A Very Hungry Birthday!

Saturday was my son's second birthday party and he had a blast!  I must admit throwing a party while 36 weeks pregnant wore me right out!  Even though we just invited family, my husband and I have very large families, so there were quite a bit of people there.  We pretty much DIY'd everything and it all turned out great!

For the food we ate the same things the caterpillar did in the book, sausages (lil' smokies), a leaf (spinach salad), strawberries, watermelon, apples, swiss cheese, salami, and pickles.  Sounds kind of like a weird combo, but it was really good.  We had lemon water also.

I used Photoshop to make up food cards.

My husband and I tag teamed the cake.  He is the artistic one, so he did all the sculpting and the fondant.  One of his co-workers made the fondant for another cake and gave us her extra, super nice!  I made home made funfetti cupcakes using this recipe.  SO GOOD.

I used my Grandma's home made butter cream frosting recipe for the icing, I think it turned out cute!

 A friend had given me a caterpillar cupcake stand, he was fun!

A few months back at Target they were clearancing out Very Hungry Caterpillar plates, napkins, and cups, I think they were like $.50-$.75 per pack, score!

I made a fun banner using my Silhouette.

 We made a balloon caterpillar, all the kids got a kick out of it!

 We made fringey streamers for decor, cheap and cute! I also used this fun washi tape to hang them.

As the kids arrived we had them color a large caterpillar mural.  My husband printed it off at work, and we used washable crayons of course!  Here is the before.....

 And the after....

We had everyone make caterpillar bookmarks.  I got the idea from this cute blog.

I was trying to think of 2 year old friendly games to play and came up with this "Feed The Very Hungry Caterpillar" game.  We bought a giant poster board and used our projector to draw the images onto it.  We colored it in with markers.  I used some of our play food that he ate in the book to "feed him".  My son LOVED it, and so did the other kids.

For the favors I was out of ideas, when I saw this cute idea on Pinterest for Butterfly snack packs. (My Pinterest link doesn't have the original source, sorry!)  My son's favorite treat is Marshmallows, I thought the fruit ones would be nice and colorful and had forgot how yummy they are!  I also did Goldfish crackers for the younger kids.  I paired them up with some Very Hungry Caterpillar stickers that were also on clearance at Target.

Though I was absolutely exhausted by the end, it was worth it.  My cute boy has been saying "Happy Birthday Party" ever since!

Easy cupcake flowers...TUTORIAL

Happy Valentine's Day! I hope everyone gets to spend lots of time with loved ones. I woke up this morning to gobs of CHOCOLATE, and a gift card to a nail salon...loving cute, pedicured toes for SUMMER. What a WONDERFUL husband I have!!!

I wanted to share this great idea, my mom shared with me, for putting flowers on cupcakes.

You start with mini marshmallows and a pair of scissors. (Please wash your scissors BEFORE and AFTER) Cut your marshmallows in half~ corner to corner.



Next,gently push the sticky end of the marshmallow onto some pretty, colored sugar.



This is how the marshies look, when covered with the sugar.



Arrange them in a "flower" pattern on a frosted cupcake...



and, lastly, add a gumdrop to the center.




This was super easy, and we decorated 30+ cupcakes in less than an hour.



What do you think? Will you give it a try?

50 Golden Years

Thursday marks my parents 50th wedding anniversary! 50 golden years is a big deal, so a few weeks ago we through them a small party of family and a few friends to celebrate. We had to do it before school started so everyone could attend. I think it turned out well. I started the planning process at the beginning of the year and wasn't feeling super creative. Thankfully there are plenty of creative people out there sharing the ideas on the world wide web. The "theme" was gold, since it was a golden anniversary. The "50" photo collage was Martha's idea, that woman is amazing. I decided to do a mix of color and b/w photos, mainly because I was lazy and didn't want to change them.

My niece made this cute arraignment from pie tins. Isn't it so cute!! You can find the full tutorial here.

I saw this idea last year on Ohdeedoh and bookmarked it, I knew I would want to use it and this was the perfect occasion. Instead of a guestbook, we had everyone "leaf" their thumbprint. We bought a foam board from the dollar store and cut it to 16x20, my husband the artist drew the tree, and my sister in law made the names and date in vinyl. Here is the before.....



And the after. Once it was full we framed it and my parents now have it hanging in their home.

We had a small luncheon with sandwiches, salads, and desserts. I found this fun gold star edible glitter at Hobby Lobby. It was way cute, but since I made the cupcakes the day before it bled a little and wasn't as gold. Lesson learned for next time.

