7 Holiday Prep Tips

Hi Foxy Friends! Driving back from Arizona today, I think it's about a 6-7 hour car ride? I don't remember it being that long the last time, but I guess it was...when we got there last time we checked in and then went and ate dinner...anyway back to the post. It's another Monday and I'm linking up again with The Blended Blog for our Monday chats. Today's topic is Holiday Prep Tips.

| ONE | Sending Invites

Even though we invite only family, I like to send out snail mail invites. I usually wait for Tiny Prints or Shutterfly to give out free 10 cards, and get my invitations that way, so I'm only paying for shipping, which makes sending out invitations a low cost thing.

| TWO | Decorations

Always decorate the table a couple of days in advance. Usually my mom comes over to help me, since she always has a TON of decorations and likes doing that sort of thing. But we set the whole table up, from centerpieces to plates to napkins to place cards, that way we're not scrambling the day of trying to get the table done.

| THREE | Know Your Serve Ware

What I mean by this, you already know what food is being served, so have all of the serving platters out with little sticky notes of what food is going in what bowl or dish (in our case chaffing dish). That way if someone is helping you to put food out, you have minimal direction, as the dishes are already labeled with what you want in them. Cause we all know when food starts coming out of the kitchen, it's a mad dash to get things out and keep them hot!

| FOUR | Food Assignment

Typically in our family, the host family provides the main dish, in our case the meat, and everyone else provides the desserts, appetizers and side dishes. Before even sending out the invite, write a list out of who you want to bring what. Or a list of things you want to serve, that way people just pick from the list what they want to bring. People like being told what to bring, instead of  having to come up with something that will work for the dinner. If you want to give them a little wiggle room, assign them appetizer, or side dish, that way they have a category and can come up with something on their own, but you are still in control of what is coming to dinner.

| FIVE | Have Fun

Don't fret over the small things. If it's not done, it's not done, it's not going to ruin the holiday because rolls didn't show up. No one is going to remember that time you didn't have rolls with dinner. Have fun, and more importantly enjoy your guests instead of fretting around trying to do everything. Everyone always asks "how can I help" so let them and enjoy their company while you do, then you get to socialize while getting stuff done and your guests feel like they helped you out. Don't be the hero, it is family after all.

| Six | Food Timing

Don't forget about your timing. In our case, we need to try and get the temp of the meat closer to room temp than fridge temp. We typically will leave it out for 2 hours prior to cooking. Do the math ahead of time of when you want to eat, how long you need the meat to rest after coming out of the oven, and how long it's going to take to cook. That way morning of you know, at 10 I need to take the roast out of the fridge, at Noon I need to put the meat in the oven, etc.

| Seven | Party Timing

Have a loose plan of what you want to happen and when. My family typically runs 30 minutes late, so I sort of add that into my plans. We typically host Christmas, so we know we need to set aside some time for opening gifts. I like to have the kids open gifts as we are setting out dessert/eating it. I also know when I am trying to get dinner on the table, so I work towards that time goal.

In our case we also have to make time for Baby Fox's birthday celebration, a balloon drop is always fun for the kids.

So is a fun cake:

Related: How To Celebrate a Christmas Baby

Any cake ideas for this year? I had those three years planned out (literally, year one I already knew was I was going to do for the next two years)...now I am out of ideas...help!

Here are the other topics if you want to join us this month! Head on over to The Blended Blog to see what Holiday Tips others have.

Unicorn Birthday Party

Hello Foxy Friends! What? Two posts in a row? I know, who am I? This past weekend was Mini Fox's 5th birthday. I know! Where did the time go? I feel like just yesterday she was this small...

And now? How did that happen?

Anyway, birthday girl wanted a Unicorn birthday...since March...she kept talking about all the things she wanted, so we did it all! I love me a good theme. I usually do some sort of background on our wall where we typically serve food, but what do you do for a unicorn? I mean super heros is buildings and stuff, like I did here. I figured I would theme everything around flowers. I've always wanted to make paper flowers...so why not start learning right now?  This was the second one  I made, the first one was a complete disaster!

