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.

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!

My Little Pony Party

April 9, 2014Mellu Leave a comment

It looks like we have turned a corner with my oldest and she has really wanted to help in the planning of her birthday parties. I always let the kids pick the theme they want, but she wanted to be really hands-on with the decorations and what activities we would do and the order of the party. Looks like I am training up another little planner! 🙂 She wanted a My Little Pony party this year. I had seen that Hasbro has blank white My Little Pony that you can order, so I ordered some of those. I had no idea how we would decorate those, but we decided on Permanent Markers… you can color the hair and everything. I wanted the girls to be able to take them home and not get wet paint all over. If you have more time, I would recommend the markers for the hair and then probably acrylic paint would be better for the body and produce a more even look and glitter glue for some sparkle.

Without further ado, here are the pics!

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!

Strawberry Shortcake Party!

May 18, 2013Mellu 1 Comment

Welcome to Berry Bitty City!

Strawberry, strawberry, strawberry shortcake! The song is still in my head 3 weeks later! LOL This party turned out cute, but I wasn’t on top of things as I normally am (I have to start months early for the April birthdays since we have 2 of them and I ordered the stuff early, but didn’t get to the crafting part early enough) … so it was a little stressful at the end. But it all worked out and my daughter had a great time! We had about 16 kids or so this time. The kids arrived and started on a coloring sheet/maze activity, then we played some games, had some cake and she opened her presents.

Strawberries are cut from the Hello Kitty cricut cartridge.

My wonderful older daughters did all the coloring of the dots with some sharpie markers! We just taped on the leaves and stem. (warning… don’t let your kids play with these balloons when you take them down… the sharpie comes off everywhere… TRUST me!)

Strawberry confetti from birthday express, Table cloth from oriental trading. The maize printout and coloring sheets are from the strawberry shortcake website.

My grandma crocheted these Strawberry shortcake dolls for me when I was a kid and I still had them. They are amazing and worked great for centerpieces!

balloons from birthday express

This was a HUGE decoration that worked great for filling up a wall! And only $6 at birthday express

Images from google and bing image search. Again… make sure you go to advanced search and search only for images with a high resolution to look better with printing!

This piñata was an idea I found on Pinterest from Grey Luster girl. She is amazing at parties and had a lot of fun ideas!
I did make it into a pull string piñata because my girls prefer them. (my string broke this time though… which was a bummer). For instructions on making a pull string piñata see HERE

Strawberry Shortcake pin the strawberry on the vine game from Shindigz

Birthday girl!!

I made a bunch of these out of felt and we used them to play a musical chairs game. Most of the kids have never played that before and were not happy about me taking them away. LOL. But it was fun to watch them figure it out.

We had strawberry shortcake music in the background! You know… the ones that are still in my head! (there are a lot of different strawberry shortcake albums available… we liked the Strawberry Jams and Let’s Dance the best.)

For the food, we had strawberry applesause, Strawberries, dried strawberries, Chocolate wafers, Pretzel thins, homemade suckers, cupcakes, and beverages. Most things are from Trader Joes.

I love making candy! It is a pretty fast process if you have all the right tools. I bought this hard candy mold from sugarcraft. I also recommend getting the large candy funnel… Works great! THIS was a helpful blog when I first started to make candy (without my mom, that is)!

chocolate cupcakes

I made a simple buttercream frosting with powdered sugar and butter (but I only used about 1/2-2/3 as much sugar as the recipe called for) and I added strawberry flavoring to it. Oh man.. it was so yummy!

Remember these? I don’t think I ever did say how I made them… They are from the flower shoppe cricut cartridge… probably my most used cartridge! So many things you can use flowers for! Anyway, you use a fancy pearl pin to pin them to the Styrofoam ball topiary. (Be sure to store them out of the sun when you aren’t using them because the colors can fade)

Enjoying some goodies!

