Party Decor Times Three!!

As usual, life has been crazy and my blog has ended up with the short end of the stick.  Between finishing up my grad school applications, studying and taking my Graduate Record Exam (super hard test but I am super pleased with how well I did... especially when the math sections are stuff I learned over 17 years ago!), taking care of the kiddos, and putting together a few orders of party decor I have been one busy girl!  But I'm back!!

As I said, I had been lucky enough to be asked to do some of the decor for a few birthday parties and a bridal shower recently and thought I would share... especially since I haven't shared a thing on here in quite some time!   See, I really have been doing something... just not blogging... :/

So, the first party I made a few things for was a Star Wars birthday party.  Now, you may know that I have a son, but he is only 3 and not yet found the excitement of Star Wars (it's still all about Mario). When I was asked to do some cupcake wrappers and a banner I thought, "Sure, how hard could it be??"  Then I started thinking about what I could do, and realized I have very little knowledge of anything Star Wars and NOTHING Star Wars for my Cricut... Which meant it was time to get a bit more creative!  I was lucky enough to stumble upon some clearance Star Wars paper at Michael's (and bought a TON of it just in case) and some clearance Star Wars wall clings at Hobby Lobby (I now have a package of wall clings minus two Yodas and an R2D2 with nothing to do with them, but well worth the few bucks spent!!).  I fashioned a few light sabers out of bright green and orange glitter paper (to give them a shiny look) and some stars out of gold and black glitter paper, and voila!  Two dozen cupcake wrappers and a "May the birthday force be with you" banner fit for a young Star Wars fan!!!



Cupcake Wrappers with blue
Star Wars paper and black and gold glitter stars

 A very long banner... Made in two sections...
Used black, gold, bright green, blue, and white ribbon

 

Close up of the finished wrappers and banner.  The stars on the wrappers match some of the
banner pieces, and the end pieces were the Yoda wall clings.

 

 



 

So, for party number two, I was asked to make some cupcake wrappers, a banner, and a very large cupcake topper for a giant cupcake shaped cake... Minnie Mouse themed!!!  This one I was sure I could do!!! I used a variety of textured and smooth cardstock for the pieces, and some adorable matching ribbons including some polka dot printed ribbon and sheer red ribbon.  I used a simple Mickey Mouse head shape and a bright red Minnie bow from my Mickey and Friends Cricut cartridge, and voila!  I was also asked to do a separate giant cupcake topper for the little girl's "cake smash" picture session, which was a different color theme. 



The giant cupcake topper for the
"cupcake" cake... 6 inches diameter for the topper!

Double layer cupcake wrapper with a Minnie Mouse
head popped off the wrapper.

Minnie Mouse giant cupcake topper! The
Minnie Mouse head and polka dots are
popped off the page, and the other side is a mirror
image of this side, with the Minnie head directly behind
this one.   

 

A few cupcake wrappers with the giant topper!

 

 

 

Don't mind all the junk around the banner... Two sectioned Minnie themed banner!

Close up of the banner.... The polka dots were popped off the page as were
the Minnie Mouse heads on the white pieces. 

The last party I was asked to help dress up was a French themed bridal shower.  Apparently it was supposed to be somewhat of a play off the shower in the movie "Bridesmaids" but since I have yet to see this movie I just took my good friend's word and created something like what she described.  Unfortunately, and I am kicking myself for this, I did NOT take pictures of the finished thank you gift tags or banner... so you'll have to use your imagination a bit to picture the ribbons on both.  So... I was asked to make a bunch of blank table tents for the buffet table so the buffet item could be written on it at the shower, a bunch of black poodle tags to go on the French macaroon thank you gifts for the guests, and an "Ooh La La" banner.  It was fun trying to find various French themed items for this, and I had plenty of luck... a beautiful Eiffel Tower stamp and perfect blush pink, royal blue, and silver papers (again a mix of textured, smooth and glittery paper) from Michael's, some gorgeous French paper at Joanne Fabrics, and the perfect Critcut cartridges for the poodle and the banner lettering. 

So here are the blank table tents. Pretty
silver filigree accent in the corner. I also used some of the same
filigree shapes in silver on the banner.  

 

Picture is quite fuzzy, and the item is not complete... Ugh...
But it is the black poodle tag.. The center says "Merci
Beaucoup!" and a thin pink ribbon was added to the top.

