The Copelands: Brannon's 7th Birthday Party!

We celebrated Brannon's birthday this weekend. A few months (yes, months!) ago Brannon told me he wanted to have a fishing party. I thought this sounded like a lot of fun but I also reminded him that his birthday is in February....the dead of winter....that could be tricky. Well, lately we've had some wonderful, warm, beautiful and very spring like weather so I was optimistic that we could pull this off. I had some back up ideas ready in case we were forced to stay indoors but I knew they wouldn't be as much fun as fishing! I also went ahead and decorated inside a little....because let's face it...I just love to do it! I really had more ideas that I wanted to do but I tried to reign it in some....especially since all Brannon really wanted to do was go fishing!

I made a banner with pictures of Brannon from when he was a tiny newborn and on up! This was fun to do and brought tears to my eyes to see how fast the years have gone by!!! It was also neat to see how much Nate looks like him!

I found some fishing themed items on sale at Hobby Lobby and used them to decorate our table in the foyer and make a little center piece on the dining room table. The boys bathroom is basically still a blank slate and they've been asking for a new shower curtain (Blake says the one in there is too babyish) so my plan is to decorate their bathroom soon (I'm on the lookout for a new shower curtain now) and use these items in there.

Brannon picked 2 cupcake flavors and I had fun making cupcake wrappers to go with them! He chose cookies and cream (talk about a perfect flavor for these bait bucket cupcakes!!! I got that idea from some cupcakes I saw on Pinterest. They were originally from a great party blog/store for boys called Spaceships & Laser Beams. These were chocolate cupcakes with a cream filling topped with chocolate ganache and Oreo crumbs and then, of course, some gummy worms! I'd share the recipe but I honestly wasn't happy with it so I'm going to tweak it a bit if I make these again!

The next cupcakes were by far the favorite!!! These were chocolate chip cookie dough cupcakes that I found from a new favorite blog--Kevin & Amanda. These were a cookie dough cupcake with a cookie dough filling--even the buttercream tasted like cookie dough. They are a new favorite around here. Blake has already requested these for his birthday!

Well, we weren't lucky enough for warm, spring like weather this weekend but it was sunny and beautiful with highs in the low-mid 50s so we thought we'd head out to the lake at Matt's parents place and try to do some fishing and grilling. Well....the boys did do a little fishing and then some playing on the beach area and playground until the cold, cold,COLD wind sent us running for Nana and Papa C's house!