Ok… there were so many fun favors to do this time… I may have gotten a little carried away. It was still under $5 per kid though which is my max. 🙂

So, I bought THIS cricut cartridge just for this party and it made the 3D strawberries in the basket and the basket. So fun! Inside the 3D strawberries are strawberry daiquiri jelly bellies. And also in the basket there is a packet of strawberry flavored Annies fruit snacks and strawberry Kelloggs pastry crisps.

These mini hand sanitizers are from bath and body works and I tried to find the fruity scents and just make my own label for them in Photoshop, printed on sticky paper and stuck them on! 🙂

Also there are coloring books and bubble wands ($1 each at Michaels).

Ice cream party!

May 17, 2013Mellu 1 Comment

Ice cream birthday party

I scream, you scream, we all scream for ICE CREAM! Actually the screaming didn’t get too loud! 🙂 Ok.. I’ll be honest, I never really know what to say in these intros, but sometimes I feel like I need to introduce each party! 🙂 Bla bla bla… I’m more of a picture person myself, so let’s just get right to the fun stuff! 🙂

First up the decorations:

I sorta threw this together last minute… I had made a large crocheted ball a few months ago as part of an experiment that didn’t work out. And I had some of those cardboard like cones from Michaels from a previous party… so I hot glued on a ribbon hanger and rubber banded the tulle over my crocheted ball and shoved it in the cone. Would have been cute with some beads glued on top for sprinkles.

inflatable cone… what I am going to do with this after the party?

So, I painted this cone for a game, but realized it was too small… so it just became a decoration.

(Ice cream try number too for pin the cherry on the sundae)

to make ice cream cone garland… see THIS blog post

I saw these cute ice cream balloons on Pinterest, so I tried them… they are helium filled balloons, but what I found out was that the weight of the cone (paper) was so heavy that they wouldn’t stay up in a bouquet… so I just tied them tightly to each chair and that worked. Still a fun idea though… if you try this with a lighter weight paper and it works, let me know.

I ran out of time to make a piñata, so I bought this at our local party store… I think it may have been the first time we used a piñata that wasn’t a pull string one… it was interesting! (my girls are not much into hitting with a bat)

This was one of the games. I had 4 buckets and filled 2 of them with some pom poms I made with this brilliant contraption. And I bought these cute ice cream scoopers. So, the game was a relay type race… there were 2 lines of kids and they had to scoop a ball of “ice cream” and run across the room to the empty bucket and drop it in and run back, then the next kid goes. Which ever line finishes first wins. We played a few rounds of this. It was a nice calm active game for them!

I may do a blog post about this game too. Have you all heard of the Cupcake game? It is a super cute easy game for kids. I spent a bunch of time creating a game like it, but it was making an ice cream cone or sundae instead. 5 kids could play at each game, so I made 4 games total. I will link to the post after I blog about that.

Pin the cherry on top of the Sundae!

I found this cake pop kit on clearance at Michaels and it was just perfect for the party. It was pretty easy to make… the instructions were well written and they looked adorable.

lot of syrups!

Lots of toppings!

and MORE toppings! (I am always happy when I get to use this fun ferris wheel serving piece from what used to be Southern Living at Home.)

Here are those finished cake pops

popcorn cones

ice cream bowls from Oriental Trading

We had a ton of different cones, but the majority just wanted to use the fun bowls. The plates and napkins were from Birthday Express

I had my helpers (sis and mom-in-law) pre-scoop the ice cream onto a cookie sheet and stuck it in the freezer. Then when it was time to serve… we dumped them into bowls and they were ready to go. This was super helpful and make things fast and not as messy!

chocolate chip mint

and vanilla

She didn’t want a cake, so candles went into the ice cream scoop! 🙂

party favors (in the green bucket there are THESE ice cream shooters for the boys)

These party pails were from oriental trading and they had the idea HERE

inside the pails there was Ice cream scented nail polish, tattoos, ice cream lip gloss and stickers. (just the sticker and tattoos in the boy’s favors)

Note: on the instructions from Oriental trading… the didn’t say anything about how they got the blue / purple/etc color under the iridescent glitter… I just hot glued on some ribbon of the same color and then glued the glitter stuff on top!

