LDS Baptism Invitation

As I said in my previous post, my oldest daughter, Kaylee, just turned 8!  This is a big birthday in our family.  In our faith (The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints or Mormon) when our children turn eight years old they are baptized.  You can read about LDS baptism here if you would like.  It is such a special event no matter how old you are when you are baptized!  (I was 22.  Maybe that will be a post for another day!)  We really wanted to make Kaylee's baptism special & a day that she will cherish & remember forever.  I decided that I wanted to send out invitations to her baptism.  At first I thought I would just do a digital version that I could email out.  But I am still a little old fashioned I guess & I like sending & receiving cards & thank you notes in the mail, regardless of the high cost of postage these days!  So I still made one in my digital program but then had them printed up at Costco with their new signature greeting card option.  I was pleasantly surprised with how great the quality was & I loved how they turned out:

We had taken Kaylee to the temple one afternoon to take some pictures to use for her invitations & I'm so glad we did.  I'm no professional photographer, but I think the picture still turned out nice.  Then she picked aqua as an accent color for her baptism.  Oh yes, we of course needed an accent color for her baptism!  I made the invitation very simple & then on the back I typed up the address for the church, the address for our house where the dinner would be after the baptism & I also added the RSVP info.  I love those digital doily stamps too & they kind of became a theme for her baptism dinner.  I'll have to post pics of that too.

Movie Night Birthday Party

We've decided that we aren't going to do big birthday parties for our girls every year.  There's just no way we can afford it, plus they are a lot of work for this busy mom!  But, of course, we love to celebrate birthdays!  And Kaylee really wanted to do a little something with her friends this year for her birthday.  So we decided to do a movie night birthday party!  I figured that was easy enough-play a movie, provide some treats, birthday fun!  Well, if you have followed my blog for a while now you know that I can get carried away.  There must be some kind of support group for this kind of problem!  {smile}  I just can't help myself!

The week before the movie night I started looking around on Pinterest & came across all sorts of cute, simple ideas for our party.  And, hence, got a little carried away...

I made a party invitation in the digital design program I always use which is My Digital Studio from Stampin' Up!  I love how it turned out & I just printed them out in 5"x7" size at Costco:

Then I used my Silhouette machine to print & cut out some "Admit One" tickets.  We wrote each girls' name on the ticket & simply stapled it to the invitation & then dropped them off to our friends' houses:

I made a movie poster & clipped it on our easel at the entrance to our "movie theater."  My daughter had picked Tangled to watch that night so I printed out a picture of the movie cover off the Internet & glued it on there:

I attempted to make a "theater" feeling in our family room by draping our TV cabinet in red plastic tablecloths:

So you could see through the plastic tablecloths a little, but it was a really cheap idea so I wasn't going to be too picky about it!

For our movie night treats we had a concession stand, of course:

Every girl received 3 blue tickets when they arrived at the party so that they could buy some treats at the concession stand.  Each item cost 1 ticket.  I made a "concession stand" poster to show some of the goodies they could "buy" & also to be a decoration:

We had popcorn:

 (I found the little cardboard popcorn boxes at Target.)

We had candy:

 (I saw this idea on Pinterest of putting the movie candy in these little containers.  I just printed out some decorative circles, punched them out & then wrote the names of the candy on them to attach on the lids.  My husband thought I was crazy for doing this because he said most of our party guests can't read yet anyway, but I thought it was such a cute idea!  And I like how I could make the perfect kid-sized portions for our movie night.)

We also had soda:

 (Caffeine free, of course!  And I love those little cans!)

I covered an empty baby formula can with some scrapbook paper & added a little "tickets" label.  Then I cut a slot into the lid so that the girls could put their tickets into the can when they "bought" something at the concession stand:

I started thinking that the likelihood of 10 little girls sitting through the entire Tangled movie wasn't good.  I decided to have at least one game ready to play to keep them entertained.  I found a great "Pin the Frying Pan on Flynn Rider" game online.  She provides a printable frying pan where all you have to do is print & cut it out, but then you have to draw your own "wanted" poster.  Luckily one of my husband's hidden talents is that he can draw really well!

So he drew the poster for our game:

The birthday girl got to go first:

And little sister, Aidynn, went last.  But you can see the frying pans in this photo:

I had also decided to bake some cupcakes so that we would have something we could stick a candle into so we could sing happy birthday to Kaylee.  I decided on these delicious hostess imitation cupcakes:

They fit with our concession stand theme, plus these are seriously some of our all-time favorite cupcakes!  And they're really easy to make too!

