Birthdays!

Yep, I’ve been MIA for the last month. And it was nice. We had 4 close family member birthdays, Easter, several dinner parties (1 that I hosted), teaching preschool for a week, and a birthday party. It’s been a bit hectic. My little princes had a birthday, and wanted to do a Barbie butterfly popstar party, with purple, pink, and sparkly for the colors. Plus, she’s been really wanting a wedding dress for her and her Barbies. So, I’ve had a few projects in the works.

This dress is still a work in progress, but you can see her Barbie had a pretty dress too. I’ll figure out what to do and show you later.

So I got the main ideas for these dresses online. Belle was here, Ken jacket was here, wedding dress with train was here, wedding veil here, and the ball gown here. Poor ballerina, with only 1 foot.

Barbie even has a bouquet she can hold. Don’t worry, Ken is barefoot. I think he came with flip flops that have since been lost?

To prep for the party, I used a Cricut, with a brand new blade, to cut out bunches of purple & pink butterflies, and yellow stars. The dang thing ruined half of them! Argh, I get so frustrated with those machines! I hung those all up with fishing line and sticky tack on the ceiling.

We made flower balloons to hang up, but used push pins to get those to stay in the ceiling.

I used streamers from the dollar store, and cut out some big stars and spray painted them with metallic paint for the other wall.

We bought dollar store fairy wings for all the girls, and the 2 boy cousins got SWAT helmets. Tricky planning with boys!

For party games, I printed a Barbie butterfly picture at Staples, and had them do an engineering print. I only did 18”x24”. Then we colored it.

I picked up some jewel stickers and some foam butterfly stickers while waiting for it to print at Staples, and they were blindfolded and had to stick a jewel on the wings.

We decorated these cardboard butterflies I got at Michaels, and some microphones. If there were more reading kids, we would’ve done some Karaoke.

My cute husband was the star. He painted all the kiddos faces when they came in. Butterflies and Star Wars (for the boys).

He also made the Barbie butterfly cake. Let’s pretend I have a nice pretty tray for it, mkay?

All in all, she had lots of fun! She got even more Barbies too. Maybe I’ll post more now? We’ll see….

Harry Potter Party

Way back at the beginning of the year, my oldest, Jingus, turned eleven.  He is a huge Harry Potter fan, so we had a Harry Potter party.

I mentioned that we were doing that a long time ago, but I never showed you the party.

(hanging my head in shame)

I hope that you’ll forgive me! 

This Harry Potter party was a lot of fun.  It was perfect for an eleven-year-old birthday party.  There were a few things I would have done differently, but whatevs.  It was Jingus’s party, so we did it his way. 

His party invitations were Hogwarts Acceptance Letters.

We ran through Platform 9 3/4 to get onto the Hogwarts Express.  This is just a cheap plastic tablecloth.  I would have sponge painted the bricks onto it, but Jingus wanted to do it this way.

First, the wands chose the wizards.  I posted a tutorial for the wands a few months ago.

Then the wizards were sorted into their Houses.  We just used a witch hat for The Sorting Hat.  I wrote down all the house names on strips of paper and put them into the bowl.  Each guest pulled a paper out of the bowl, and that was what house they were “sorted” into.

We played “How well do you know your Hogwarts Staff and Students.”  I found this printable somewhere on Pinterest.  Not gonna lie.  There was a lot of cheating happening with this game!  Everyone wanted to copy my boys' worksheets.  Dang.  My kids are geeks too!  They never really stood a chance…

Here’s “the trolley.”  Oh.  Didn’t get a picture of all the balloons in the front room.  We had to blow up a gagillion balloons.  Want to know how I did it?!

Monkey’s nebulizer!  Ha!  All those hospital visits last Winter weren’t good for nothing!  :)  Mkay.  Back to the trolley:

Look at all that deliciousness!  I made the chocolate frogs from this mold I bought off of Amazon:

CK Products Frog Assortment Chocolate Mold

The frogs are just melted chocolate chips.

We just named some of these treats after Harry Potter treats.  They’re Jingus’ favorite snacks.

We couldn’t forget the Butter Beer!  These are just IBC cream sodas with labels I found off Pinterest.  I don’t remember where, but I’ve got all of these things pinned on my Birthday Pinboard.

