A St. Patty's Day Birthday

Ok.  Do I remember how to do this? It has been. Quite. Awhile!  Apparently I have been missing this here blog, because I keep thinking "Man, I should post that".  Kind of a crazy thought since it has been almost two years since I have posted anything.

But time to come back.  Right?!  So let me come back with something that fits with March coming up soon.

Last year, my son requested a St. Patrick's Day Birthday Party since his birthday is around St. Patty's Day.  We made it a more "family" type of party and had a true blast.  Kids got fun and games and adults got Irish beer.  Good all around!

As you can see in the pic of my son and daughter, we had hats (from Oriental Trading) and beads to wear.

We did a lot of decorating with rainbows.
 

For food, we ordered pizza but then I also made fruit and veggie rainbows.


We had the kids play a couple of games.  We started with "Gold, Gold, Who's Got the Gold?".  You can read the rules of the game HERE.  Another game was to "Shoot the Shamrocks" with nerf guns.  I had to cut out a lot of shamrocks!  We also had them go on a gold coin hunt.  We hid chocolate gold coins throughout our house with numbers on them.  Then each kid was assigned a number and had to find their numbered coins.  Of course they need a bucket to collect their coins, so I spray painted some tin buckets and created a rainbow handle from pipe cleaners.

For a small additional party favor, I saw the idea to make licorice rainbows with Rolo candies as the pot of gold.  I found it on Pinterest, but this is the original source for the idea.

Finally the cake was the part I was most giddy about!  The outer decorations were ok, but the inside of the cake was the best part!!

 

Just look at those colors in the cake!  Just makes me smile whenever I see how pretty it was!

So since it has been almost a two whole years since I was on here, I should probably fill you all in a bit.  During that time we had a big change to our family...we added a kid!  My daughter, Oliann, was born in December of 2012 and is now 14 months old! Amazing how much can change in two years!

So here is my THREE kids (and final!) last summer:

And here is a bit more updated of the little one.  

Well hopefully I won't be such a stranger around here...but hey, I have three kids now...so now promises! Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

Board Game Theme Party: Goodie Bags and Birthday Clue

So I have already covered some of my son's Board Game Theme Party, so if you missed them, mkae sure you check out: Board Game Theme Party and Life-Size Candyland.  I will save the cake as a separate post...not that it was anything crazy...just want to keep cakes to their own posts.  

So for the goodie bags for the kids, I went ultra simple (mainly because my craft stuff was still in boxes!) with just white bags and taping the "Clue" card that had each of their pictures on it...more on that below.  Inside the bag was a travel game from a dollar store, the pawn t-shirts that I made for them (which we put on most of the kids when they arrived), and a bag of "Treats from their Trip through Candyland".  I had ginger snap cookies from the Gingerbread Tree, Candy Canes for the Peppermint Forest, Gumdrops from Gumdrop Mountains, Lollipop from Lollipop Woods, and a chocolate bar from the Chocolate Swamp.  It was a fun way to add treats to the bag and still keep with my Board Game theme.

So at the party we played the Life-Size Candyland game that I created, Twister, and a Birthday version of the game Clue.  All of the kids at the party were the characters, the locations were rooms in my house, and instead of weapons,  we used birthday decorations.  So our story was someone stole party decorations from a room...they had to figure out who, where, and what.  So I created the "detective notebook" like they have in Clue and the individual cards for each character, room, and decoration.  


My plan was for them to play it like the game of Clue...they have to meet up with someone in one of the rooms, make a guess, and see if the other person could prove them wrong with the cards in their hands.  Biggest problem was that with 13 kids, they only got 2 cards each.  That made it very difficult to "prove someone wrong" because they were not very likely to guess what was in the other person's hands.  

The other problem we ran into was that only about 2-3 of the kids had actually played Clue, so the concept of the game was difficult.  So in the end we had the kids all in one room and just had them walk around and look at each other's cards.  Even with our very modified version, the kids seemed to have fun.  


Well that is everything but the cake which I will post a little later.  Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

Board Game Theme Party: Life-size Candyland

This is the second post for my son's Board Game Theme party.  I totally blame this idea on Pinterest.  See I saw the "pin" of someone creating giant lollipops and repinned it for a future date.  Well it stuck with me and I decided to run with it.  So I created a life-size version of the game Candyland in my basement.  

