the photo op

Another must at our monthly parties: the photo op. A few tropical paradise wall clings, a blue tarp, 60lbs of sand, a blow up palm tree, two sand buckets (w/shovels), a beach ball, a grass skirt, and a foam flower bra. What more could you need? This is always my favorite part of the night. I love seeing the creative things people will do when they are faced with the photo op. Here are just a few of the pictures I took for your viewing pleasure:

I feel the next two pictures merit some explanation. I love this kid named Mike. He is such a stud and always willing to do anything. He gets really excited about activities, especially sports. I was so happy when he showed up at my house in his idea of beach attire: a towel on his shoulder and holding a volleyball. I thought it would be awesome to take a picture with him, mimicking his beach attire as well...so I grabbed a beach towel and my beach ball. I think this picture is classic! Much better than the crazy blackmail-ish picture we took together at the last photo op...

And finally...one of my favorite pictures of the night (for obvious reasons)...me surrounded by some muscular men with totem pole men tattoos:

{just the way a photo op should be}

p.s. just one more post...i promise!

pinata

One of our favorite things to have at our monthly parties is a pinata. This particular pinata was purchased way back in February (after V-Day sale) and has been waiting in my closet just for this special birthday bash. You gotta love the lips!
Why lips you may ask? Well, somehow I have coined this nickname...and I don't recall if I gave it to myself or if someone else did...but whenever we have game nights my name is "They call me Lips" (not just "Lips" you have to include "They call me Lips"). Hence the reason for the lips pinata. The birthday girls got to take a swing first:

Don't I look fierce? All it took was one swing and the lips hit the ground. Cheap pinata! It didn't break, just the holding mechanism broke. So we wrapped the pinata up in the rope and everyone else got to take a swing or three. Here is the other b-day girl Sarah, followed by others...I won't bore you by labeling each picture:

After many others hit the pinata (not all pictured due to lack of interest in seeing the same type of picture over and over) finally Michael connects...and bam!
A candy explosion! Hurry...grab it before it's gone!

And that, my friends, is the story of the pinata. Stay tuned for more posts. That's right...the fun is still not over.

P.S. Sorry for the crappy quality pictures (minus the candy explosion pic that was taken on Sarah's camera). I got a little excited during the hula hoop competition and dropped my camera. It kind of had issues taking pictures the rest of the night...

but wait...there's more

Since my first post was dedicated to the decos and food, this post will be dedicated to the folks & fun. Just random shots of people chillin' at the beach bash.

Waiting for Plan B to be implemented (see previous post for food disaster):

Eric trying to make me believe the the fishing pond was really fun:

A little flip flop decorating:

Sandy showing off the amazing prize she won:

Group games:



And, of course, the hula hoop competition:


Words cannot describe the mad hula hooping skills that Mike (in the blue flower shorts) possesses...

{lots more to come}

in the beginning...

Umm...I have about 3oo pictures to post from the birthday bash, so I have broken down the pictures into smaller categories and will post them as I write about them. I will try to go in chronological order. These are pictures of the calm before the storm: the fun decorations and the food.

When people walked in they were greeted by this little table containing some leis...to be worn around the neck, of course. There were totem pole men cut-outs, palm tree cut-outs, pineapple and palm tree garlands and other random beach items found all around the house.

We had some game stations set up in random areas as well. Here is the fishing pond I made for the guest room. Also in the guest room was the photo op...in the beginning stages. More on that to come in a later post.

The fishing game didn't quite work out the way I had planned/hoped. The photo op eventually contained a tarp with sand on it and a blow up palm tree. It was a hit! People especially loved the props: a beach ball, sand buckets, a grass skirt, and a coconut bra (ok, so it was really made out of foam flowers).


I also set up another station in the kitchen for a flip flop decorating contest. Yep, just a lame piece of paper with a picture of flip flops on it, some glue, some pom poms, crayons, markers and glittery stuff.

We had about 10 entries...all of which were amazing.


And, of course, here is the scrumptious food we served, complete with flip flop cake to round out the beach theme.

We had this brilliant idea to serve shish-kabobs (not sure how to spell that one)...teriyaki chicken, pineapple chunks, bell peppers and onions on a skewer. But as fate would have it, the barbeque started acting up, and the skewers all started on fire. To plan B: cooking the chicken on the stove and sauteing the veggies. It ended up being more of a stir fry...but I really think it turned out better that way. We also served rice and fruit, complete with a yummy lemon fruit dip. Oh, and the drink was delicious too! Thanks Nat for sending me such scrumptious recipes!!

{more to come}

Birthday Beach Bash

This weekend my friend Sarah and I threw the birthday party to end all birthday parties. My birthday was the 20th and Sarah's was the 25th so we thought it would be fun to have a combined birthday bash...with a beach theme. Let me just explain to you that when Sarah and I decide to throw a party, we really get into it. There were beach decos everywhere. We made people wear leis, flip flops and beach attire. We had the most amazing photo op in my only-empty-for-a-few-more-days guest room, and got lots of good photos. Unfortunately I don't have time to write all about it now, but check back later this week for millions of photos, complete with descriptions. Until then, here are two pictures to check out and get you excited for the blog this week:

me in my birthday girl, flower-in-hair, beach get up

and the awesome flip flop cake made by Sarah's mother

P.S. This new song on my blog is kind of lame, but I love it for one reason. It was one of the first songs I heard on Saturday morning (the day of our birthday beach bash) and it was also the first time I had ever heard this song. It helped me to realize that "tonight's gonna be a good night"...in reference to Saturday night that is. And it was! I LOVED almost EVERY MINUTE OF IT!!!