All those party boys cleared us out of EVERYTHING!!

Especially this one.  He loves to eat sweets!

After all of the games and presents, the boys headed downstairs to watch Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone.

It was a really fun party.  At one point, I was thinking, “My goodness!  All this time and money put into the party!  It would have been so much easier to just buy him more presents!” 

But, then, all his friends came over. 

They raised a ruckus. 

They got high off of sugar. 

They had so much fun. 

The presents they gave him were more special because, “That one is from…I love this one from...  I wish he didn’t move or that we could play more often…” 

And then I realized it was so worth it.  He had a fun day with his friends, and they all had fun at the party.  It made this Momma’s heart happy to see her boys having such a great time!  It was definitely worth all the effort, and he’ll always have the memory. 

That lasts a lot longer than a present!

Birthday Celebrations Cont…

Happy Birthday to me, Happy Birthday to me, Happy birthday to me!
Hee hee, I’m funny. Okay, so my hubby and I celebrated my birthday last week because we are actually in the process of moving. Right now. As you’re reading this. Wish me luck. Good thing for pre-scheduled posts, eh? Anyway, I was driving last week, and listening to my favorite radio station, while picking up an awesome free Craigslist item (can’t wait to start that bad boy!) and they were broadcasting at the City Creek Center in Salt Lake, that was opening that day. As I listened, I got the idea that it’d be fun to go and see it. So, we hopped on the FrontRunner train and rode to Salt Lake, then got on Trax (Utah’s public train/bus systems), and didn’t have to worry anything about parking! I took a bunch of pictures with my phone, so enjoy! (Disclaimer: I didn’t intentionally take pictures of random strangers. If you’re in the pictures, well, what are the chances!)
First store we stopped at was a tea store, since my hubby loves his herbal teas and mate. Gag. But, this tea was pretty cool.

See that little ball on the plate? You drop that in the water, and it turns into this huge decorative flower thing. It’s hard to tell, but it’s in the jar right by it.
Anyway, the City Creek Center (go here to see their website and everything they’ve got!) is 2 city blocks, that has a sky bridge to connect over Main Street in SLC, and has the city creek running through the middle of it. It’s an open air mall type place, and is 2 levels on both blocks. It’s BIG.

It’s got little ponds, and fish swimming around all through it.

See the creek?

It’s got a nice food court, and this fun area for kids play at. Funny thing, there’s a Disney store, but you have to wait in line to even go inside! It’s like a 20 minute wait! I almost thought I was in Disneyland!!!

A waterfall…

Fountains and splash pads to play in…While we were there, there was musicians, bands, and singers at different locations. Very cool.

It’s got a lot of very high-end shops, but there are some there for us commoners as well. I took this picture just to send to my brother.

Pretty view of the temple across the street.

Wait, what’s that across the way?

Wait for it…

Oh baby!

The perfect place to get rid of the mean reds! (sidenote: the cute skinny jeans are from my awesome sister-in-law, the gray purse is from my other amazing sister-in-law, and the sweater is a steal from Miya Designs. If you live in Northern Utah, you should totally go there!)

And finally, the drool-tastic store of them all! We spent the longest in the store, and I snapped tons of pictures of things we loved, and price tags that were insane! Even more exciting?! There’s an Anthropolgie coming!!!
So, if you’re in Salt Lake, you NEED to go see this place. It was so fun! After, we walked down to 4th South and ate dinner at the Star of India. De-li-cious! We’ve been there before, but it has yet to disappoint. If you love Indian food, you must eat there. If you don’t love Indian food, you need to try it!!!!! We had Aloo Chat as an appetizer, garlic Nan bread on the side, Lamb Shahi Coconut Korma, and Chicken Tikka Saagwala. Oh baby, loved it. Then we walked back, rode the Trax & FrontRunner, and got home to girls in bed! (thanks Mom!!)
By the way, just because I feel like it, it’s my birthday, so I’m giving somebody a present! I have a $15 gift card for Great Harvest Bread Co. that I’ll mail to a random comment on this post (you should be able to use it at any Great Harvest). Answer these questions (1 comment total):
What fun adventures have you been on lately? Do you think the Crafting Cousins should have a Facebook page? What about Twitter? I’ll be honest, I’m scared and intimidated by Twitter. What is your favorite birthday traditions?
We'll end this when I have internet again, so Saturday night? 8:00 PM.
Thanks for reading!
By the way, I'm nowhere near cool enough for anyone I mentioned in the above to know who I am, much less pay me for it. I just love their stuff!