I taped down sheets of construction paper to create the Candyland path and included all of the special spots, Rainbow Trail, and Gumdrop Path.  Then I tried to decorate each of the different areas of Candyland.  

I created the Gingerbread Tree from a roll of kraft paper and crumpled green tissue paper.  I used the tree on the actual game for reference.  I don't usually think I am good at drawing, but I was pretty pleased how well my tree turned out.  

My parents actually had light-up candy canes for outdoor Christmas decorations, so we borrowed those and stuck them in pots filled with dirt to make the Peppermint Forest.  They were in a perfect spot in the basement because they lit up a darker area.

For the Gumdrop Mountains, I used pots again to create my gumdrops.  I covered them with kraft paper, painted them (my kids helped), and then added a "sugar" sprinkle.  The "sugar" sprinkle was made by taking two styrofoam balls and rubbing them together.  Rubbing the balls together pretty much disintegrates the balls into tiny styrofoam flakes.  So I sprayed the gumdrops with a spray adhesive and then sprinkle the styrofoam flakes over them.  

The lollipops for the Lollipop Woods were created using a rolled up white poster board for the "stick", a balloon, and clear cellophane.  Like I said this was taken from an idea I saw on Pinterest.  We had difficulty getting them to stand up, so we weighted the bottoms with a bag full of pebbles (or sand) and then taping them to the floor.  It worked pretty well!

The peanuts in Peanut Acres on the other hand were a little shaky, but they got the point across.  I taped two balloons together and then wrapped them with crinkled kraft paper. 

The chocolate bars in the Chocolate Swamp were just boxes covered in kraft paper (this stuff can be found at dollar stores!) and painted to look like a chocolate bar.  Then for the finale, I had my Mom whom actually is an artist paint a castle on a large sheet of paper to be our Candy Castle.   

When the kids actually played the game, I ran around and gave them a card from the actual Candyland game so they could move spaces.  The kids had a blast and kept wanting to play it!  The hardest part was knowing by the end of the party that the whole thing would most likely be destroyed...and it was.  We let them go play it while kids finished eating and while waiting for parents to come...yup that was the end of it.  I was kind of sad simply because I wanted to play it too!  

Thanks f0r checking out my kind of engineering!

Movie Week - Recap

Here is another recap for you of my Theme Weeks.  Mainly because I wanted to take my kids to see Cars 2 in the theater, I made this week Movie Week!  So obviously, my husband and I took the kids to see Cars 2, which was a treat in itself since usually I am taking the kids by myself.  But we went on the 4th, so Holiday for Hubby!

The next activity was to have a "Drive-In" movie.  This idea came from Family Fun as well...probably going to get tired of saying that!  There actually is a local Drive-In by me, but I wanted the kids to have it at home.  So, I gathered up some boxes, hot glued some paper plates to the sides for wheels, and let the kids decorate their "cars" till their heart's content!  Each one came up with their own type of car and seemed to enjoy making them...well my daughter lost interest at one point, so I helped finish hers for her.  I actually found a box that already had an end cutout, so the oldest wouldn't get uncomfortable sitting in his box.

We had a Jeep, Mack the Truck from the movie Cars, a fully decorated convertible, and whatever my daughter made.

After everything dried, we took them down in our basement (where our main TV is), put some pillows in the cars for comfort, and took a seat in the cars.  I attached a food "tray" to each "car" with binder clips and gave them a cup of popcorn, cup of another food (cheese/crackers, sandwich, pizza rolls), and a juice pouch.  We watched the movie Tangled and I made sure to turn up the sound system nice an loud so they felt like they were watching a movie at a theater.

Isn't this just the cutest thing you have ever seen?!

My little punky made it in her car for most of the movie, but she joined me on the couch at the end.

A movie week couldn't be complete without actually making one, right?  So while we were at the beach, we made a couple music videos.  I put a couple songs on my phone, held it up by the camera, and basically followed the kids around while they did crazy stuff.  Not quite as organized as I would have preferred...I wanted them to plan out what they were going to do and then lip sync to the music...but they had fun.  The oldest didn't want me to post the videos publicly, so I can't post them here.  He had fun doing it, but I don't think he wants any chance of his friends seeing it...at 11 years old, gotta respect that.