*Some of the links are affiliate links and I will  either receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you click on it or if you make a purchase from one of these links, I may also receive a commission on the sale of the product. Click here for my disclosure page.

I ended up making 5 of these, 3 big ones and 2 small ones...

The pink one fell off and I didn't retake the picture...oops.

Then I cricuted a horn, ears and cute eyes and I got this.

Then I bought these glitter banners, and added my own letters. You can't beat the price, I couldn't make that man triangles with glitter paper for that price.

I made a ton more flowers and added them to cover the tape that was holding up the banners. I like to use painters tape, which I know is blue, but it's fairly strong and can hold up your decorations without hurting the paint on your walls. So behind all of those flowers is a TON of blue tape.

I went to Party City and bought most of their unicorn decorations to decorate the tables and the ceiling.  For the food, I thought it would be fun to label, and I had bought the unicorns on a stick, so I put them in cyliner vases (bought at the Dollar Store), and then added some crinkle cut paper (also Dollar store), and added my own name on glitter paper, I stuck it to a bamboo skewer.

A friend made the cake, which turned out great. I bought these horn/ears/eyes from Amazon.

Mostly I decorated everything with the paper flowers. I did find some real flowers from Costco that were bright color daisys that worked so perfect for our theme, I had to buy them.

I printed some random unicorns to put on the window...behind. We had bought some bags for  the treat bag, and we ended up doing a pinata, so I put them out with a sticker sheet in each.

I think the pinata was a HUGE hit at the party! If you can get one, it makes doing the treat bag easier, as they just get the candy from the pinata, and the kids had a blast!

Let me tell you that thing was hard to break! Oh and a tip if you are doing a pinata at your birthday party...have extra candy on hand. We bought a bag from costco, and I also bought some suckers and ring pops to add in, plus some butterfly rings and bubbles, and it weighed way more than then recommended. I only put in 2/3 of the costco candy, but then after the pinat broke we dumped the rest of the candy from the Costco bag on the ground too, it was the perfect amount of candy. I think any less and some kids wouldn't have gotten much. So if you are doing a pinata, have extra candy to dump out. Obviously depending on how many kids, we had about 16 kids. And used probably 7.5 (ish) pounds of stuff.

Note: At Party City, it suggested we use 4 lbs of candy for our Pinata, I think ours weighed more like 5.5-6 pounds and was fine.

The last thing we had at the party was a balloon drop. You guys if you have never done one, you HAVE to do it. The kids love it and it's so cheap to do too!

Cheap thrill I'm telling ya.

So that is everything that I did for our Unicorn Party! Pretty simple decorations, nothing over the top, because this mama spent all of her time learning how to make flowers...all of which I made in 5 days...oops, I might have procrastinated a bit!

 

Linking up here

Red, White and Blue Candy Bar

Hi Foxy Friends! Last week for 4th of July I was tasked with bringing a Red, White and Blue candy bar. I took my job from my cousin seriously. I bought all the candy, but wanted a cute way to display it...I decided to head to the Dollar Store to see what I could find. I knew that I wanted some sort of cups that I could make into a flag shape, with the Red, White and Blue candy in them. So here's what you'll need:

*Some of the links are affiliate links and I will  either receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you click on it or if you make a purchase from one of these links, I may also receive a commission on the sale of the product. Click here for my disclosure page.

What  You'll Need:

Red Candy -

Swedish Fish
Red Vines 
Kit Kat (Picked out the red and white striped ones) 

other red candy that we did not use (too spicy for kids)
Cinnamon Bears
Hot Tamales

White Candy -

Hershey's Crunchers (this was a favorite, and I really only bought them because it was white)
Circus Animal Crackers (yep picked out all of the white ones)
White Fudge Pretzels
White Kit Kat
Yogurt Covered Raisins

Blue Candy -

Hershey Kisses
Nestle Crunch Bars
Kit Kat (Picked out the blue ones) and used the red and white striped ones for the Red

All three colors -

Patriotic M&M's  (didn't have time to find these, but wanted to get them)
Red White and Blue Snickers  (I separated the colors)

Containers (I found them at the Dollar Store) - I did use taller containers for the red vines, and put those towards the back, all the stripes were shorter circluar containers, and the stars were used because they ran out of the containers I wanted, but I think it worked out well.