I also got the idea online to print out a few Tangled coloring pages to give the girls as their thank you for coming goody along with a set of inexpensive watercolors (since Rapunzel loves to paint, ya know):

I am so happy with how everything turned out.  And really, honestly, it came together quickly & was fairly inexpensive & best of all the girls had a blast!  Maybe we'll just do movie night every year for birthdays!

Princess/Arts & Crafts Birthday Party

I know, where have I been? Well, I had been planning & preparing for a fabulous princess/arts & crafts party! My first-born turned 5 yesterday & we celebrated with a birthday party for her last Saturday. This was the first year that she really wanted to have a party with some of her friends. And what better way to celebrate than to combine two of her favorite things-princesses & arts & crafts! What I loved about this party was that it was really easy to put together & a lot of the stuff we already had at home.

{Beware-this post is a long one!}

To start I made the invitations through Shutterfly. I had an awesome coupon code for 10 FREE cards & I needed 9 invitations so it worked out perfectly!

And they even had this darling princess crown design:

(Don't mind the smudges, I just blurred out our address & phone number!)

We were hoping for nice weather because we wanted to do the party in the backyard & it couldn't have been a more beautiful day-warm, but not too hot!

Here is how we set it up:

We used some paper from our Ikea easel & painted a birthday banner:

I just covered the ugly folding tables with some cheap plastic {pink!} tablecloths. I only wish I had something I could have covered the ugly folding chairs with, but oh well! I had bought a large generic princess coloring book (11" x 14") months ago & thought this was the perfect time to use some of those coloring pages. We put one at each seat to serve as a placemat, plus the girls could color on it while we were waiting for all of our guests to arrive. We did put a little piece of masking tape on the back of each corner to hold them in place on the tablecloth. Sometimes we get a little breeze in the afternoons. We also put some crayons in paper cups for them to use on their placemats:

A close-up of one of the spots:

We got some clothesline rope & used our staple gun to attach it to different areas of the fence & put a bunch of clothespins on it so that the girls could hang their finished paintings up to dry:

It also made for some really cute decorations when they started hanging them up there:

{Painting was, by far, the favorite activity for all of the girls & I love seeing their creativity in each painting!}

I also made each party guest an apron. This was the first craft we did. The girls colored on the apron using fabric markers (which I bought using my coupons for JoAnn's which saved $$). The fabric markers were great because they were easy for the girls to use & they dried really fast. We hung them up on some clothesline too until we were ready to use them:

I bought a pack of these canvas aprons at my local teacher supply store which was much cheaper than buying them individually. Then I used my {awesome} Silhouette machine to cut out the crowns & the names in some heat transfer vinyl which I then ironed onto the aprons. So easy & they looked really cute:

The next craft the girls did was to decorate a princess hat. I used a princess hat we already had in our dress-up bin as an example & made the princess hats out of felt, interfacing, ric rac, tulle & some elastic for the strap:

Then the girls used foam shapes & rhinestones to decorate them how they wanted. The foam shapes were adhesive & stuck really well, but we did have to use a little glue to attach the rhinestones. Luckily we had plenty of adult supervisors to help with that & it wasn't as messy as I had feared!

The next craft they did was to make some beaded necklaces. Sadly, I didn't get any pictures of them doing that!

Here is the birthday girl in her decorated princess hat & apron:

{She just had so much fun!}

We also set up our easel with some sheets of paper & paint so that the girls could paint pictures whenever they wanted:

Like I said, that was probably their favorite activity! And when the paintings were dry, we rolled them up & put them in their goody baskets for them to take home.

Here are the goody baskets:

I found these cute baskets at Target in the $1 bin a while back & I knew they would be perfect to act as little artist bins for the girls to take all of their goodies home in. I was going to use my Silhouette to cut some princess crowns out of chalkboard vinyl (which is really reasonably priced through Expressions Vinyl), but then I found these already made at Michaels for super cheap! I just punched holes in them, tied them onto the baskets with some white yarn & then wrote each girl's name on it with my chalkboard markers:

My first thought for some party decorations was to do some kind of cute paper lanterns, but they are a little pricy! Much more than I had thought they would be! So I have been seeing these tissue paper pom-poms all over the internet lately & they seemed easy enough:

My mom & I made them & they really didn't take much time at all! Plus with the colored tissue paper they looked so great! We used white yarn to hang them everywhere!

We hung on the lights outside, off of the shade cover, off of the ceiling fan in the kitchen over the dessert table, on the umbrella outside:

On the big tree:

They looked so nice!

