My very dear friend Andrea is a great party planner. I love to get invitations to her parties: everything from a low-key, make your own panini party (let’s just say I have to duplicate the apricot, prosciutto ham and cream cheese panini that I made at her house!) to more sophisticated birthday parties and holiday dinners.

Andrea puts working moms to shame and really considers the details. For her youngest daughter’s first birthday she had a party with a pinwheel theme. It was colorful and was downright cute. What was so great were the details that she took time to include that made it special. She’s letting me post her secrets here so that you can create this party at home.

The birthday girl in her birthday tutu.

Happy Birthday banner. The letters are made from paper and strung on ribbon that is tacked to the wall.

I love this. Andrea took a simple mason jar and put in some colorful green ribbon, then placed the pinwheel in the jar. She had these on the main table holding the cake, and throughout the house.

Same premise here, she jut used a flower vase with some matching pink and green paper confetti.

Party hats! Even the hats match! The birthday girl’s hat has a subtle tag on her hat so there is no mistaking the party is for her.

Again with the details … the birthday girl’s high chair was decorated in coordinating colors with a pink “skirt” velcroed to the tray. Made for great cake-eating photos.

So, these were just simple, plain green and pink cups. Andrea added a pinwheel sticker to make them personalized.

Here’s the cake. So sweet. All pink and green. All matchy-matchy with the decorations. A local bakery made this gem and I can tell you that it tasted delicious. I had a lovely piece cut for me and started eating it when I had to do something with my daughter (Adele’s first friend), she must have been trying to get into something. Well, I put my cake down on the table and went into another room. When I went back to finish my piece of cake it had been cleaned up and thrown out by some well meaning house guests!

What’s a woman to do? I went back and got an entire new piece and gobble it up before the cleaning crew came around again.

Here’s a close up of the cake. The icing looks like butter cream, but I think it was fondant. Decadent, actually edible, fondant.

The entire table display. Simple, yet elegant and welcoming.

Party time! Getting ready for the cake.

All the guests went home with gift bags filled with home made cookie treats. The bags were customized with a sticker thanking everyone for coming and topped with a mini-pinwheel that was glued to a tiny close pin.

Resource list:

• Pinwheels, party hats, banner:  www.pinwhirls.com
• Cake from Party Flavors: http://www.orlandocustomcakes.com
• Tutu outfit (onsie, tutu and headband):  http://www.etsy.com/shop/sweetiepietutus
• Favor labels, pinwheel stickers (on cups):  Kate, one of the Haute Apple Pie bloggers made these.  She’s a graphic designer at www.goldandtwig.com. We’re not sure if she really makes these for sale, but when asked, she made them for Andrea.

You too can make this cute Easter bunny cake. My mother has been making this cake for years. It’s so simple and even though it’s not the fanciest cake, it is always a winner with kids. I have fond memories from childhood holding up this cake at Easter to have our photo taken with it.

There’s no special equipment needed for this cake — just two round cake pans.

Materials and ingredients:

• Two round cake pans (I use 9 inch)
• White icing (you can make your own or use store bought)
• Coconut, one bag
• Food coloring (pink for the ears and paws and a color for the bow tie)
• Candy for eyes, nose and buttons
• Licorice for whiskers (we didn’t have any so I used spaghetti on this bunny)

How-to make and decorate the cake:

First, bake a cake using two, 9-inch round cake pans. If you are using a box mix, one box is enough — just split the batter between both pans.

After the cakes have cooled, you’ll need to cut them into the correct shapes and place them on a flat surface. No fancy materials required. Next time I make this, I’m going to attempt a better background than a regular sheet pan covered in foil, but that’s all I had at the time I was baking. The beauty of this cake is that it really doesn’t take much to put a smile on a kid’s face.

Here’s my crude drawing, but you’ll get the picture with it.

