Embracing the East Coast…
Last year, we celebrated my oldest’s third birthday less than a week after moving to Baltimore. We treated the party a little like a celebration that we made it through such a transitional summer and landed on the East Coast.
We were wrapped up in the move so didn’t have a ton of time to plan for the party, but it also wasn’t for a big group of people… sadly, no friends yet in a brand new place.
The nautical theme was fun! So much fun that I think I might have to do it again when I have more time to dedicate to it.
The Food
We kept the menu simple. We picked up a bunch of food trays from the grocery store nearby and had ‘Submarine Sandwiches’, fruit, veggies, and obviously…. crab. The crab out here is pretty incredible.
To make the veggie tray a little more exciting, I copied a Pinterest trend I kept seeing where the pepper looks like an octopus. Mine turned out looking a little more like a spider, but I still thought he looked super cute!
Dessert
I know I’ve mentioned this before, but I’m really not a big fan of cake. I probably shouldn’t project that onto my children, but when I was trying to brainstorm dessert ideas, I kept going back to cookies and ice cream. We didn’t have time to get a custom cake done, so I found some cute cupcake decor and baked brownies as ‘cups’ and scooped ice cream on top to look like frosting. I also have an incredible cutout cookie recipe that my mom has passed along. It takes days to make because it’s a multi-step process, but I like to make them for special occasions. I used an anchor cookie cutter to fit the theme…
Instead of party hats, we all wore sailor hats. I’m sharing this picture specifically because I promised to share a little of the chaos…
It’s hard to miss that nasty looking scrape on J’s eye. We had a rough first week here. After lunch with Joe at work, we were running back to catch the water taxi, and there was a bad trip and fall. It was so scary, but J handled it like a champ.
The second scare came with the elevator, which we clearly weren’t used to. J was knocking on the door while we were waiting for it to open, and in the two seconds it took us to gather up the other kids and all our stuff, his hand got stuck in the door. It was only for a second, and his hand ended up being totally fine, but I think I’m scarred for life.
How do things like this always seem to happen at times that are high-stress to begin with??
And then I have to share this gem… a more accurate depiction of our family photos, with the boys strangling each other…
