3 Tips How To Throw A Surprise Party

Hi Foxy Friends! Over the weekend we actually pulled it off and threw a surprise party for my aunt who was turning who was turning 60! I can't believe we did it, seriously, she has her house on serious lock down! Has the Ring doorbell and everything, so there was no way she was leaving the house for any amount of time for us to get the house ready. So without anyone to host the party nearby...we did the next best thing...snuck in and decorated her whole house WHILE she was getting ready. That's right folks, we snuck into her house while she was getting ready to go out (what she thought was to a neighbors house for dinner) and we decorated.

So we did have one advantage, the way her house is laid out, her house is in the back bedroom in the way back of the house, and she usually keeps the TV on really loud so she can listen to the news while she is getting ready. So we had that going for us. As soon as she went back to take a shower my uncle texted us and we were there within seconds, unloading our car. The main decoration was all of these flowers. Since we knew we only had about 30 minutes to get everything set up.

So all that being said here are some tips on how to throw a surprise party.

| TIP 1 |

Don't stress too much about the surprise part. It's nice if it happens the way everyone envisions, with the guest of honor walking in on a dozen family and friends yelling surprise! But you know what? Even if there is just the people setting up yelling surprise it's still a surprise to the person coming.

Like I said, my aunt has her house on lock down, so we snuck in and decorated while she was getting ready. We got all of the flowers out, and the food even came 30 minutes early, and we had all the food out too, so it was even more of a surprise to have a huge buffet full of food set up.

I ended up making a pallet sign for her, and decided Saturday morning to have everyone sign the back. It ended up super cute.

| TIP 2 |

If your guest of honor is home when you are there, less is more. We went big with the flowers, but if you have more time, these 5 steps on how to throw the best party are helpful. I would have loved to go big with a ton of decorations but I knew our limitations and was aware of it.

| TIP 3 |

Enjoy the process, go with the flow, in the end you're doing something super nice for the person you love and no matter if they find out, like my sister did when I tried to throw her a 40th surprise party and she was going to back out of going to the "dinner" I had planned, and ended up telling her. It was still a surprise at the moment and she was thankful in the end I made her go.

Now go out and plan the perfect surprise party! It will be worth it!

 

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How To Celebrate A Christmas Baby

Hello Foxy Friends! Back when I was pregnant with Baby Fox, I never in a million years would have thought he would be born in December, let only Christmas Morning! Seriously, my due date was in January, therefore I am having a January baby right? Wrong. When Baby Fox was born on Christmas day we knew we wanted to make it extra special for him. Funny enough Mr's best friend was also born on Christmas, and he said he always, always felt jipped. I knew I definitely didn't want that, so we created some traditions just for Baby Fox.

ONE:

We have a Birthday Tree. Yep it's a Christmas Tree that we decorate with birthday things, streamers and whatever theme Baby Fox wants that year. This year was Power Ranger Dino Charge (let me tell you how hard that was to find!)

2015 was Batman

2014 was Power Ranger Super Mega Force (apparently there's a difference)

2013 was Dinosaurs

2012 - I guess I forgot to take a picture of it that year...but here is it in the background, for the life of me I can't remember what the theme was....I think it was just birthday stuff, no real them other than finding fun birthday stuff at Party City.

 

2011 - The first year we did it was Cars theme, why? Because he was only 1 and he really liked toy cars, so why not.

 

 

Two

 

We decorate the kids door and leave it up for however long they want, who cares that it's not Christmas decorations. We like to decorate the door so when they wake up it's on their door ready to go.

 

2015

 

 

 

 

2014

 

 

2013 - I think the first year we did it, previously he was still in a crib and we didn't think it was as fun.

 

Three

 

Stop Christmas celebrating and do a birthday cake. Yes there are a ton of other desserts out there, but stop everything and sing Happy Birthday, have a special cake just for them.

 

This is last year to go with the Batman theme of course.

Rainbow Cake

Four

 

We do a half birthdays. Every June/July we host a half birthday party, because honestly who wants to take time out of their precious, limited Saturdays or Sundays before Christmas to go to a kid birthday party. Plus what would they do, too cold to go swimming. Since we have a pool, we take advantage of the free entertainment. 

 

Same cake as Christmas time inside.

 

So those are 4 tips on creating a special day or two for your Christmas Baby. Plus I think Baby Fox likes that he gets to celebrate his birthday twice a year.

 

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How to Make A Cityscape Backdrop on the Cheap

I did our Spiderman party recap last month, but never told you how I made the citiscape. Only a month later but better later then never right?

I knew I could make one for way cheaper than the one I found on Oriental Trading Company. I came up with the idea and I think it came out even better than I even imagined!

What You'll Need:

Plastic Table Cloth from Party City (I started with the 99 cent store one and they are too thin)
Butcher Paper
Yellow Scrapbook Paper
Pencil
Ruler
Scissors
Painters Tape
Spray Adhesive
Rectangle cutting device (I used a Cricut)
Glue Stick
Various Accessories to decorate it with

Directions:

Step 1: 

I laid out the butcher paper to the length of the tablecloth, plus added a few more inches to the end just in case. Then I drew the cityscape onto the butcher paper with a pencil using a ruler. I used this cityscape as my sort of template for my cityscape. But really it could look like anything.