My daughter wanted a pinata as well, so we found a princess crown pinata at Target that we hung from the tree:

We also had a little "guess how many jellybeans in the jar" game. The chalkboard crown & the small plastic paint jar also came from Michaels:

I just stamped a crown, put some bling on it & punched it out with my circle punch to put on the top of the lid of the jar. I also stamped a crown on the notecards for each girl to use to write down how many jellybeans they thought were in the jar.

Here's a close-up:

{There were 712 jellybeans in that jar! Yep, my hubby counted every single one!}

I'm really bummed that I forgot to get a photo of the whole dessert table all together, but at least I got some photos of the desserts. I made an artist's palette cake:

Some princess crown sugar cookies:

And some princess crown {pink} chocolate lollipops:

I also used my Silhouette to make a little subway art for the dessert table. I wrote words that describe my daughter, nicknames, things she loves, etc. & cut it out in some bright pink vinyl. I already had the flat canvas so I stuck it on that. Then I covered it with a couple of layers of Mod Podge. The canvas was bigger than I had thought it was so I added a pink bow at the top to fill up some of the extra white space.

I really like how it turned out:

And now that the party is over, we can put it up in my daughter's room!

Of course, I had to make a little birthday shirt for the birthday girl too:

I love those $5 t-shirts from Target (sometimes they go on sale too) & then I used my Silhouette once again to cut out the crown & the little heart from some heat transfer vinyl & just ironed them onto the shirt. Sorry for the glare from my flash, but the silver heat transfer looks awesome in person!

The birthday girl all dolled up for her party:

{Oh how we love her!}

And she loved her pretty pettiskirt that I bought her from Fairy Flowers Boutique:

Their stuff is very reasonably priced, super cute & ships really fast!

Whew! Typing up this post may have made me as tired as I was after the actual party! But it was all worth it!

Beautiful Bridal Shower

So remember the bridal shower invite that I showed you a while back? This one:

Well the bridal shower was last Saturday. My sister-in-law, Cheryl, planned, organized & orchestrated the entire party (her nickname is "The Party Planner") & it turned out really, really nice. My sister-in-law, Beth, & I helped out too. It was a lot of work, but definitely worth it. As a side note, I've known my niece, Alisha, who this shower was for, since I was 16 years old & she was only 6. So I got a little emotional with this one {tear}. I have so loved watching her grow up into the beautiful woman she's become. And I can't believe she's getting married! I keep saying, how did she grow up when I haven't gotten any older? ;)

So anyway, I wanted to share some photos with you of the shower & some of the things we made for it. These are the thank you cards that I made for her that match the invite:

And here's a guest book that I made for people to write a little message to the bride & then we recorded who gave her what in the back. I have to say, I LOVE how the cake turned out! Don't you love it when you have a vision in your mind & it turns out even better than you though?

Here's the awesome dessert table. My SIL wanted an elegant dessert table & it definitely was! And filled with all sorts of yummy stuff too-cupcakes, cookies, chocolate covered pretzels & lots of candies!

I had seen cupcake holders like these numerous times online & I thought it would be a perfect way to display the cupcakes at the shower. It was so easy to make too! I went to my local packing supply store & bought 3 square boxes in different sizes so that would make it look like a 3-tier cake. Then I covered the boxes with some pretty wedding wrapping paper. Then I wrapped some ribbon around it & topped it with some fresh hydrangeas on top. I was going to put the ribbon bands around the bottom of each layer, but with the cupcakes there it wasn't going to show. I thought it looked beautiful! Way better than I imagined! And it's the perfect way to display cupcakes. Yes, I got to practice my cake decorating skills again too! I made half chocolate & half vanilla cupcakes in silver foil liners, topped each one with a swirl of bright white buttercream & then added a small lavender fondant flower on top. They looked pretty & tasted yummy too!

My SIL, Beth, made these adorable heart-shaped butter cookies with her cookie press. I have to say, these cookies are so good they are totally addicting! But look how pretty they are & the way she displayed them was so cute!

My SIL, Cheryl, wanted to have some takeout boxes that people could fill with candy from the dessert table & take home with them as their party favor. So we decorated a bunch of these cute takeout boxes to match the invites. Another reason I love my Big Shot!

And here's a photo of the brunch table just because it looked so awesome too! And everything was delicious!

And here she is, my sweet niece Alisha! Soon to be Mrs. McLeod!

*Oh and don't you love that vinyl sign too? My friend Anya makes them. You can customize them any way you want. They are wonderful gifts! Check out all of her vinyl creations at Stuck Anya-Vinyl Lettering & More.