this year.

X chose to give one to her new 3rd grade teacher as well as her 1st & 2nd grade teachers.

I had those extra copies of her birthday picture just laying around begging for something cute to be done with them.

I made one for E’s preschool teacher, Mrs. Rachel, as well.

Who, we found out that day, is leaving Mini Texans. Booooo.

Nothing throws your 4 year old off more than changing teachers abruptly.

His new teacher is Ms. Sally.

I asked E if he pictured her as a blue sports car.

From the movie CARS….

He laughed and said “no, I’m pretty sure she’s just a person.”

With the kids off at school I set to get my house back in order. Lots of cleaning and organizing.

And packing up of all the Valentine’s day decor while I was at it.

Easter is full effect at the Newcom house.

For dinner I made us pink heart pancakes, eggs, and sausage.

I don’t normally have my camera at the table but since I did I tortured my family with random shots of them eating.

Luckily for Ryan and X only the ones of E came out decent.

After dinner we took a family walk/bike ride to the mailbox.

So nice to have Texas style weather again.

I’m thinking I need to institute a 1/2 Valentine’s day on August 14th.

It would be awfully nice to celebrate this holiday twice a year.

Yes. That would be twice the love shared on the blog too.

To celebrate X’s birthday we had a birthday breakfast since I had to sleep during the day.

I wish I could take credit for this awesome theme but it was my Mother-in-law. (Did I mention they drove in on Thursday to surprise X?)

I can’t even take credit for the cake, Debby did that too. I did, however, buy the candles for the cake at Walgreens before coming home from work that morning.

We had Baked French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, and strawberries stuffed with freshly made whipped cream.

Grace and Leath (Grace’s mom) joined us for breakfast.

X could not wait to start digging into these presents.

I had bought her a bunch of clothes (stuff she needed regardless of birthday) and wrapped it all up separately so she would have lots of things to open as E did after his birthday party.

Leath made X a scarf. It’s beautiful and she wore it the rest of the morning.

I always give X and “X” for her birthday (and randomly throughout the year).

then it was clothes after clothes after clothes….

Super excited to get this Vera Bradley lunch bag (that matches the purse she got last year for her birthday).

out of focus but I lover her expression

This headband from Grandma Robben has been worn every day since Saturday.

And after everything was opened X and Grace laid out all the clothes designing outfits and deciding what she should wear the rest of the day.

After breakfast, I went to bed but Grandma Newcom took X and Grace out to lunch and shopping.

The Aloia family (friends/old neighbors from Houston) arrived around dinner time as a pit stop on their way to El Paso. We got Rudy’s takeout for all 12 of us, had some birthday cake, and found beds, couches, and floor space for everyone to sleep.

Except me, I went back to work.

I may have went a bit overboard with this party (as you may have noticed with the menu).

But, man oh man – was it fun!

So here’s our living room:

I hung bats from the ceiling and the ceiling fan. I traced them from my friend Maria’s design. The bats and cave-like drippings (is that what you’d call it?) on the fireplace is a Martha Stewart kit I bought at Michaels.

It doesn’t actually look like a lot of bats because I think they were spinning – but there was around 20 of them hanging.

The candelabra was borrowed from my friend Cindy. She also lent me the skeleton (aka 3rd child left in time-out).

I used 2 pieces of black posterboard taped together to make the “Happy Birthday Edward” sign. The, albeit gorgeous, framed photograph of the mountains didn’t go with my Halloween theme so this is the best way I could think to cover it. Ryan just scotch taped the posterboard to the frame. The letters were stamped on with foam stamps and acrylic paint.

And then the dining room:

I made some major modifications in the dining room. First we took out the rug so nothing would get spilled or dripped on it.

Then I had the genius idea to empty my china cabinet (of normal china) and fill it with Halloween themed labeled bottles. The labels were a Martha Stewart kit I also bought at Michaels. I covered the wine glasses with spiders and cobwebs inside the cabinet as well.

I used random bottles of wine, vinegar, beer, oil.

Then I hung spiders from the ceiling. Also traced off my friend Maria. I used sewing thread and a push pin get it to stay in the ceiling.

The tablecloth is my Mother-in-law’s. She also bought the 3 monster-like characters (from Target) for the party/kids. The Green Frankenstein does the Monster Mash; the blue Mad Scientist does the Cha Cha slide; and the purple mummy does the Cupid Shuffle.

I made the pictures on the wall with 8×10 white canvases and a kit of wall appliques from Target. I used black acrylic paint to distress the edges and give it a framed look.

They looked a bit lost on this giant wall so when I was at Target the day after Halloween I bought another pack of the appliques (50% off) so I can make more next year.

I added small little touches like this around the house sporadically. The eyes are gumballs and the skeletons were strung together as a garland. I got the bloody eyeballs at Target and found the skeletons at HEB (our grocery store).

And, I was wrong yesterday. This isn’t the last Birthday party post. One more tomorrow – and it’s probably my favorite.

The costumes…..

Ryan and I have been enjoying reading the Catalog Living blog. As browsers of the Pottery Barn and Crate & Barrell catalogs ourselves, we love the laughs it provides.

And since a lot of my seasonal decor is from Crate & Barrell (they have a great day-after-Christmas sale) and Pottery Barn (we live 45 minutes from the outlet) I decided to have a little catalog living fun myself.

Ryan couldn’t believe Kelly poured glasses of the 2001 pine cones simply for decoration when he had been saving up for a special occasion.

Some more of my fall decor….

I love these pumpkins. I got them 1/2 off at Hobby Lobby last year.

I love these too. I inherited them my Mother-in-law.

I don’t put too much Halloween stuff out till about about 2 weeks before Halloween. I couldn’t resist these little ones though.

It’s an even better excuse to spend the day getting crafty.

Angela and I had an ENORMOUS amount of fun yesterday playing in the SBR. With Ryan in Boston we overtook the room with scrapbooking, paint, canvases, music, and overall joy.

And when I say joy, I really mean giddiness.

We took a couple of these…

a lot of this…

and a little bit of this…

and made this…

and this.

We are forgoing scrapbooking for the rest of the day and are making more canvases instead.

A day doesn’t get much better than this.