One of my other sister in laws made the cake. SHE MADE THIS.



It was so delicious, yummy red velvet, and an absolutely stunning cake.

I did a DIY favor bar where guests could take a little scoop of gold with them.



We put our projector to good use and my brother made a slide show of the pictures throughout the years. It was great, he had the photos set to songs from the decade they were in. I loved it.

For the centerpieces I found some wood letters at Hobby Lobby, with a little gold paint, and some super glue, they turned out really cute. We added "50" confetti throughout the tables.

These tissue pomanders were fun and inexpensive, but I am not going to lie, they took awhile to make. My sisters, sister in laws, and nieces had a craft night and it took all of us a good 4 hours to make 12 of these. We found the candelabras at the dollar store, and did 2 different sized to signify my Mom and Dad.

Overall it was a great party, it is always fun to get together with family, visit, and eat don't you think?

P is for Party....

Although it didn't go just according to plan, my son's first birthday still turned out pretty spectacular I'd say. The weather didn't cooperate, but my Mother in law was nice enough to let us clean her basement the night before, so we could have the party there. I felt bad, because I was planning it outdoors I invited a ton of people, but she was so nice to help make it great! I know I went overboard, but my son loved it! He was pointing to all the decorations and balloons with the biggest smile on his face! It was all worth it.

My son loves to read and he especially loves his Sesame Street books that I picked up at the dollar spot over at Target. Between his love of those books and a picture of my younger brother's birthday from 1985, I had my theme, Cookie Monster. Well Cookie Monster, plus my added theme, "use what you have."

In that photo from 1985, my Mother had made an amazing Cookie Monster Cake, I tried to copy it. Here is a photo of the cake, that I made, MYSELF, from scratch, and decorated it MYSELF too, the frosting from scratch as well. I am really proud of myself, I am not artistic whatsoever.

Here is the present table, where I hung his "monthly" photos. A couple years ago I was at IKEA and they were blowing out wrapping paper at $.25 a roll, I pick up a bunch of rolls, the same pattern, but different colors. The blue was PERFECT for a Cookie Monster theme, so perfect in fact that we used it as a backdrop for our "photo booth."
Since I already had a bunch of scrapbook paper in different shades of blue, I just went with it. I really didn't have money to spend. I found this cute paper hat template HERE. We brought over my son's Cookie Monster stuffed animal, he was a perfect addition to the party.

You may remember my frames from my bebe shower. The "cookie jars" were my baby food jars with a little Cookie Krisp cereal and my little Cookie Monster figurines were from the dollar spot at Target.

I used my Silhouette for everything in this party, it was so fast, and I love how it turned out.
I made the smash cake too!
I used different jars from my pantry, even though they were different shapes and sizes, I think they worked out well. I added some ribbon and twine to jazz them up a bit. The large jar I found at Tai Pan Trading for a steal at $7.97! I added a fun Cookie Monster sticker from Michael's to the front. I made all of the cookies from scratch, well except the Oreos, those were my husband's request, we never have them at home.
Planning early is a must for me! I saved so much money by doing so. I knew I wanted "milk bottles", but wasn't going to spend money on them. So, in January I asked coworkers to give me any old Starbucks bottles they were going to throw away. I washed them and spray painted the lids and "voila" milk bottles! I got the idea for the Cookie Monster cups from Hostess with the Mostess.
Some really inexpensive decor, tissue paper pom poms, and a felt circle garland.
I used my son's "M" from his room, it worked perfect.
For the kid's we had a game to guess how many cookies are in the cookie jar. The prize was Cookie Monster book, Cookie Monster stamp, and Cookie Monster figure, all from the dollar spot at Target.
I really scored with the favors, and didn't spent a cent of my own money. Let me explain. My husband sold some of his old text books to Amazon, so we had some online credit. I purchased these letter and number cookie cutters with the credit, so they were free! I used bags I already had from other favors, and leftover ribbon. I cut out the tags with the Silhouette and had them say "This party was brought to you by the letter "M" and the number 1." I printed out some recipes for sugar cookies to go along with them and placed them in a milk crate my Mother in law had.
We set up a coloring table for the kids with coloring pages I printed off the PBS kids website. We used an elegant paper table cloth, so we didn't have to worry about crayon on the nice ones. We had foam stickers, stamps, and Sesame Street stickers.
Overall, everyone had fun, and it turned out great, even on a budget. I think I spent around $50 total, which I felt was really reasonable for a party of 50 people. You only turn 1 once!