2016 Kid Craft Calendar

January 1, 2016Mellu Leave a comment

Here is the calendar we finished up this year! It was fun to have the neighbor kids join us for the calendar making fun this year (our traditional Christmas break activity). Here are pictures of what we did this year!

January – Water color background, paper cut out trees and painted snow.

February – Heart paper penguins and stamped hearts

March – Foamy mosaic rainbows and Clovers made from 3 wine corks rubber banded together as a stamp

April – puddle made from blowing a blob of paint with a straw and then Hello Kitty is cut from my Cricut

May – Kites cut with tissue paper behind and foamy bows

June – Spirograph flowers with gel pens

July – Fireworks stamped with bent straws stuck together.

August – Flower made from cut out patterned paper

September – made from paper stencil (cut from my Cricut) and dotted paint with Qtip inside

October – Prismacolor white pencil on black paper (used ruler to draw long lines)

November – Painted trees and leaved made with a paper towel or toilet paper roll as a stamp

December – paper strip trees

Kid Craft Calendar 2014

January 1, 2016Mellu Leave a comment

Forgot to post these from a couple years ago. Every year between Christmas and New Years, the kids and I make a calendar for their rooms with a different craft each month. Here is the version from 2014!

January Snow men (painted with Qtips

February – Hearts out of oil pastels

March – stamped heart clovers

April – tissue paper crosses

May – flowers cut from my cricut

June – Butterflies (painted and folded in half)

July – dot stamped flags

August – Sand dollars made with paper and quinoa glued on

September – paper pinwheels

October – paper candy corn collage

November – Trees with leaves cut from my cricut

December – paper snowflakes (and snowflake stickers)

Lemon and Lime theme

January 29, 2015Mellu Leave a comment

I don’t have any new parties to add at the moment, so here is an old one that I never posted. We did a Lemon and Lime theme for an Appreciation party. The platters were made from cups and plates from the Dollar Tree. The cups were spray painted and apoxy’ed to the bottom. The placemats are cut from my cricut with the lace cartridge.

Sofia the First Party

May 29, 2014Mellu Leave a comment

We had a Sofia the First Party for my 5 year old. It was so cute and we just love Sofia around here. I got carried away with all the little detailed crafts on this one … I had lots of fun with that part. I should have planned a couple more games or activities, but it all worked out in the end.

This was a fun (yet time consuming) little craft for the front door. below is a picture of how I did it.

I got to reuse these flowers from a couple years ago… made from my cricut flower shoppe cartridge

When the girls arrived, I had them start by decorating crowns while we waited for all the guest to arrive.

Below is a tip on decorating a cake stand in a temporary way that won’t damage your platter.

found this super cute butterfly dish from HomeGoods

Birdies and flower from Michaels Craft Store

I hot glued giant jewels onto wooden skewers and then added the grapes

Lace glued onto mini water bottles

guess I didn’t get a picture after I made the punch, but it had raspberry sherbet in it … yum…

Saw this adorable sofia the first cupcake cake idea on Pinterest. The white pearls are sixlets candy and the amulet is a homemade purple hard candy (in a jewel mold)

We watched an episode of Sofia the First during snack.

FYI… spray adhesive works better to hid the seams on a printed image, but I didn’t do that this time… whoops

cake time

cake face

parachute games to fill some time (see my lack of planning games this time above)…

crawling under the parachute

party favors … found these super cute crocheted flowers in the dollar bins at Michaels and I hot glued a barrette to the back. Inside the bags are stickers, cheap tiaras (that I added some jewels to, to make them sparkle) and these (earring/ring set)

I made amulets from beads from Michaels onto a thing ribbon. made the mistake of not making the ribbon long enough for some kids to get over their heads… 😦

That’s the party! Now here are those last 2 how to projects mentioned above:

I just took 2-3 strands of heavy gauge wire and made it into a large “5” … then cut little squares of purple tulle (you can barely see them on the table) and bunched them in the middle and hot glued the center onto the wire. Lastly I added some butterfly clips as shown in the top picture.

Under my cake stand I attached some scotch packing tape around my platter (and stuck another one under it with sticky sides together, so it was only stuck to the platter at the very top and wouldn’t stick to it below.) Then you can hot glue whatever tulle, ribbon, fabric or lace onto the tape. When the party is over, just cut it all off… so this is pretty much a one time decoration.

How to make a jeweled placeholder

May 28, 2014Mellu Leave a comment

I wanted some cute placeholders to display the food titles for my daughter’s Sofia the First party. So, here is a tutorial for you all who are interested.

