rushley & crew

I love to throw parties, but I don't get the chance (or have the budget!) often enough! However, when one of my good friends, Katie Allan, was having her second baby (but the opposite gender of her first baby), I jumped at the chance to throw her a little baby sprinkle :) And it turned out pretty great, if I do say so, myself :D I browsed Pinterest for ideas, and re-created this invitation. I was initially thinking I'd create a photo backdrop, which is why I hung the gold sheet, but then we didn't end up using it that way, so I probably would have liked the whole set-up better if I had just let the natural window light come through here, but oh well :) For refreshments, we had an ice cream bar along with a sprinkle-covered cake. The sprinkle-covered cake taught me to never work with sprinkles ever again 😂 They just bounce and fly EVERYWHERE! haha The cute mama! :) For activities/games, I just planned one game, and it was a total hit! I had guests se...

My birthday was yesterday, and I had a great day! I think part of what made it so great was that I really tried to have zero expectations and to ask for(/make happen) what I wanted. Several months ago, I wrote about my " birthday epiphany " which was essentially that we should always plan our own birthdays and not put the pressure on other people to make our day great (because people aren't mind readers, and we often don't even know our own minds well enough), so I was trying to put that into practice. As my birthday approached, I started to feel all this pressure to come up with something fun to do on my birthday. I honestly didn't have any ideas, which kinda made me feel ... dumb? ... like, why don't I know what I want to do on my birthday? But then when my birthday came, I had this realization that I was feeling pressure to do something that other people might think was cool, so I let that go and decided that what I wanted on my birthday was just to rel...

Well folks, I think I settled on an annual party I'd like to throw -- Pie Night! I first heard of pie night shortly after I entered Russ's family, because one of his aunts does this every year (for her immediate family I think, but that's how I heard about it). In case you're unfamiliar with it, the idea is that on Thanksgiving Day, you get too full from all the other good food, that by the time it's time to eat pie, you can't fully enjoy it. Thus, you have a "pie night" some other time, where you can thoroughly enjoy all the pie. Pie Night is a great party to throw because it's relatively easy and cheap! Decor is already taken care of because Thanksgiving decor counts; all I had to do food-wise is make (or buy!) one pie, and then I provided milk, cool whip, and reddiwhip; and my only costs were basically paper products, printing costs (for invitations, printable, and food tent labels), and I really splurged with the three dollar store p...

A murder mystery been on my "party list" for ages, but I've never gotten around to throwing one (probably because there are too many other ideas on my party list haha). So even though we were planning to do Harry Potter movie parties every Friday and Saturday in October, when my friend asked if we'd be available for a murder mystery, I told her I would rearrange my schedule to be there! Haha :) When the actual invitation came, I was super impressed because it was so themed and legit! Diana went above and beyond -- the kit they bought (from  Night of Mystery ) came with invitations, but she had someone design different ones that were so awesome. Girl knows how to get the party started right from the get-go! I had heard about and seen other murder mysteries before, and the main thing I always heard about was people dressing up. It was so fun to arrive at Diana and Michael's and find that everyone had really gone all out with their costumes! Wigs,...

We have friends that live in St. George and friends that live in Cedar City, both of whom have offered to let people stay at their houses, so I had been trying to find a good time to go down there, and #ashleysfun25 was the perfect excuse! I was a little bit worried about taking Ada on a trip because I knew it would mess with her schedule that was juuuuust barely seeming fully established, but she actually did GREAT! It wasn't perfect, and the times when naps got messy were a struggle, but all in all, she did great sleeping on the trip (as in perfect night sleep and a perfect first nap; only the second nap was ever wonky, and that's because we were either driving or hiking during that nap on all three days!) and got right back to her good habits the day we returned home. **sidenote** Man, in writing this post, I realized I'm very  long-winded. So the short version is that on Friday we saw Russ's grandparents on our way down to St. George, and then we met up with Matt...