 

 

I just loved these pieces!  The Eiffel Tower is a stamp that I embossed in black,
and then I added a blush pink layered flower with a pink brad center... These were the end pieces of the banner.

 

And this is the picture I kick myself for... Imagine white and silver, royal blue, blush pink, black
and white ribbons attaching the pieces to each other.  The other separateing pieces of the banner
were pretty, glittery pieces of French themed scrapbook paper I got on sale... Wish you could see the final product!!

 

And there you have it!!!  Now you can see what I've been up to recently, while I've been neglecting my blog... Hope you enjoy!!!

Advent Activity Calendar

While browsing Pinterest for holiday ideas in the fall, I came across quite a few Advent activity calendar ideas, which I fell in love with.  I was honestly sick of buying the Advent calendars with the chocolates in them, that we constantly forgot about anyways, and who needs more candy every day when there is already so much around during the holidays?!?!  My favorite was the calendars made from mini muffin tins... 24 holes for the 24 days in December leading up to Christmas... Perfect!!  Unfortunately, I ran out of time to make a cute calendar like all the ones I had seen, so I simply took some red and green card stock, folded them in half and cut a slit in one side to hook the opposite side under, numbered them 1-24 on the outside, and then wrote down our activity for the day inside.  Somewhat boring, I know, but it served the purpose while I was cramming for finals for the semester!!  So what did we do for activities, you ask??? Let me tell you!!! 

1) The local Christmas parade (We just happened to be marching in it, so they already knew this one was coming... I warned the kids early on that every day wouldn't necessarily be a surprise or huge activitiy, but it was still something fun nonetheless!)
2) Celebrate my birthday!!  (Ok, I may have been the only one excited about this one!!)
3) Read the Nativity Story (Which led to requests for more stories read aloud by Mom... fairly rare with 8 and 10 year olds who can read perfectly fine themselves, so a nice change from reading to just the littlest one.)
4) Make a Christmas craft (We made jingle bell reindeer and snowmen necklaces... Lots of fun ideas for crafts on Pinterest, but we opted for a simple but fun craft from a package... did I mention I had finals coming up??)

Derrick with his snowman necklace!

5) Watch Mickey's Christmas Carol and eat popcorn
6) Elementary Christmas Orchestra Concert (Again, another thing they expected since my oldest plays the violin in the school orchestra, but still something fun to put us in the holiday spirit.)
7) Watch the Grinch (cartoon version) and have Grinch floats (Lime sherbet + 7 UP = Grinch floats!)
8) Christmas in the Park (A local park, Arnette Park, had lots of lights displays, marshmallow roasting, holiday movies on a big inflatable screen, winter treats, and much more... Check out your local Chamber of Commerce or parks and rec websites for activities near you!!)

Abby and Emma with their marshmallows
and cocoa!!

9) Bake cookies!!

Chocolate meatball cookies, chocolate peanut butter snowballs,
magic layer bars, cinnamon chip oatmeal cookies, and cranberry cookies!

10) Jingle the neighbors (We purchased a few holiday treats, pencils, Christmas kitchen items, and more, put them in a gift bag with a tag letting them know they were "jingled", placed the bag on the front porch, rang the bell and ran!)
11) Make an ornament (We actually made pipe cleaner garlands for the small tree in the girl's room... very colorful and perfect size for their mini tree!)
12) Make snowy playdough (Homemade white playdough with silver and white glitter mixed in... simple but fun... would be neat to do with other colors for other holidays... red playdough with red and silver glitter for Valentines, orange playdough with black glitter for Halloween.)

13) Game night and hot cocoa... December 13th is National Hot Cocoa Day!!!!
14) Roller skating (Not necessarily a holiday activity, but we went with the other altar servers and their families from church for a holiday thank you to the servers, so it was quite holiday-like for us!)
15) Disney on Ice... need I say more???  (Of course, the 3 year old was SO scared of the fireworks they used in the show he and the hubby had to sit in the car most of the show... he wouldn't even stay in the building!!)
16) Make Gingerbread Houses

17) Make candy bark (White almond bark melted and spread on wax paper on a cookie sheet, holiday M&M's and pretzel twists sprinkled all over... hardened in the fridge and then broken into pieces.)
18) Help make a holiday scrapbook page (Each girl did a page with pictures from our gingerbread house decorating on Day 16!)
19) Unwrap an early present (Christmas pajamas, of course!)
20) Make snack mix and have hot cocoa (Chex Mix Muddy Buddies... super easy and super yummy!!  You can find the recipe on the Chex website!)
21) Celebrating the middle child's birthday... Her choice of activity, which was to go to a local vineyard to see the holiday lights display.  They had lights set up through the vineyard, which you drove your car through with the radio tuned to a specific station so the lights lit up in time with the Christmas music playing on that channel... really neat!!)