Here are the supplies needed: 12 gauge floral wire, bottle caps, jewels, hot glue gun, wire cutter, needle nose pliers, round tip pliers (optional) and something with a sharp metal point (I used a compass)

poke a hold in the middle of the bottle cap with a sharp metal point.

Measure about 8″ of wire and cut

insert wire through bottlecap

bend the end and press it in

hot glue to secure the end

bend wire in half about half way through and using the rounded tip pliers, swirl the end all the way to the bended part.

keep that swirl going

after completed, hot glue a jewel sparkle over the swirled part at the top and some jewels on top of the bottle cap.

Frozen Party

May 27, 2014Mellu Leave a comment

Here are pictures from my 7-year-old’s Frozen Birthday Party with descriptions and links below!

The wreath is Styrofoam wrapped with white tulle and I cut out some snowflakes on my Cricut with the Winter Lace cartridge. The printable Olaf is found here.

I used the idea from Oh Happy Day to make these fun party hats.

Frozen party supplies where hard to find back in March/April, but I managed to find a few things! I am sure supplies are more available by now.

Blue LED Lights and some crochet and embroidered snowflakes and white tinsel as a table decoration.

making beaded bracelets with pearl beads and clear tribeads

Snowcap Punch recipe here And snowball sign holders found here.

AKA Powdered sugar donut holes

The Disney Frozen figurines are from the Disney Store… Sven fell into the cake and I loved how it looked with cake on his nose, so I just left it… He is a little mischievous sometimes, so it worked. I just bought the plainest white cake I could find and decorated it myself. The idea found here. I made the blue ice with a simple hard candy recipe like this. and the snowflake sprinkles are from Wilton.

We played a Frozen scavenger hunt based on the lyrics of Let It Go… brilliant game and thanks so much to the Bombshell Bling for this free printable

finding clues and at the end of the hunt, I had a bowl full of snowflake barrettes for each girl to pick one.

We played a very fun game called Don’t Eat Olaf! It was a crowd favorite for sure (despite a couple tears when things got too loud). I saw it on Etsy.

Another game we played was to divide into 2 teams and each team decorate one person into a snowman using toilet paper and hats, scarves and carrot nose. The birthday girl got to pick the winning team with the snowman she liked best.

in addition to the bracelet and hair piece from the party, the kids also got a book and stickers for party favors

Here is a link to my Pinterest board for more ideas!

40th birthday party for my husband

May 4, 2014Mellu Leave a comment

I threw a party for my husband’s 40th birthday and it was super fun to plan a party for adults (not that I don’t like doing the kid’s parties, but it was a nice change!) You only turn 40 once, so I went all out and rented some bistro tables, plates, and glasses and rearranged the house and even hired a bartender (which, by the way, was a huge help and allowed me to enjoy the party also!) The party was on Saturday, so the bistro tables were delivered on Friday and picked up on Monday (also night… allowing me plenty of time to set up and tear down).

some assembly required. 🙂 We rented from Grand Event Rentals and they were great and responded quickly to my questions.

The color theme was black and blue, so I moved all our black furniture (couch and a couple benches) into the living room and used black linens on the tables.

The curtains were made with black streamers. I cut a strip for the top and attached the long streamers to it and then it was a little easier to just tape it all to the ceiling at once. Masking tape worked well. Then I draped it by tacking a strip to the wall to hold them back. I loved how this turned out and made a fun entrance and WAYYY cheaper than fabric curtains!

40 decorations from amazon

for the Christmas lights around the ceiling I used 3M Command hooks and they worked great and came off the wall really well afterwards.

I bought these really fun submersible blue LED lights and some blue water pearls to fill some random vases I had. Also with a glass tea light holder and black tea candle. They turned out so awesome! Set a fun mood.

Another fun project: I bought these plain coasters and sprayed them with black chalkboard spray paint (takes around 3 coats) and then people could write on them with chalk to keep track of which drink was theirs.

saw this idea on pinterest and loved it! Pictures from all the stages of life. 🙂

The Food!: The desserts were from Whole Foods (petits), strawberries, potato boats, stuffed mushrooms, pita bread with jalopeno artichoke dip, shrimp taco bites and cream cheese cucumber bites. The silver platters I found on Amazon and they are very fun. Also the napkins.

I played some awesome hits from the hubby’s younger years; some where awesome classics and some were glad to be in the past! 🙂

It was truly a fun party and I definitely need to do this again sometime!!

Lalaloopsy birthday party

March 24, 2014Mellu 1 Comment

Lalaloopsies are so adorable, I was excited when my daughter chose that theme for her birthday party. (the party was last fall and I am again behind on my posts!) First, I bought a book (for the kids) that had most of the lalaloopsies in it, so I could get an idea of decorations and activities for the party (and Pinterest of course). And we watched a Lalaloopsy show on Netflix (the show isn’t good, IMO … the plot is horrible), but I did get some ideas. Here are the pictures from her party with links and comments!

