Friday, July 27, 2012

Tissue Pom Poms



I'm going to try and make these using this tutorial: 

http://www.marthastewart.com/how-to/tissue-paper-pom-poms-how-to

I have high hopes, I couldn't justify spending $20 for 5 of them (okay if you use the Michael's 40% off coupon, it still makes them $13)

I'll let you know how it goes.

Monday, July 23, 2012

Cars Themed 1st Birthday Party

My son's first birthday has come and gone, but that doesn't mean I can't relive that day, a million times over. I love pictures how they capture each moment of the party. I wish I had taken more picture, or dedicated someone to take pictures, but at least I got the before shots of everything before everyone stared showing up. I decided on a Cars them party for my son because...well my sister knows someone who worked on Cars and could get us a bunch of stuff for free...what more could I ask for? Free stuff...woo hoo! So here's the party break down.

Walking up to the party we made a road with trash bags and white tape, totally easy right?



We don't have any furniture in this room, rather very little furniture, so it was going to be the perfect place to set up shop.


The stickers on the back wall are removable (provided by friend, but you can find something sort of like them here), the stuffed cars on the back of the table were also provided by friend. I went to Party City and bought the Cars themed paper plates, napkins, cupcake tree, the paper tablecloth, flags, little toothpick flags for the cupcakes and for people to use to retrieve meatballs (what's in the crockpot). We had extra flags from the banner (see below), so we attached them to the side of the table, since the tablecloth wasn't wide enough for our table. We made "tire" stacks with chocolate donuts (funny enough, everyone LOVED the donuts, I guess people don't buy those, they were gone within minutes).
 We specifically picked a time so we wouldn't have to feed people lunch or dinner, but snacks, so we went with meatballs in BBQ sauce, hummus and pita chips, some spinach dip and veggies which could be dipped in the hummus or the spinach dip.

I made the cupcakes, chocolate with chocolate frosting, and pumpkin with cream cheese frosting. Who doesn't love a mini cupcake? You can't tell but the cupcake wrappers have Cars theme on them...boo for using chocolate and it covering them up. Lessoned learned.


 I made this for Colton. I just made a 13x9 in cake and then cut out shapes to make the number "1". I should have taken pictures, but forgot. I ended up being able to make this a two layer cake with just 1 pan. I tried to buy the number "1" cake pan, but that thing in GINORMOUS! This was a much better size. Especially since it was just for my son and he probably wasn't going to eat it anyway.


It was Christmas time for the party, so we used what was already up, and used some checkered streamers as garland for the staircase.


We also decided since Colton was born on Christmas that we would make him a Birthday Christmas Tree each year, where just his birthday presents would go. Here's his Cars Themed 1st birthday tree. I just used the streamers and then we bought a bunch of Cars, both big and small to put on the tree. You can see it, but the top of the tree is an orange cone.



I made a banner that says "Happy 1st Birthday Colton" bought the checkered flags and then used my Cricut to cut out letters.


 With the copious amounts of pictures I've taken of my son, I've managed to take pictures of him each month with the same doggy. We printed them out in 5 x 7's then put a white background and pasted that to the 12x12 scrapbooking paper. The letters were cut out with my Cricut, if you don't have one of those, I highly recommend!



We wanted to provide a little craft for the kids to do while they were there. So I made up personalized license plates for each of the kids. The month of the expiration date was the month that they were born in. The year was 2012 (duh).


 Here's my cute son. He didn't like the cake and didn't want to get his hands dirty. So serious Baby Fox!