prepping C for her party

i love to participate in i❤faces every week. This coming week is super tricky for me because the theme is "Birthday Party" but it has to involve a child. The only child's birthday party i've recently attended is R's and I wasn't thinking about capturing photo entries at the time.

I thought about perusing local parks and stealthy taking pictures of kids celebrating their birthdays. Besides my Cybershot's zoom being pretty ineffective, following through on that idea would be a little creepy.

Since I never considered not entering, i decided to do a test-run of C's birthday party...which will be in...2 months (can't hurt to plan!). {DON'T WORRY--I tweeted with the awesome ladies behind i❤faces said they stage themed photos at times themselves!}

First stop--head to Trader Joe's for a free balloon. Check. Seems like C loves balloons. Good to know.

Then i forgot to take photos of C so the balloon sat in the corner of our apt. and shriveled up and died. Good to know TJ's balloons only last one day.

Left to make do with what we had at home, I dug up a banner I won

and busted out two of C's birthday gear paraphernalia from her Grandma and her GiGi (great-grandma). I found some ribbon, grabbed a pink blanket, flung open the windows, turned on the lights, and voila--we had a mini photo shoot in our dining room!

Granted, the one thing that was missing was cake + frosting. Pics of those two key ingredients usually lead to pretty fun photos. I didn't want to give C her first taste of cake pre-birthday, though, so I gave her some banana bread from a recipe I found at Never A Dull Moment (thanks Mandy!).

Now I'm sure you're dying to see what the photos looked like, right? Well, I'm saving my best for the actual i❤faces submission so, until then, here are a few outtakes:

and J's personal favorites, just for good measure...