Next week will be Nature Week...I have a separate post with the ideas I have for that.  Until then, thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

Patriotic Week - Recap

Ok I am now in the third week of theme weeks and I am finally getting a post up about it!  I will see if I can be any better about giving you advanced week info...knowing my luck, they will all probably be recaps like this one!  Oh well...I can only do so much.  


So the first two weeks were Patriotic Week in honor of the 4th of July.  The first week actually had the last day of school in there, so it was kind of a partial week.  I think that the kids have been enjoying the theme weeks and I have enjoyed having activities and such to do with them (planned out in advance) so we aren't always doing the same stuff.  Now we are still hitting the beach, playgrounds, etc, but we are getting the theme stuff in there too!


The first week, the kids (mine and a neighbors that I watch 2 days a week) made some very cute patriotic decorations.  The idea for them came from the Family Fun Website...pretty much everything I do comes from there!!  Totally love that site and magazine! 

They don't make a ton of noise when the wind blows, but they do jingle a little bit!

Then I had them make Star and Stripes T-shirts.  This was a huge hit!  

I kind of wish I would have made one for myself, they turned out so good!  

The last project we did was to make a Flag Dessert.  We made two...one for my family and one for the neighbors.  The kids were pretty proud of it.  They cut all of the strawberries and everything!

We did some other stuff too, but nothing noteworthy...tried to talk about the US, the flag, etc and got some books from the library.  I meant to teach them the Star Spangled Banner, but kind of forgot!  

One project, in addition to the theme weeks, that I have the kids doing throughout the whole summer is trying to look around us to find letters.  Not letters on a sign...that would be too easy...but letters that are formed by a tree, a lamp post, a handrail, etc.  My goal is to find every letter by the end of summer and then print out the letters of there name as a room decoration.  We are doing pretty good so far...here is an example of what one looks like:

A recap of the current movie week is coming up!  Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

A Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Birthday

 Wow, sorry that I have been a little non-existent on the blog here for the last couple of weeks.  I had my daughter's 3rd birthday over this last weekend and I had invitations, party favors, craft projects, and a cake to make for it...all at the last minute of course!  Seriously, I saved most of it till the week of for some reason....no idea why!  But now that it is over, I need to get back into some normal crafting...although I promised some graduation announcements for my nephew...so I better not procrastinate on those!!


So I thought I would share with you today all that I have been doing...all to make a Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Birthday Party as special as my sweet little girl!  This is a long post, so grab a cup of coffee (at least that is what I need right now!) and enjoy.  First I made the invitations.  Since I was running way later than I would prefer, I kept them very simple. Most of it was designed on the computer and then I added the stamped/embossed/colored Mickey Mouse on top.  Again nothing spectacular but I thought they turned out cute.


Then came the party favors.  See I follow Jessica Witty's blog (she is the amazing former Go-To Gal for Paper Crafts magazine whom I have actually chatted with via FB...my brush with fame! hehe!) and she did this adorable project during a Papertrey Ink release of a paper mache hot air balloon.  Well when I decided to do Mickey Mouse Clubhouse as the theme for my daughter's party, I immediately thought back to that project and how I could transform it into the Mickey Glove Balloon from the show.  Yah....fantastic idea...one I definitely should have started weeks before the party...one that I started the week of the party.  I blew up some latex gloves, taped down the pinky finger (Mickey only has 4 fingers), taped on a paper ring on the bottom, and paper mached it with tissue paper and gluey water.  Near the end I was sort of cursing Miss Jessica's name (really I still love her) as paper mache is a very time consuming process for 7 party favors!  After I paper mached them, I paint them white and added the black marks like Mickey's glove.  All of this would have been fine and dandy really until I decided to pop one of the "balloons" too early (i.e. before it was completely dry) and it imploded!  Mind you I only had exactly 7 gloves to work with!  Thankfully my husband was smart enough to think about blowing up a small regular balloon inside to get it to blow back up, we re-glued it, and let it dry for days...just to be sure!  Again all during the week of the party.


I then built a paper basket and glued it all together with some cookie pop sticks.  I printed all of the kids names out and attached them to the basket.  Then I filled the basket with the silly little trinket toys that kids love and parents hate!  My kids have loved them...they put animals and figures in the basket and fly them around.