Happy birthday sweet girl!

She-Ra Birthday party!

January 17, 2013Mellu 7 Comments

Princess of Power!!

I am She-Ra! LOL! I had fun planning my daughter’s 9th birthday party… took me back a few decades. I totally remember watching She-Ra and He-man from childhood! (Although, I was more of a Rainbow Brite and Wonder Woman fan.) My daughter started watching She-Ra when I saw it on Instant Netflix and she was an instant fan. But, when she asked about having a She-Ra party, I was actually a little nervous…. how was I going to do that one and where would I find She-Ra stuff 3 decades after it was popular! Thanks to some helpful facebook friends, I got some good ideas for crafts and games and finally got my creativity rolling for it.
As usual, I will just post pictures and explain as we go! 🙂 Thanks for reading!

printed some posters to put in the entryway. Just found them from Bing and Google Image search on the “wallpaper” or larger options (so they are not pixelated when printing)

Recognize these?

Party confetti and She-Ra images printed out and cut.

As kids arrived, we had them start on the first craft. I bought these paper swords from Oriental Trading and the girls got to decorate their “She-Ra” swords with jewels and markers and stickers. A nice easy craft to get the party started. And the funny thing is when the girls got all into it, there wasn’t a sound out of all 9 girls… I just love girl parties!

After the craft, we went right to snacks and then they watched an episode of She-Ra (I suspected not many of them knew anything about her, so it was good to watch a show first).
I hot glued jewels to these gold plates and forks… I love how they turned out and will be doing this more often!

Just some fun snacks from Trader Joes.

Stole this idea from Kara’s Party Ideas. The image was found here.

After watching the episode of She-Ra, we did 4 games lumped together… I called it “superhero training”! The first part of the “training” was finding the crystals hidden around the living room and returning them to the crystal bowl that goes back into the Crystal Castle.

Be sure to count your crystals first because they can easily be lost… the girls had to find 20 small ones and 5 larger crystals. Aren’t they pretty?

The next game was to throw the suction balls at Sceletor. What a scary looking character for a girls party, but it was still fun.

Ok… so nevermind the quality of my pasting together of the papers I printed off. With the light shining through, I should have lined the back with a thicker paper to hide it better, but I figured a bunch of 8-9 year olds wouldn’t care.

Found these suction balls at the party store… they didn’t stick to the window as well as I’d hoped, but it did help to throw underhanded FYI.

Pin the horn on Swift Wind (She-Ra’s flying unicorn)

My daughter wanted to help with the party and she drew the horse for the pin the horn on the unicorn. Pretty good job I think! (oh… and I highly recommend buying white butcher paper in a huge roll from some place like Cash N Carry. We bought ours maybe 6-7 years ago and STILL have a bunch on the roll! It lasts forever and we use it a LOT to cover the table for party crafts and other things like this for instance…. not cheap, but when you consider how long it is lasting, it is a great investment!)

And I don’t have any pictures of the last game of the super hero training, and it was sorta added last minute. We had unicorn flying lessons. My girls got stick horses for Christmas, so we had 4 of them. The party attenders took turns on their horses “pretending they were flying unicorns” following a quick little obsticle course I made up of pillows and around couches, etc. It was pretty cheesy, but they seemed to like it. 🙂

Cake time!

After cake and presents we did the last craft. I had originally planned on making She-Ra headbands, but got to thinking… these girls will never get to wear these again because She-Ra’s headband is a little… um… out there (literally). Anyway, so I found these great headbands on oriental trading and you can use wire to bead around them. Perfect. I wish I would have taken pictures of each girl’s creation, but the parents started coming and it got a little hectic. They were all so different and creative.

headband making supplies. The beads are all just a collection of stuff I had, and a few I picked up.

