Amelia's birthday party!

8 years ago, on a cold November day, the biggest treasure life has given me came into this world. 

Every day I'm amazed to see my Amelia grow, become her own person and fill our days with happiness and I'm so, so grateful for each of those moments. She's my funny, intelligent, determined, caring and loving little girl!

One of her favourite things in the world is cats and we decided to make a cat-themed party to treat her and celebrate her. It was so much fun, from project planning to making, cooking and decorating to see her go wow with every detail! We crafted the crap out of it, mostly used materials we already had (I'm a paper junky and have drawers full of it so it was nice to get to use it and also, reuse some from old projects!). 

Next, a few photos from the party and bellow, the resources from the ideas and inspiration. Look how happy Amelia was :D

Resources and ideas

Cake: I bought the "Ricardo: nos meilleurs gateaux" book and it was totally worth it because the cake was the best cake I have ever made (well, not that I made good cake, to be honest, hardly LOL! but this was good!)! The end cake was an invention of Amelia and I, but we based all the cake and frosting recipes from the book. I wanted to make a part vanilla, part chocolate cake with vanilla frosting, so the colour would go well with the rest of the decorations but Amelia wanted raspberry frosting so we decided to put the raspberry in the middle of the cake. You couldn't see it until we cut it and it was not just a beautiful thing but delicious! And as I made both, chocolate and vanilla cakes, there's was a lot of cake dough left so we made cupcakes too: vanilla with raspberry frosting and chocolate with vanilla frosting. My faves were the chocolate ones, they were scrumptious! 

Cat bunting: Thanks Pinterest for all the great ideas! we found so many cool stuff and inspiration. I based my bunting in this DIY post   by A Subtle Revelry but changed the colours and instead of cutting the cats double and folding/glue them, I made a single sheet face and punched some holes to pass the twine through  I used a glittery silver twine to match the decor and lots of black, white and gold for the faces.

I also made some extra circle bunting with some old circles I had from a craft show decorations from some years ago. it was nice to get to reuse that and it gave the wall a nice, fun touch that complemented the cat bunting perfectly.

Piñata: I follower this tutorial by 100 layer cake-let which was so easy and the piñata came up looking pretty cool! It could have looked better to be honest, but I tried not to put too much effort in it because the plan was of course, to smash it, so the less I felt attached to it, the better! Only thing, it was way to fragile for a bunch of hyped 8 years-olds so it came undone quite fast, lol! So next time, I'll make it sturdier! 

Cake props: I saw this cat party Oh Happy Day throw with these funny props and I knew they were going to be perfect for Amelia as they reflect her sense of humour! They looked amazing, so funny! I added a little bunting with Amelia's name that a pair of cats were holding, to make the came more personalized. 

Favour bags: I got the idea from Bog & Ide. The bags looks super cute and the kids loved them! Plus we made the cat faces folding to parts of paper, like a card, and Amelia wrote a thank you message for her friends on the inside, so it had a nice, personal touch. We filled the bags with fish cookies, chocolate, gummies and a fun little toy.

Invitations: I did not take a photo of them but should have because they were real cute. I painted them myself, little cat faces and then just added the text using Picmonkey. 

Other decor: The honey comb balls were reused from previous years and I got them from Party A Decor on Etsy!

Food: We got pizza + juice for the kids and we treat the parents with a tacos! It was SO GOOD, honestly. We cooked three different fillings + we had lots of guacamole, warm tortillas, two different types of salsa and a couple of veggie accompaniments. I'm still dreaming of those tacos, I want to make more!

Best thing of all of course, my girl had a great time! Thanks for checking out my blog!
Iveth

Nova Scotia

In August, we got to visit Nova Scotia once again. It feels now like a little tradition, in a way, to visit each summer. And we are very lucky because is a place like no other and going has been quite easy as Alex visits customers there every summer so we just tag along. So, is really not like a vacation because most time Alex is working but for Amelia and me is a great opportunity to explore, relax and enjoy the city and then, when Alex finishes his work there, we always take a few days off to explore together. 

Some years we have gone to Lunenburg and last year we visited Cape Breton. This time we stuck close to Halifax and we went to Peggy's Cove, which is one of my favourite places in the world (well, that whole coastal drive along the Atlantic is).

It doesn't mater how many times we visit, I honesty never bore of Nova Scotia, is one of the most beautiful places I know (the landscapes, the ocean, the lighthouses, the little boats, the colourful houses, the weathered fishermen towns!) and always feel so peaceful when I'm there, beside the Atlantic ocean. 

Most of the photos I took where with my phone so if you want to see more, please visit my Instagram account! you will need to scroll down a bit as I posted more of those when we were there! Here, I'll share with you the photos I took with my regular camera the day we visited Peggy's Cove, which was a super windy and rainy day, the perfect weather to visit the place if you asked me ;) 

The first batch of pics, though, was taken at the Bas-Saint-Laurent which is here in Quebec, while on our way to the Maritimes . I hope you enjoy them!

If you ever have the chance to visit Nova Scotia, don't doubt it for a minute! You'll love it.

Thanks for visiting my blog!

Iveth

New York

It has been a long while! Such a hot and busy summer this was and I hope it treated you well and that the beginning of Autumn is bringing lots of lovely things your way.

Can you believe September is almost over? I hardly believe it, with time going so fast and also, with such unusual high temperatures. Normally, abut this time of the year the leaves on the trees would have turned orange and brown and yellow but this time, the colours are late, just starting to show up. My tomato plants are still giving so much fruit and well, is not that I'm complaining about the chance to enjoy a bit more of warm weather but I worry about our planet and the way we are making it act weird and off. 

We have enjoyed our summer so much, travelling a bit and enjoying the backyard, relaxing and focusing on family projects. It has been a lovely summer! And I wanted to show you some pictures from our trip to NY earlier in June. 

It was super hot and humid over there and just the second time I had  ever visited. The first time was more than 10 years ago and we stayed there just for a couple of days, hardly seeing much else than a few landmarks (it was super fun thought!). I enjoyed it so much this time around, having a lot of days to take everything slowly and  having the chance to truly explore the city. Still, so much stuff left unseen, unvisited! So that makes for plans to go back in the future!

My favourite parts were exploring little streets, the Museum of Natural History and as half of our stay was very close to Central Park, spending the days in such interesting place was great. Just taking it easy, bringing lunch to the park and exploring little roads, and bridges and lakes and looking Amelia enjoy the playgrounds. It doesn't sound like much but just the quiet of being in another place, with nothing else to do but enjoy the views and explore, was amazing. Liberating. 

Much of the pics of this half part of our trip were taken with my phone so I invite to check my Instagram account to look at those ones (you'd have to go back a bit though, as I posted them while in NY).

The other half of our stay was in the Nolita neighbourhood and oh boy, that was cool. The restaurants and little shops. I was so full all the time just by trying a bit of this and that in different restos, and snack places and pastry shops and ice cream shops. But I loved it, haha! it was so good. 

We also got to visit the Etsy hq's! that was super interesting and it felt like I had come full circle in a way, having Etsy being such an important part of this creative adventure for such a long time. I'll make another post with pics just from that visit!

But now, the photos! 

Such nice memories...I just love going out of town with my family and having these experiences with them, gosh, there's just no better company than them. And Amelia, well, she's just the best, she's so enthusiastic and full of wonder, is contagious :D

Hope you liked the photos and thank you for reading my blog!
Iveth