You say it’s your Birthday! It’s my Birthday too!

This munchkin was actually due on my birthday!

It’s hard to believe this little princess is now 4!

We celebrated with a Minnie Mouse Princess party. She had lots of fun! I made her the skirt with strips of tulle tied onto an elastic. I actually sewed a pink skirt inside so the tulle wouldn’t bug her, and it’d be more modest. She said it still hurt her, so I need to figure out the waist. The shirt I made with fabric paint.

I mixed black & sparkly silver to get the color.

I just used a plain white t-shirt from Walmart. I cut a circle out on my mom’s Cricut to get my biggest stencil.

Don’t worry, I wised up and found a stencil brush!

I used a circle stencil for the smaller ears.

And then just melted the edges of some ribbon and sewed it on for the bow!
Here’s the Happy Birthday banner!

I made tissue pom-poms with Martha’s directions here. My mom bought the Minnie Happy Birthday banner at Zurchers. I sewed some fabric triangles onto wide ric rac from Pick Your Plum for the banner at the top.

I hung them all from a Command Hook.

Don’t mind me paranoid. She’s my baby, so I blocked out her name. But see how cute the font is?

I used my mom’s Cricut to make the rosettes. I used the Ribbons & Rosettes cartridge. I figured out a few things to make these a lot easier, so here’s a few tips if anyone ever uses that cartridge.
It has different designs, but basically when you cut it out, you’ll have 5-6 pieces like this. Easiest way is hot glue, in my opinion. Put some on the little tab they cut for you.
Do all your strips (it’s fun to do mix & match colors!)

I didn’t get more pictures, but at this time, you’ll fold them fan/accordion style on the lines you can see. It suggests scoring it, but I didn’t. Then, make sure you have 2 center ready to go. One for the front and one for the back. You’ll hot glue the ends together, and then make the circle form the rosette shape, and hot glue the centers to the front and back. It worked really well for me! Anyway, more party pictures!

Originally, Thing 1 told me she wanted a Cinderella party, so I ordered that doll pan on Amazon. Then she changed her mind to the Minnie Mouse, so I threw in Princess to make it work. The reason there are 2 cakes is the first one got messed up coming out of the pan, so I had to make a second one! I ended up frosting both since I had frosting, and just made one for her to blow the candles out of. My mom bought the napkins, cups, plates, and mouse ears at Zurchers.

We hot glued bows on some of them for Minnie Mouse ears.



These were so cute! I saw the idea on Pinterest, but she didn’t give directions on how to make the ears stick, and I did melted chocolate chips, and after A LOT of trial and error, I finally got it to work. If you wanted to do it, use almond bark or candy coating or even chocolate frosting that hardens quick.



Here’s the little monsters waiting for friends to come! Can you tell who’s birthday it is, because they both look pretty excited!
We invited friends with these invitations:

I sewed 3 circles together, and sewed a 1/2 circle on for a pocket with the information in there!

When the friends got there, they all got ears. We played a few games.

This was a pin-the-bow on Minnie game mom got from Zurchers. It looks like this in the package.

A matching game

and a scavenger hunt:

The scavenger game was pretty creative. There were 32 different circles, and the kids had to find the 4 on their card. I had hid them around the room, so that could be something you change up and make your own for your theme.
We had a piñata that I made with a diaper box.

I taped it too well. The kids couldn’t break it! But I covered it with tissue paper and glue:

Then did one side with fringe,
 
and one with ruffly circles.

I stuffed it with favor bags already put together.

These bags:

We hung it out on the swing set and let the kids go at it.


Then we went inside and I had them watch an episode of Mickey Mouse Clubhouse while I got the cake and ice cream ready. They got up and did the hot dog dance after!

Then the birthday girl blew out the candles

while everyone sang Happy Birthday. They ate cake & cookies,

and then we opened presents. They had lots of fun!

Happy Birthday sweetie!
Linking to Today's Creative Blog, Tip Junkie, Skip to My Lou, CSI Project