P.S.

I found a new roomie! She'll be moving in next month. Woohoo!!!!

I'm back!!!

Well, I am back from Oregon now. I did have quite the fun/interesting vacation. Many exciting things happened and many intriguing things happened. However, the best part of the vacation was spending my birthday with these strange looking creatures:Blogging world, meet Ireland the Llama (whom I nicknamed Dolly Llama) and Itty Bit the Alpaca (whom I nicknamed Freaky Looking Black Thing).

Sadly, the majority of my pictures were taken on my parents' camera...and they just happened to fly straight to UT from OR and will be there until the end of this month (with their camera). So I will have to post those pics in about one week. Just know that I had a fantastic trip, a memorable birthday and I am slowly getting excited about being back home.

more {disturbing} fun

So there are some girls in my branch that I hang out with on occasion. There are 3 girls that live together, one of which just recently got engaged. When the girls went to go wedding dress shopping, one of the other girls managed to get her finger stuck in the car door, doing some massive damage. It was her ring finger that was injured. So in light of the two events involving the ring fingers of these two girls, the 3 roomies decided to throw a ring finger party. It was a fun little shindig complete with "finger foods." The best part was the finger-like sugar cookies seen below:

How disturbing is that??!!

And here is just another picture of the fingers with painted nails (and some swelling):

All in all it was a fun party. But the greatest party is yet to come: MY PARTY!!! That's right, it is almost that time when I inch one step closer to the grave...my birthday. But since my pal Sarah is celebrating a birthday 5 days after mine, we are having a HUGE birthday bash complete with beach theme. It is going to be amazing!!! More on that later...

But now I just look forward to my Oregon trip, and the fun time that will be had on my BIG day. So in honor of that trip {and my insurance agent} I post this picture for your viewing pleasure:

How fitting is that awesome postcard/birthday wish my State Farm agent sent me?

Oregon...here I come!

visitors

I guess it has been about a week and a half since I had visitors, but it is never too late to blog about it right? About the time I was flying up to Utah was about the time that my friend in Utah was flying to Arizona. We did get to see each other one day, but it worked out really well because once I got home to AZ I was able to spend some quality time with my Utah visitors. We got together on a Wednesday morning for breakfast at my favorite little cafe in Arizona called Crackers. Then it was off to the bowling alley to show off my sexy bowling shoes and pink bowling ball:

A close up on my awesome bowling shoes in case you can't see them very well in my flamingo pose above:

I think people assume you are a good bowler when you have your own bowling shoes and bowling ball, but that is definitely not the case for me. In fact, out of the two games bowled my combined score was 189ish. Not great. Here is Amy showing off her mad skills:

And Grant...the true possessor of those aforementioned skills:

Yep, Amy and I got slaughtered...slightly. At one point we decided to combine our scores to see if we could beat Grant...and it was still a little rough. We decided to call ourselves the "Side Sisters" as every time we tried to aim for the middle pins, our balls would somehow wind up going to the side...near the gutter. Side Sisters turned into the acronym "S.S." and then we decided to add "Alayna & Amy: Side Sisters" to the name and coined the acronym "A.A.S.S."...which then turned into naughty phrases like "a little extra A in your A.S.S." I know, I am going to hell... And here is our classic "interesting pose with ball" picture:


After bowling it was back to my house to hang out as I waited for the dang termite man to once again treat my house (the stupid little things don't want to go away). While hanging out we thought it would be fun to make some cupcakes as it was almost Grant's birthday and we were going to be having a birthday bash later on in the week. Amy claims that she has never made cupcakes before. Can you believe it?
It took her about 3 hours to fill the muffin cups with the batter, but I think she did a pretty good job. Just kidding Amos...you know I love ya! Here are Grant and I posing with our masterpieces after baking:
Sad story really, the cupcakes were left at my house because Amy & Grant did not want them sitting in their car all night. I had them covered and sealed tightly on my kitchen counter. When I got home from work the next day I noticed that our awesome white writing that was on top of the chocolate frosting seemed to have disappeared...melted right away. So the cupcakes were duplicated a few days later and left out a bit longer to allow the frosting to dry before being covered. I think they turned out pretty cute:


That weekend we had our little party to celebrate Grant's birthday with a couple of Grant's friends. We had dinner at Texas Roadhouse (my fave steak place!)..and it was delicious as always. Here is the gang: Grant did not want it to be known that we were celebrating his birthday, but lucky for us his friend managed to let the waitress know without letting Grant know. The saddle arrived and Grant got on it...what a good sport!

After dinner it was off to a place called Dave and Busters, which is basically an adult Chuck E Cheese. Lots of fun games everywhere...and lots of scantily clad drunkards too. The boys were quickly off to their Monopoly game, so Amy and I decided to fill the night with a little friendly competition. We started with my favorite game, Skee Ball:

We had some hoops competitions:

And, of course, the night would not be complete without a game or two of Whack-A-Mole:

We had some car racing competitions, horse racing competitions and some other good times. Once our energy was spent and our game cards were not, we decided to blow the rest on a game that increased our chances of getting lots of tickets to buy fun prizes with. The boys joked about the shot glasses in the gift shop, but Amy and I thought they were amazing...and got one:
I also got a frisbee and a key chain! All in all, it was a fun evening...a fun week. I am so glad I got to spend time with my Utah pals!