Next up was the cake.  Of course I had to make the cake into the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse!  I did my typical research online when thinking up a cake...to see what others have done.  No sense in re-creating the wheel!  But alas, as I have often found, a lot of others use Fondant to create a lot of cool stuff.  I do not know how to use fondant nor do I like the taste of it.  So I took some of the ideas and came up with my cake.  The base is two 9 x 13 cakes and the Clubhouse body is a cake made in a bowl that was the roundest one I had.  The shoe, head and ears, and the slide are all made from Rice Krispie Treats.  This is where the challenge was.  One, the ears did not want to stay on the head.  Two, warmth makes the ears not want to stay on the head even more.  So there was 4 toothpicks in each ear holding them in place and I frosted quickly and threw them in the fridge so they wouldn't fall off...again!  I got a little smarter with the slide and stuck it in the freezer for a little bit before I tried to frost it.  

 

 I normally would have tried to smooth out all of my frosting, but due to the warmth / things falling off issue, I decided against it cuz I didn't want to mess with them anymore than I had to!  I kind of like the look though...kind of artsy looking...or am I just making myself feel better?!  The circles around the sides of the base were to mimic the circles on the invitation.  That Mickey Mouse head was heavy...didn't really think a big ball of Rice Krispie treats would be that heavy, but it was!  I had to walk very, very slowly when carrying the cake around because the head was kind of teetering on there a little bit.  I was so nervous it was going to fall off!  But all worked out, and my daughter loved it! 


I will leave you with my big 3 year old girl!  Just now noticed that she has a lovely snotty nose in this picture...ah well, kind of goes with the girl...and I do LOVE the girl!

Ninja Warrior Birthday

UPDATE: I have made the files I used available for download (for a small fee) using the following link. It contains the jpeg files for the invitation and the Word document for making the t-shirts.  Hope this makes it easier to get the files as I am terrible with responding to email requests.  Please email me with any questions or concerns.  Thanks!

Buy now

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I think it is ok (and not too arrogant) to admit that I am pretty proud of the events that I have organized for my family. I take great joy in planning and executing parties for my kids. I think the ultimate compliment can come from a 5 year old, when they say they had a great time and the party was so much fun! I think I may have outdone myself with my son's latest birthday party. One of his favorite things right now is Ninja Warrior (and Wipeout). Ever hear of it...or are we the only ones that know of this show? Both shows are competition shows that involve obstacle courses...Ninja Warrior has some pretty incredible obstacles (especially in the final stages), but I think my son loves the first stage where they show tons of people wiping out. He even creates his own "courses" out of blocks and has his "Little People" run the course...full commentary and everything. Most of the time I am just required to watch, but sometimes I have to act as one of the commentators. So with fascination in mind, I plan a Birthday Ninja Warrior Party.

First came the invitation...obviously no stamps around to use to make an invitation with this theme. So I tried my hand at some Photoshop work. Basically I stumbled around until I got what I wanted. I "borrowed" the Ninja Warrior logo (don't send the copyright police after me please!) and copied the little Ninja dude and the red slash and placed them on a black circle. Then I found a font that was close to the Ninja Warrior font...not exact, but pretty close. Then I made some red explosion marks...really not sure what to call those. Then I took the tone of the opening of the Ninja Warrior show and changed it to give the information inside the invitation. I was really quite please with how this turned out.

Since I made this fabulous logo, I decided that I need to use it to the fullest extent. I changed it to read "Future Ninja Warrior" and printed it on T-shirt transfers. I got cheap undershirt t-shirts and ironed them on for each kid (see group photo below). I gave a "Japanese-sounding" ending to each of their names and printed out name tags for each kid and presented them with their new name for the party (they thought that was pretty funny!). I also printed out their names on some other name tags (with the logo of course) and put them on their goodie bags filled with a little bit of candy, so little ninja dudes from Oriental Trading, and some ninja related tattoos also from Oriental Trading. Then of course I used the logo for the basis of my cake...check it out! I am very proud of this cake...turned out better than I thought it would!

For activities during the party, I started them painting some wood boards...they had no idea why yet, but painted happily. Then as they tried, we had them run an obstacle course in our house. Yeah I am sure the other parents hate me, because we basically had them climbing all of the furniture as they were part of the obstacles! We had them run in one at a time first and then it was a free-for-all. They went around and around. Too funny. Then we brought them back to the "craft table" and the created ball mazes with the boards. The boards had nails hammered into them (thank you to my wonderful husband) and they strung rubber bands around the nails to create a maze for some bouncy balls. This was an idea I found in the Family Fun magazine.