I got the headbands here. (Warning, they not the most comfortable since they are metal) And I printed out the samples they had on their website to help with ideas for the girls.

I started the wire on all the headbands beforehand to make it easier for the kids, but they really didn’t need much help after they got going.

bead and wrap.

This one was created by the birthday girl

And this one by my 5 year old… I was impressed and she did it on her own too!

Party favors (below is what was inside) minus the swords and headbands they made

I was lucky to find these adorable magnetic boards at Michaels on clearance… score!

Happy birthday to my creative, beautiful daughter! (oh and the She-Ra shirt was bought off ebay… loved this one!)

Dr Seuss baby shower

May 21, 2012Mellu Leave a comment

Oh, The Places You’ll Go! Well, that happens to be my friend’s favorite children’s book, so it was easy to come up with a plan for what theme to do her baby shower. Mary and I went to work with the planning. I was so thankful that Mary decided to take care of all the food and I did the decorations and games because I am not a huge fan of the food part and that’s the part that always feels more stressful to me (due to its more last minute nature). Man, this was a fun shower to plan, with pretty much free rein of all those bright colors and the whimsical style of Dr. Seuss stuff, and all the ideas I found online. (I couldn’t do any pinterest pinning this time though, because I wanted the guest of honor to be surprised!, so I had to do thing the “old fashion” way… Bing and Google!) There was a lot of good ideas out there, so thank you everyone! It probably was one of my favorite showers to help create!

Here are the pictures!

These were inspired from the book Oh, the Places You’ll Go and I had some extra large cardboard in the garage, so I just cut out the shapes and spray painted them and duct taped them together in the back and a little to the house to keep them from falling down.

Tried to imitate the balloons from the book also. Colored the striped (after they were blown up) with permanent markers

The trees also inspired from the book. I made these by using 5 sheets of tissue paper, accordian folded them and wired them around the center (just like the regular tissue paper puffs), cut both outer edge into a point, Then I used a heavier wire from Home Depot cut it twice the length needed, took a balloon clip weight, put the wire through the hole to the middle of the wire and folded the wire in half. Then, with the ends of the wire toward the prepared tissue, I wrapped the thin wire around the tissue paper around the heavy wire to attach. Next, I took black duct tape and wrapped it around the heavy wire to hide it all the way down to the balloon clip. I did also have to wrap the taped wire around the balloon clip a little bit to make it strong enough to hold the flower up and then clipped it to the buckets (or anything you want). Last, I fluffed out the tissue paper, mostly just one on side, so the top stays mostly flat to look like the Dr Seuss trees. And voila!

I also loved the vases (idea I found online) wrapped with a blue boa and hot-glued the ends together.

Momma-to-be in all her glory!

Dr. Seuss phrases and characters for around the house! (Printed and cut out)

Everyone had fun doing this and there sure were some funny ones!

One of the games (203 was the answer by the way). Another game not shown was a crossword puzzle. You can create your own here. So, I did it fill-in-the-blank style based on the book, Oh The Places You’ll Go.

The 3rd game we played. Some may recognize from a previous shower I did. I had a lot of fun with Photoshop and took random baby faces and super-imposed them over celebrities and the guests needed to guess the celebrity.

I remembered I had this teapot my mom bought for my girls, so I just HAD to do the fish in the pot!

Food table

plates from Celebrate Express

Mary made this wonderful diaper silverware holder!

Party favors

Congrats sweetie! Can’t wait to meet the little one!

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favor ideas

Sofia the First Party

Frozen Party

My Little Pony Party

Lalaloopsy birthday party

Fall Baby Shower

Outer Space Baby Shower

Strawberry Shortcake Party!

Welcome to Berry Bitty City!

Ice cream party!

Ice cream birthday party

She-Ra Birthday party!

Princess of Power!!

Dr Seuss baby shower

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Welcome to Berry Bitty City!

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Princess of Power!!

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