1. Take one of the round cakes and cut a circle out of the middle of the cake. That will be the head. That’s A.
2. With the remaining, outer circle, cut that into 5 pieces. Or, four if you don’t want a tail.
3. With the second cake, cut four rounded semicircles from the sides of the cake. These will be used for ears. You’ll be left with B, the body.
4. Put A on your board where you want the head.
5. Put B below A, for the body.
6. Take two pieces (6 and 7) and put them for one ear. Take the two other large pieces (8 and 9) for the other ear.
7. Then, you’re left with pieces 1-5. Put these on the sides of the body for the paws.

Once the pieces are on the pan in the right locations, all you do is frost like a regular cake. Put frosting between sections 6 and 7 and 8 and 9 of the ears so they stick together. Also put frosting between the body (section B) and each of the paws (sections 1,2,3,4). The frosting doesn’t have to be smooth since it will be covered with coconut.

Next, sprinkle coconut over the entire cake. I usually pat it down a tiny bit so that it stays on the cake and we don’t have any fly-away pieces, but I don’t think it’s necessary.

Next, color the coconut. It’s easy: grab a zip top bag, toss in a handful of coconut, add a few drops of food coloring, zip the bag and shake, shake shake.

Decorate away!

I like to use pink for the ears and paws.

For the bow tie — I did this free hand. Just put down the blue coconut in the shape of a tie and gave it a  pat to stay in place.

I used large M&Ms for the face and some jelly beans for his mouth and for the yellow buttons.

Usually, I use skinny licorice for whiskers, but we were out so my mother suggested the spaghetti, which worked out great.

Don’t let this one get away from you. It’s super easy, doesn’t take long, and your kids will remember it when they are grown.

Related:

• I like this version of the Easter bunny cake that stacks the paws up for a dimensional look.
• Another popular version of this easy Easter bunny cake uses just the head of the bunny with a big bow tie. Very cute.
• All of my cakes (Mickey Mouse cake, duck cake, fondant cakes and a rocket ship cake to name a few.)

My son knows that Easter is coming and that we will be traveling to MomMom and PopPop’s house this year. He is so excited and keeps asking, every single day, “how many days until Easter?”

I got tired of saying, “it’s a lot of days.” Or, “it’s a long time away.” At Christmas, we use an advent calendar and that really helped him understand how long away it was. We try so hard to get our kids excited, but if you tell them about special days too soon, it’s something you might regret.

A couple of nights ago we created a paper chain to use as an advent calendar of sorts. Each paper link on the chain represents one day. Each morning my son can rip a chain off the link. As the link gets smaller, he’ll know that Easter is getting closer. I think he was surprised how many links we needed — 32 days is a lot of links. Since we made the chain, he hasn’t once asked how many days until Easter? Mission accomplished.

How to make a paper chain:

• Cut paper into about 1 inch wide strips. No ruler needed. We used a paper cutter and just eye-balled the measurement. I even used scrap paper. It would certainly look more festive with construction paper or scrap booking paper, but I used what we had available.
• Form a circle with paper strip and glue or staple ends together. We opted for the stapler because my son loves using it and we didn’t have to wait for the glue to dry.
• Intersect second strip into first circle. Staple/glue second strip together to form circle.
• Intersect third strip into second circle. Staple/glue third strip together to form circle.
• Continue intersecting, stapling until chain is complete.

I added numbers to each circle so that I would know how many days are left without having to count the chain the next time I get asked the how many days question.

Just so you know … there are 30 days until Easter.

I received an advanced copy of the new book from “The Coupon Mom” back in December. It’s taken me this long to digest the book and write this post because there is so much great information in it. I was excited when I had the opportunity to read the book because I’ve seen Stephanie Nelson on television and she makes it look easy.

In her new book, “The Coupon Mom’s Guide To Cutting Your Grocery Bills in Half,” Nelson shares her secrets on getting the most for your dollar. She starts by talking about what type of shopper you are: busy, rookie or varsity and has advice throughout the book based on each shopping type.