A group shot (getting 12 kids to look all in one direction just doesn't happen...and for some reason my son was the worst one about not looking!), pizza, cake, and presents finished off the party!

The free-for-all of the obstacle course!

The kids making their ball mazes

Attempting a group shot of 12 four and five year olds...good luck!

Can't believe he is 5 already!

Well I hope that you enjoyed seeing the pics from his party! It really was a blast even if it was what I would call controlled chaos! Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

Hot Chocolate Anyone?

Wow is this a crazy time of year or what?! I will freely admit that I have not been well organized (starting my Christmas cards in December for example), but man I swear I feel like I am barely staying afloat! I am getting lots done (and I have recorded it), but popping in here to show off has been very low on the priority list. Hoping that things have settled down here now: Christmas cards made and sent, cookies baked, teacher gifts made and given out, presents bought and almost all wrapped, some handmade gifts made and a few more to make. Now I am trying to get ready for hosting Christmas Eve and New Year's Eve...ahhh!

Anyway, the reason I am here is to show you a cool little gift that I made for my son's classmates for Christmas. Now I take absolutely no credit for the recipe or idea. I saw a blog entry from an amazing Mom, Amy, at The Idea Room (btw, if you want a place to get awesome ideas to do with the kids, get organized, etc, you NEED to follow her blog...how she does it I will never know, but I have gotten many awesome ideas from her!) for Hot Chocolate on a Stick. She got the idea from a fellow blogger, Amber, at the Giver's Log. Amber gives great instructions, so I will not repeat them here. I will say that I used Ghirardelli Baking Bars and I had a big difference in consistency turnout between the Semi-Sweet vs. Milk Chocolate. I have no idea why, but just thought I would note that, although it tasted great either way!

I made them and then put them in bags with some ribbon and a note for instructions. I decorated them very simply, mainly because I was short on time, but also because they were going to 4 year olds! But overall I thought they turned out cute...and let me tell you they are good! Just writing about them, makes me want one!! And just to give you the full effect of 22 yummy Hot Chocolate on a Sticks:

Now go make your own!!!

Final-Days-Before-School-Starts Activity & The SU! News

Well my summer is winding down now. My son starts 4 year preschool (only 3 mornings a week) next week. That means more of a routine and the fact that I probably have to start getting up a little bit earlier so I can get a shower in before the kids get up...ugh! My late night stamping habit that I have gotten into is not going to make that very easy! So we will see how that goes!

This week, we have stayed very busy trying to get the last bit of true summer activities in before school starts, but 2 weeks ago we were struggling with what to do. I found this idea to make marshmallow structures on a great blog called "The Idea Room". Amy (the blog owner) has lots of great projects and tidbits on her blog, so I highly recommend checking it out. Anyway, just a bag of mini marshmallows (mine were stale so I was going to be throwing them out anyway) and toothpicks and we had a fun activity for about an hour! Eli really got into making his "house" and seemed to really be enjoying himself! So of course I took some pictures to share with all of you! I think I might have even enjoyed it more than him...my engineering roots showed through, in particular my focus on structure design!