Optional: A cheaper option would be to buy red plastic cups, blue plastic cups and white plastic cups from dollar store (so $3 for all of them)

Directions:

Step 1 - Wash all of the containers.

Step 2 - Arrange jars in flag shape

Step 3 - Separate candy and use red and white candy for the stripes, with Blue candy used as the "Stars"

I loved how it turned out, even if the little kids were too short to realize that it was in the shape of a flag. We all know they just want the candy. Enjoy making your Red White and Blue Candy Bar!

Linking up here

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!

 

Linking up with Ashley & Erika for...

Linking up here

Little Mermaid Birthday Party

Happy Tuesday Foxy Friends. I hope everyone had a good Monday. I'm still recovering from Mini Fox's birthday party last week. Literally I'm too lazy/tired to clean up the party stuff from last weekend...I really need to get on that...I will, this weekend, maybe. Anyway, I thought I would show you more details of her Little Mermaid party.

I tried to be better about taking pictures. I might have done only slightly better in the past...Mini Fox has been obsessed with all things Ariel for a while now, so when I asked her what she wanted her birthday theme to be it came as no surprise that she wanted an Ariel party. Although if you say Little Mermaid she always corrects you and says, NO it's Ariel.

We have a super big open space in our living room, typically I will create a huge background for it. I always start with a plastic table cloth from Party City and go from there, tutorial coming soon.

The net I got from Oriental Trading Company. It's pretty thin, so I didn't have to worry about the plates being uneven on them. The shells I borrowed from a neighbor, I think it really makes the whole table, something that you can get at Michael's or Hobby Lobby I would think.

My mom said that she wanted to make the cakes and cupcakes, one less thing on my plate, I'm all for it. I ended up buying the Ariel cake pictures, turns out it's pretty hard to find a mermaid cake, or anything that my novice skills could recreate, so I went the easy route. My mom definitely thanked me for that one. They also found these cute fishy cupcakes and ice cream cone mermaid tails, aren't they just the cutest?

For the drink I knew I wanted to do those circles in the background. I basically cut out the circles on my cricut and then sewed them together. Literally the easiest thing on the planet to do. If you want a quick video tutorial on that, comment below and I can put that together!

I also made those same circles to decorate Mini Fox's door when she came out of her room. She loved it, and they are currently still there on her door.

Full on bedhead right there

 The table I just did the easy stuff, Mermaid tablecloth and the normal table decorations you can find with any themed party you want to throw.

For the thank you's I had some left over sea horses that I didn't use for the background, so I stuck them on the all and I happen to have enough to spell out Thanks, perfect right?

I couldn't think of what I wanted to do for thank you's and I felt that the normal goody bag filled with stuff that mom's don't really want to deal with, so instead I decided to make some cake pops. Hey I wasn't making the cake so I might as well make something else right. I bought these tongs that had shapes on the end of it, that you put the cake pop mix into, that's how I got the star shape, They also had a shell and a heart shape, but the star looked the best.

The last thing I did, super last minute was put together a wreath. I could have used my normal wreath, but decided to make a new one so I could sell it when I was done, or put it on Mini Fox's bedroom door if she wanted it there. I bought the burlap and Mini Fox decided that she wanted pink and the teal color to go with it. I had bought the cupcake toppers thinking I was going to make cupcakes, but my mom ended up making them and she didn't need them, so I last minute stuck them into the wreath. I think it turned out pretty fantastic. Click here for my basic wreath tutorial, and click here for the color burlap and extra decorations. I make every single one of them the same, so apply those same concepts to this wreath as well.

All in all I think the birthday girl had a fantastic time and she said that it was the best birthday ever. Worth all of the hard work I put into it. 

Linking up here