The buttons were cut out on the Cricut using my Wild Card cartridge. And then I just used a yarn needle and threaded yarn through the buttons to make garland.

Found these wall decals on clearance at Toys R Us… good deal, but they did NOT stick well at all… they were in the trash right after the party unfortunately. They also have them on Amazon and Birthday Express and hopefully better quality.

More Garland made from dessert size paper plates and a black paper button cutout glued to the plate.

More button garland! (I guess I got crazy with the paper button cutting, because I had a lot!)

Used the book mentioned at the top of the page to help lookup a bunch of lalaloopsies on Bing image search (make sure you set the image size to wallpaper (or large) find the better quality images! Then I added the names and printed them out… (they moved to her bedroom wall after the party!)

For one activity, we stuffed, sewed and decorated little lalaloopsy pets. I prepared them, but printing out the pets on paper and tracing them and their pieces onto felt. Then glued some of the pieces on using felt glue (so they would have time to dry) and sewing the button eyes on. With the front and back felt pieces together, I used a very small 1/16 hole punch to punch around the edges. (warning: hand fatigue is possible!!)

We used embroidery floss to stitch them together and I had a bunch of plastic yarn needles for sewing them and stuffing.

Also felt markers (found at a fabric/craft store) for decorating.

For the second craft, I purchased a bunch of small prepared canvas boards from Michaels and precut with my cricut the first letter of the girls who were attending the party. I traced their letter onto the canvas with pencil and we used thick glue dots to glue on buttons to fill in their letter.

buttons from Oriental Trading

The last activity was a Lalaloopsy board game and it was so cute. It comes with a little lalaloopsy doll and it involves someone hiding the doll and they others picking cards to figure out which room she is in and then they have a minute to try to find her. (I had all the kids go look instead of one at a time as the directions say). Also I took out the cards of the rooms that I didn’t want the kids looking in (bedrooms, etc)

lalaloopsy party supplies found here. I also crocheted a few flowers to stick around.

Button candy molds found here. I just melted Wiltons candy melts and poured them into the melts. Make sure you wait until they are good and cooled before you pop them out of the molds (some of mine turned out better than the others)

super cute cupcake topper from Amazon.

I found these tin lalaloopsy boxes from Hobby Lobby and they worked great to put their little animals in and some stickers.

Fall Baby Shower

January 6, 2014Mellu Leave a comment

Another baby shower that I helped with last fall was a fall themed shower. I used my Cricut a lot this time with the Flower Shoppe cartridge (one of my favorites) and made little flowers to set around in our fall-ish color scheme: plum, bronze, teal, brown, lite pink, and cream. We just did a few simple printed games for this shower and again I didn’t have to do food (in case you didn’t notice, it is my least favorite part of party planning).
The invitation.

Paper flower wreath for the front door.

Banner made with light and dark brown burlap strips and a variety of different ribbons and lace throughout.

Centerpiece (mini hay bales, flowers, acorns and leaf cutouts)

The food made by my friend was totally amazing and gourmet! YUM!

I had 2 party favors for the guest (mostly because I wasn’t sure if my caramel apples would turn out ok, but they ended up pretty yummy afterall.)

The little fall candles were from Bath and Body works and they even wrapped them all up for me and everything!

Outer Space Baby Shower

January 6, 2014Mellu Leave a comment

A few months ago, I hosted an Outer Space baby shower for a friend and her baby boy. Thanks to my friend Liz, I didn’t have to do much with the food, so I got to focus on my favorite things: the decorations, games and favors! Here are the pictures with descriptions below them:

The invitation created in Adobe Illustrator

This is a foam wreath, covered with white tulle. Then I cut out the rocket, star, and banner with my cricut and just pinned it onto the foam and added a ribbon to hang it.

Here is another banner made from my Cricut.

Here, I printed out different planets and cut them out. You can use a glue stick on the picture side of the paper and paste them to the bottom of a clear plate to go with the theme of the party.

The food and cut out stars scattered around.

I bought these whirly decorations of Amazon.

More cut out stars strung and displayed around.

Fun baby shower Memory game. Instructions HERE

The favors were popcorn balls with a little blue food coloring!

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2016 Kid Craft Calendar

Kid Craft Calendar 2014

Lemon and Lime theme

Sofia the First Party

How to make a jeweled placeholder

Frozen Party

40th birthday party for my husband

Lalaloopsy birthday party

Fall Baby Shower

Outer Space Baby Shower

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