What I like about the book is that Nelson is not only a mother and savvy shopper, but she’s well spoken and clearly uses her business background to help shoppers learn techniques that can help save their families a lot of money. Here’s some of what I’m taking away from the book:

• Even though I’m a busy working mother, I can save money with coupons. Nelson’s personal strategy is not to spend hours every week cutting coupons; instead, she saves the circulars each week and puts a date on the front. No clipping coupons yet. When she’s ready to shop, she consults her Web site’s Grocery Deals database to find the best deals for the week. The database will tell her which circular to find the coupons and then she simply clips the coupons she’s using for that shopping trip.
• Knowledge is power, or in Nelson’s case, store and pricing knowledge is money. She says to learn what is on sale, when at your local grocery and drug stores (as well as other stores) so that you know when to buy what. An example she gives is that her local grocery store puts chicken on sale once a month. She knows when this happens and buys four weeks worth of chicken when it’s on sale.
• Combine store coupons with manufacturer coupons to receive maximum benefits. Before reading this book I didn’t even realize there was a difference between a manufacturer coupon and store coupon, let alone that you can use them both on an item and save big! I think this is the secret to how Nelson can go into a store and get $100 worth of groceries for pennies (see video below).
• Sign up for and use couponmom.com. Nelson’s Web site is a goldmine. This is where the time saving techniques really come into play. Every week her site is updated with local discounts. The magic is that you can find discounts in  your local area simply by clicking a few pages of her site and you be rewarded with a grid that tells you what items are on sale, which coupons to use, where to find the coupons and it will show you a final price you’ll pay for that item. It also shows you when you can get things for free using sales and coupons. You don’t have to do the legwork, just use the database to find the deals.

The book also has chapters on wholesale clubs, the breakout of drugstores and their rewards programs, how to use couponmom.com and chapters about how to save buying meat, vegetables, dairy and sweets. She even throws in some recipes that she uses with her family. This book is like an encyclopedia for saving money. Well worth the read because even if you implement only one of her strategies, you’ll surely save money.

If you don’t believe it or haven’t seen Nelson in action, watch this short clip where she gets $100 worth of groceries for 25 cents!

Photo credit: Stephanie Nelson

Related:

• CouponMom.com
• Stephanie Nelson’s Coupon Mom show airs on You Tube every Thursday. “In her new series, Nelson teaches real families how to save BIG by sharing her infamous tips and tricks on how to get the biggest bang for your buck without sacrificing quality.”
• “The Coupon Mom’s Guide To Cutting Your Grocery Bills In Half” Amazon link and reviews
• Time.com’s Q&A with Stephanie Nelson, “Coupon Mom: How To Cut Grocery Bills In Half“

When I was pregnant with my son I decided not to do a baby blue nursery. I’m just not a fan of the traditional baby colors for either sex. We opted for a soothing pale green and complimented it with an animal crib bedding set.

Our dear friend Kevin came over to help my husband paint the vertical stripes on the wall — alternating shades of green in a 5 inch and 8 inch pattern around the room. They even painted the ceiling the palest of the green palette. Kevin died just over a year ago and I can’t look at this room without thinking about him. Several months ago we began planning the birth of a baby girl and had to start thinking about the nursery and how to decorate it. Painting over it was not an option.

Three years later, I still love the room. We decided to keep the green for a girl. I chose crib bedding that continued the same shade of green and complimented it with a wonderful deep magenta and soothing ivory shades: flowers and butterflies complete the picture.

Here’s what we did:

BEFORE (above)

On the left is the tie back I made for my son’s room. I kept the curtains and made a new tie back with a butterfly on it (right) for my daughter’s room.

I simply swapped out bedding for something more feminine, keeping in mind the green color in which it needed to coordinate.

I purchased huge butterflies and used a staple gun to attach them to the walls instead of hanging them from the ceiling. I love the affect they have and how they bring more color on the walls.

All in all, I am really pleased with the transformation of the room. I even think that if I hadn’t had the walls already painted, I would want to do the room just like this anyway.