22) Holiday Lights in the Garden (We strolled through the lights display at the local botanical garden... kind of chilly but not too bad... neat to walk through at night with it all lit up!)

23) Watch the Polar Express and drink cocoa
24) Christmas Eve... which meant mass, the Christmas play during mass, homemade pizza for dinner per our family tradition, and cookies and milk out for the big guy!! 

I gathered ideas from activities that we usually do, activities I found online, and searching the local paper, parks and rec websites, chamber of commerce sites, and more.  We got to do some neat things we hadn't done years before, and they kids didn't complain for an entire month that they were bored because they knew something good was coming every day, no matter how big or small it was.  This is definitely something I will continue to do... Of course, I may need to come up with some new activities next year!!  Enjoy!! 

Better Late Than Never... I hope!!

Well, I was looking over my last blog post and realized it was full of reasons I hadn't blogged in so long... and guess how this post is going to start too??  You guessed it... reasons I haven't posted in what seems like forever!  Between coaching cheering (I may be biased, but I had an amazing groupd of girls and parents!) and going back to school (only two online classes... things should be interesting once school gears up next fall for me!), not to mention welcoming home a deployed hubby and taking care of the house, kids, and four-legged friends, I definitely had less spare time than I hoped for!  I will have this semester off from school and any kind of coaching so maybe I can get some extra time in to post a few things...   Keeping my fingers crossed!! 

So, I thought about starting out with a few things from the holidays, but thought I would back up a bit further and post a neat set of birthday party decorations I made for a friend's husband's 30th birthday party.  What she asked for was some brightly colored birthday decor that would center around a cute centerpiece she was hoping I could concoct for her... As soon as she asked if I had seen pictures of the boxes with the suckers that said something like "30 sucks" on it, I knew exactly what she was talking about!   I had seen a few pictures of something similar on Pinterest, so I did some research and came up with a plan. 

I essentially took a small mailing box, covered it in textured posterboard, and inserted three stacked pieces of styrofoam, which I cut to size and covered in white tissue paper, inside the box.  (FYI, I found the posterboard wanting to pull away from the box at the edges, so I got some textured duct-tape sheets in white and secured the board with that inside... it matched perfectly and held much better than any other adhesives I had.)  I then decorated the outside of the box with some ribbon, die-cut balloons and a "30 Blows!" sign on the front.  I then inserted 30 Blow-Pops into the styrofoam and provided her with a bag of red shredded paper to place in the box on top of the styrofoam when it came time for the party... I think it turned out pretty cute... What do you think??? 

The final product... Just picture it with red shredded paper inside...
I don't have a picture of that unfortunately!



The stripe around the bottom is two kinds of ribbon.

You can see I layered the balloon pieces with progressively smaller
balloon pieces and popped each piece off the bigger piece below it
to give it some more depth.

 

Up next was some placecards for some items she was putting out as favors... things that, along with the Blow-Pops, could be blown (super cute idea!!)!  Cute cards, and super simple! 

The "explosions" are also popped off the paper, which is just a piece
of folded cardstock.

She also asked for a garland with balloon shapes, so I did one similar in style to the one I had done for my son's Mario birthday party, and a "Happy Birthday" banner. 

Balloon die-cuts to match the Blow-Pop box, with some cute
blue and white polka-dot ribbon.

More matching balloons, in coordinating colors of paper
and ribbon... with a white background to the letters to make
them pop. 

The finished sign!  Fun!!!

I must admit, just posting these pictures is getting me in the spirit to do something creative... Glad I just bought a bunch of scrapbooking and card-making stuff with some Christmas gift cards I got!  Enjoy!!!!  (And thanks for keeping me in business Lina!!!)