Step 2:

Cut out the cityscape, try not to lean too much on the paper. The butcher paper is fairly thin.

In the end it should end up looking like this:

Step 3:

Lay out the tableloth. I ended up putting on the tile and taping it down so it would stay in place. I use the same technique when I quilt.

Step 4:

Lay the cityscape background onto the tablecloth. At first I started off just double side taping it down, but remembered that I had some spray adhesive and thought I would give that a whirl. It worked like a charm, so I would definitely use that. So much faster, spray a bit and you're done, it took me less than 5 minutes.

Step 5:

I made a bunch of rectangle squares on my Cricut, that thing is awesome. I highly recommend getting one if you don't have one. I've also heard that the Silhouette is good too.

Step 6:

Lay the rectangles randomly on the buildings. I used a glue stick and was super random about it, I didn't follow a pattern, so I tried not to look at where the other rectangles were, just the one I was placing. Knowing me I probably would have tried to follow a pattern. I thought the random ones would look better.

I ended up using a folded towel halfway through, man my knees were killing without it!

Step 7:

Hang on wall and decorate.

I almost always use painters tape when trying to hang stuff. I usually use the Green Frog  one...but since green was not going to match my cityscape I had to use the blue. Which isn't as strong, so I ended up having to do several layers/rows of it to get it to stick. Then I used this pack of decorations to decorate along with making some "Pow", "Ka Pow", "Boom" signs and hung those up. Those were also done using my Cricut, but could easily been done by hand.

Bonus Step:

I of course made the spiderwebs and the spiders using the Circut. For the wider spider webs and the spiderweb that Spidy is throwing out, I did it in phases and ended up taping it all together. It was long and tedious but worth it in the end I think. The spiderman came from the pack above, it just worked out that it looks like he's shooting a web. That was not planned, just sheer luck. I was just going to do a silhouette of Spiderman had that not worked out.

and that's how I made the cityscape. I do have to admit it's so hard to take it down and now a month later it's still hanging in my living room. I don't think it's going to come down easy. Usually I'm able to sell all of my party stuff that I made, but this is one thing that I don't think will work after it comes down. So it stays up, probably until Mini Fox's birthday in September. haha.

If you have any questions just shoot me an email, I love talking party!

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Spiderman Party (Part 1)

I know you've held your breathe all day yesterday waiting for more pictures of our Spiderman Party, wait no longer here it is!

I actually ended up buying a lot of the party decorations. When it comes to spiderman, it's hard to craft the actual guy, so you kinda have to buy everything. These are the party decorations I started with.

I know I wanted a background for the back of the food table, and saw this and wanted to do something like this, but didn't want to pay $36 for it.

I thought I could do something like that...and I think it came out even better than just ubying that cityscape above. Tutorial coming next week! It's so pretty and I spent so much time on it, it's hard to take it down...so it's staying on the wall for now :)

Of course I forgot to take pictures of everything, why do I always do that? I should have a list of things to take pictures of, but mostly I finish decorating minutes before guest arrive and I'm going around taking pictures of things while greeting people, so it gets crazy.

The cake I was pretty proud of actually, until it started falling apart that is, haha. Oh well, live and learn. And I'm going to have a semi tutorial in the coming weeks for that too! Plus I'll let you guys know what NOT to do, hehe.

The dessert table, Baby Fox wanted a spiderman cake and cupcakes and since I knew we were going to be having a lot of people (about 50), we were going to need a lot of dessert. So I had my Mom make Vanessa's S'mores bars, everyone raved about them!

The cake took on a life of it's own...but you get the drift, minus spiderman crying...oops!

I didn't read the directions fully and it needs 24 hours for it to set, I only let it set for 6 hours...and then couldn't get the other eye done, which is why it looks pretty awful...oops. But now I know for next time and for telling you guys how to make this cake!

I actually bought the cupcake wrappers and the toppers at William Sonoma when Baby Fox was just 5 months old, I knew it would come in handy one day! Mostly it was on mega clearance, originally $12.99 marked down to $3.99, have to buy it at that price right?

Usually I try to find unique things to put in the goodie bags, but this time I bought the good bag kit and called it a day.

I hung some of the decorations in the umbrella, I didn't end up using all of them, because we just ran out of time to hang things, but if I had more time I would have hung more of them.

Baby Fox has this mask already, so I attached it to the drink basket. It actually hung facing a little down, so I broke a bamoo skewer in half, put both of those behind the mask right near the mouth to make the make stick out.

We also had a drink table inside, both had the same things in it.

I also made a welcome sign with a spider web and used that super hero tape on our front door, but forgot to take pictures. Again, need to write down the pictures I need to take, so I'm not rushing to get the pictures.

All in all, I think Baby Fox had a great birthday party and he'll never forget it, mostly because I think that poster is going to be hanging in our living room till the end of time :)

Come back next week for the tutorial on how I made the sign!

Linking up with Tuesday Talk  and Wake Up Wednesday, The Lady Collective and Mommy Moments