Now onto the final portion of my post. I know most (if not all) of crafty blog readers or SCS fans have seen the announcement from Stampin' Up! regarding its demonstrators...or at least have seen the rumors. I will admit that when I first started looking into it, I had a bad first reaction and I wasn't sure I would continue on...sort of out of principle. Well for those that may have no idea what I am referring to, in short, Stampin' Up! is asking all of its demonstrators to re-sign their Independent Demonstrator Agreement with the new changes. The new changes basically say that SU! demonstrators may no longer promote, market, or sell competitive manufacturers products on any form of electronic media (blog, email, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). This means no other stamp companies' Design Teams if you want to remain a demonstrator. Ok, if they would have just said that, then I would have said no problem right away...I am not on any Design Teams (although I tried a few times). Well SU! decided to go further and say that demonstrators cannot link to competitor's websites where people can buy their products. This is where it gets a little sticky for me. I am not the "Career" demonstrator type...I am the lowly "Hobby" demonstrator. This change makes sense and is welcomed by those Career demonstrators because talking about something other than SU! could hurt their business. But as a Hobby demonstrator, I am very aware of the "competitor's products" and like them, so I purchase them on occasion and try to win them or whatever. Then I use those products on cards and scrapbook pages and show them here...mind you these are all personal cards and such...not like I am going to show these at a workshop or class or anything that is related to my Stampin' Up! "business". When I show you a project, I like to be complete with the supplies I used and the manufacturers...this is the gray area of the new agreement. I am taking it though that if I don't directly link you to that manufacturer where you can buy the product when I create the project, then I am in the clear...I will still continue to give a complete supplies list. I still have slight issue with SU! regulating what I can link to on my own personal blog, Facebook, etc...especially since I don't really use my blog to advertise my SU! business (I do on occasion, but it is not my main focus), but I understand the intent. Well this was suppose to be the short story...think it was a little longer once I started typing...but, in short, I will remain a demonstrator right now unless other opportunities begin to arise for me elsewhere in the crafting industry (ahh, I can dream!) that goes against the new agreement. If you want to read more about all of this (and not all of the rumors and negative feedback!) check out Jan Tink's blog where she recently posted about it after Stampin' Up! clarified a lot of the changes that caused the most amount of uproar (and they actually changed the wording so it isn't quite as strict as was first introduced...the big one for me was that I could potentially design for a store or display, but I cannot promote it...I was thinking about looking into this for local scrapbook stores...not that I have, but ykwim!). Thanks Jan for helping to sort it all out!

Sorry no crafty post today...I will show something next time. Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

Oh My Goodness and a Road Trip

So I may use a little space here as a little therapy session...if you would rather not hear me whine, skip down to the next paragraph. Still here...oh thanks! Let me start by saying I love my baby girl so very much...have to remind myself of that sometimes especially on days like these! So she seriously needs to start talking already...she is 13.5 months old now and all we really get are "doggie", maybe "duck", maybe "car", and a lot of mamamamamama (which may or may not relate to me!). The reason I say this is because the poor thing has no way of communicating with me besides screaming! Problem is all of the screams sound the same...LOUD! I have tried and am still trying signing with her, but she does not seem to get it nor has she ever attempted to show me a sign. I got to the point today I yelled at her to stop, which startled her, then she did stop screaming (yeah!), but then started crying (which is close to screaming!). Ahhhh, I just want her to start talking, signing, or something so that we can communicate better with each other! My son was an early talker, so I didn't have this issue with him....I am so struggling right now! Ok enough of my therapy session...on to the subject at hand.

First for my "Oh My Goodness" portion of the title of today's post. I got some very exciting news recently! Spellbinder's (the makers of the Nestabilities) blog had a Blog Frenzy last week to showcase their new Pendants and Borderabilities (all of which are very cool!) and you could enter each day to have a chance to win that days Pendant and matching Borderabilities...and if you entered all of the days, you had a chance to win the Grand Prize of all of the new Pendants and Borderabilities. Well guess what....I WON the GRAND PRIZE! Check out all of the cool stuff I won HERE! It is so exciting to see my name as the winner...I just couldn't (and still can't) believe it!

Now for the Road Trip portion of the post...my family is headed on a trip this weekend to southern Ohio. This will be the longest trip I think we have taken with the kids, so I have been trying to come up with ideas to keep Eli (Adi is too young for all of this) entertained without too many DVD's and such. Allison Fillo was kind enough to send me a link to a Road Trip game that you try and count up the number of each vehicle you see. So I took that idea and made it into a Road Trip BINGO. So as we are driving along, we will play BINGO with the things we see. It sounds like it should be fun...I will let you know how it goes when we get back!

Thanks for checking out my kind of engineering!

Flower Birthday

Well I will warn you that this post may make you faint from all of the adorable cuteness I am going to show you...ok that is just my not-so-humble biased opinion!  I will try and put the actual crafty stuff up front so if you really don't want to see the cuteness, you can skip it...but really, why would you when I am talking extreme cuteness!  

