An early Princess Birthday Party

We wanted to celebrate Allie's birthday while Bana and Kristin were in town. So, this evening, we had ourselves a little Princess Birthday Party!!!

Earlier today, I wanted to take some pictures of Allie in all of her "almost 2 year old" glory!

Getting geared up for the party...Allie quickly lost interest in her balloons!!

I decided to make homemade cupcakes for her birthday. She LOVES cupcakes. According to Allie, "I love cupcakes! I can eat them all day long!" So we had chocolate cupcakes, with a peanut butter middle with Oreo icing!!

I went to Zurchers to get her balloons and ended up buying some party favors! I could've easily gone overboard....Zurchers has way too many fun things!!
Allie was a fan of her princess hat...but was not a fan of having her picture taken with it at this particular moment!
She had quite a fun time with these party favors! I wasn't sure that she was going to be able to blow it out, but she managed to do it!!





And she was so proud of herself!
Soon it was time to sing Happy Birthday and blow out her candle!!



And then, of course, eat her cupcake!!! :-)

These photos are courtesy of Bana...

We actually did a second blowing out of the candle and singing because Allie requested. She got a bit too close to the candle and almost burnt her lip! As she got close and felt the flame, there was a split second of silence as Allie started to cry, but then we all said, "Yay!" and celebrated and those few moments of almost certain tears turned into smiles and fun!

After the cupcakes were eaten, we headed downstairs for the presents!! These photos are all courtesy of Bana and Kristin!

I'm not quite sure what Brad was doing here....

Allie cracked me up while she was opening her presents...she kept saying as she was trying to rip up the paper, "What IS IT?!"

Lando actually cracked me up in this photo...how pitiful does he look?!

Leave it to Aunt Kristin to buy Allie veggies to go with her kitchen!! They were quite the hit...

Since most of her gifts were really too big to wrap, we covered them with sheets...
This is her cupcake oven that Aunt Jessica bought...she LOVES cupcakes so this was a huge hit!!

This is an activity table from Bana and Aunt Kristin - Allie loves to color and paint - so this will come in handy!!!
Then, the unveiling of her mommy and daddy gift - her grilling kitchen!!
Making sure the phone works properly...
Bana and Kristin set up her tea set place setting too...
Checking out the activity table...

Cutting up her veggies....this was a brilliant idea...velcro - so she actually cuts them!!

All in all - a fantastic 2nd birthday party on a much, much smaller scale than her last birthday!! But I think she enjoyed it more!!! We had planned on buying her a lot more...but then realized 1) she already has a ton of toys and 2) we have to save something for Christmas!

Plus - Nana and Pappaw are coming to visit soon and will probably take her out shopping as well! Mammaw and Don contributed to Allie's savings / college fund - so all the way around - Allie had a wonderful birthday!!