So two weekends ago (wow has it already been that long!) we celebrated my daughter's 1st birthday.  I have been admiring the Women of Life set from Papertrey Ink for awhile, so I decided to get it and make by daughter's birthday around it.   So first up is the invitation.  Pretty sure that I did not use a sketch challenge for this, but honestly I use them so much, I am not sure!  The color combo (Rose Red, So Saffron, Certainly Celery) was what I put together to get a spring feel to the invite.  I scalloped the bottom strip of Certainly Celery to give it a grass feel for the flowers.  I popped up one of the flowers (actually made it bigger than the others) and added a "1" to it.  I then printed the inside with all of the party details...btw, anyone have any recommendations of printers that will easily print on cardstock?  I have to print mine a half of a page at a time and even then I still get jams!  

The Engineering Details

Stamps - Women of Life (Papertrey Ink), Dot Alphabet (bought at WalMart); Paper - Rose Red, So Saffron, Certainly Celery, Basic White (Papertrey Ink); Ink - Rose Red, So Saffron, Certainly Celery, Basic Black; Accessories - Swiss Dots Cuttlebug Embossing Folder, Scallop Edge Punch, So Saffron 5/8" Grosgrain ribbon, dimensionals

I recently created the thank you card that I will eventually be sending out...I want to include my daughter's 1 year pictures which have yet to be 

taken (huge GASP from anyone that knows me...I cannot believe I am this late either...I am so the type that gets these pictures taken as close to the actual birthday as I can).  Stuck with the same color combo and elements, but just went with the one large flower with "Thank you" over it.  For this one I did use a Mojo Monday Sketch Challenge for the the layout:  MOJO88.  I created a little background paper with the extra leaf stamp in the Women of Life set on the Certainly Celery behind the flower.  

The Engineering Details

Stamps - Women of Life (Papertrey Ink), Noteworthy (retired); Paper - Rose Red, So Saffron, Certainly Celery, Basic White (Papertrey Ink); Ink - Rose Red, So Saffron, Certainly Celery, Basic Black; Accessories - Swiss Dots Cuttlebug Embossing Folder, Scallop Edge Punch,Certainly Celery 5/8" Poly-twill ribbon, Circle and Scallop Circle Nestabilities, Ticket Corner Punch, dimensionals

For the actual party, we had about 14 kids or so ranging in ages from 6 months to 13 years old.  So I tried to come up with a craft that all of them could potentially enjoy (well except for the babies...they just don't have that coordination thing down yet!).  

I had them paint small clay pots and then go through the activity of planting a flower in their pot.  I later tied a ribbon and a name tag to their pots.  My Mom helped me pre-paint the 4 babies pots since they were not going to be painting.

It turned out good and I think the kids all had fun with it...now I just hope that all of the flowers survive...mainly the two for my kids...I so do not have a green thumb!! 

O.k. so now on to the cake for the party...don't worry the extreme cuteness is yet to come!  I really do love to decorate my kids cakes and I love it even more when it coordinates with the invitation or theme of the party.  For Adi's cake, I tried to use the invitation as my inspiration.  It turned out pretty much like I envisioned it...the flowers on the side of the cake were a bit of a challenge and they could definitely be better.  I used a really large tip for them and I could get a really pretty flower if I was doing it vertically, but for some reason trying it horizontally just 

did not want to work real well.  Oh well, this is probably where practice makes perfect right?!  

The color red on the cake was the only other issue I had...I really wanted it to be the color Rose Red like the invite, but after a whole bottle of one color and some additions of other colors, I just could not figure out how to get there...felt like I needed a color degree or something to know what drop of color would get me Rose Red from the color I had.  It was definitely pinky-red, but just not quite the right shade...something only I noticed I am sure!  The side view of the cake shows the not-so-great flowers that went around the whole cake.

Now you can see the extreme cuteness that is my adorable daughter...again in my not-so-humble biased opinion.  So the first picture shows her with her cake...I love the look on her face...kind of a look of concern (like what is happening) and kind of a look of disbelief (you are setting that in front of me?!).  She didn't blow the candle out and I did not leave the whole cake in front of her in case you were curious!  We cut off a piece of the cake and let her go to town.  

She quickly went to this (frosting anyone?):

And this:

And this (yes she actually did touch my camera...she was quicker than I thought she would be!):

Ok pick yourself up off of the floor after fainting from the extreme cuteness so I can leave you with some extreme sweetness.  Happy Birthday once again to my sweet Adilane Rose!  Thanks for stopping by my engineering world!