Dora Birthday Party

For Kaitlyn's 4th Birthday we decided on a Dora theme. I was particularly excited about this one because although it was a lot of work, it was also fun to come up with all the challenges for the kids on their adventure - just like in the TV show!

We started out in the living room (of my mom's house -mine was too small and I couldn't count on the weather cooperating), where we discovered that Swiper had swiped the birthday cake. Of course we had to go to his hideout to get it back. And what do we need to help us find it? The map! I had made backpacks for all the kids (you can find instructions at NickJr.com), complete with their own maps. The map told us to follow the Star Path (star shapes cut out of cardstock and taped to the floor) across the Puzzle Bridge, through the Lollipop Forest to Swiper's Hideout. So the kids looked around for the stars and sure enough there they were leading us into the kitchen.

In the kitchen was the Puzzle Bridge (blue sheet spread on the floor for the lake, bridge made out of posterboard with various shaped pieces cut out of it) that needed to be put together before they could cross. How do we do that? Ask Backpack if he has anything that will help us. And yes, each child had a puzzle piece that fit into one of the holes on the bridge.

Once across the bridge we ran into Swiper (my niece), who we scared off by shouting "Swiper, no swiping!"

The star path led us to the stairs, where we encountered the Singing Door. The poor Singing Door (with my niece doing the voice from behind it) couldn't get the words right to some popular kid's songs.

As soon as the kids helped her sing them correctly they were allowed through and made their way downstairs to the Lollipop Forest (large lollipops constructed with posterboard and dowels which had been shoved into flower pots so they would stand up). We were about to make our way through the Forest when I received a call from Diego saying that some of the animals from the Animal Rescue Center were lost in the Lollipop Forest. Well, since we were there, of course we helped Diego look for them and sent them all back to the Animal Rescue Center (these were stuffed animals of course). We also caught a glimpse of Swiper through the window - he was carrying off the presents! "Swiper, NO SWIPING!"

We consulted the map again and found we were almost to our destination. Sure enough, we could see Swiper's Hideout just past the Dark Tunnel (card tables covered with brown sheet). We needed something to help us get through the tunnel and happily found mini flashlights in their backpacks. Once through the tunnel we were confronted by the door to the Hideout, which was locked up tight. The kids had to search through a big box of keys for the Star Key that opened the lock on the door.

Once through the door we found...Kaitlyn's Fiesta! Swiper hadn't been stealing the cake and presents, he was just helping set up for the party :)

We then ate and did the present thing. The food included cupcakes, strawberries (one of Katy's fav things), Dora shaped animal cracker type things, and star shaped Goldfish, and of course Katy's green punch. The cake was saved until the next day for our extended family party. (that's my tradition - cupcakes for the kids, the fancy cake for the grandparents) Then the kids had to go back and do the whole adventure again because they loved it so much.

The only thing I was sad about was that I didn't have the sound effects to go along with everything - the songs, Swiper's voice saying "oh man!" and so on. Oh well. As people keep telling me, it was an over-the-top party even without that :)

Oh, can't forget the party favors. I gave them little bags filled with some Dora fruit snacks and some things I had printed out from NickJr.com (paper dolls, coloring pgs, etc). And of course they each got to keep their backpacks, maps, and flashlights.

Fairy Birthday Party

For Kaitlyn's 3rd birthday I chose to do a fairy birthday party.

The Decorations:
-bubble machine outside on the porch which was decorated with ballons, tissue flowers, and streamers
-giant butterflies and tissue paper flowers hanging from the ceiling, giant tissue flowers in pots
-fairy tent (white christmas lights and tulle, hanging from the ceiling)
The Party:
-when the girls arrived they were each outfitted with fairy wings, flower crowns (silk flower leis that I had pulled apart and threaded the flowers onto pipe cleaners that I had formed into circles, and added curly ribbon streamers), and fairy dust (body glitter) on their cheeks
-Find the Fairy game - printed out clipart of fairies on small pieces of paper and hid them around the room
-Kaitlyn's favorite freeze dance game (I really need to come up with a name for this one, but names really aren't my specialty): printed and colored pictures of a fairy, unicorn, flower, etc (with at least 1 of each item per guest), cut the paper into circles, and laminated the circles. To play you just toss out the circles on the floor and designate on item for everyone to stand on. Turn on the music and the kids dance around the room (you can tell them to skip, hop, crawl, etc too). When you turn off the music you call out a picture for them to find, stand on, and "make a shape" (pose). This one was a real hit - Kaitlyn had a meltdown when we tried to move on to the next game so we ended up playing this again after eating.
-fairy picnic: I find tiny tea sets that I served the food on. The food itself was mini cupcakes and fruit fairy wands (melon cut into tiny star shapes with a cookie cutter, on toothpicks) and green punch (specific request from Katy since that was her absolute favorite color at the time)
-make your own beaded bracelets/necklaces

The Favors:
-I "planted" silk roses into small pots (that I had painted and stenciled with butterflies) and hid the favors inside each rose and inside the pot. The favors included butterfly hair clips, bracelets, and small vials of body glitter (fairy dust), bubbles, flower shaped sidewalk chalk

Oh! I almost forgot one of the best parts - the invites! I need to find one of them and post a photo because they turned out really cute. I made teeny tiny invites - probably about 1 1/2" square in a tiny font. Then I put them into larger envelopes along with fairy dust and little magnifying glasses.

How To - Tissue paper flowers
-Stack 5-6 sheets of tissue paper together (can be full sheets or smaller pieces as long as all pieces are the same size) and accordian fold, lengthwise.

-Find center of folded tissue and tie together with pipe cleaner.

-Gently separate each layer of tissue paper from the rest, shaping the flower as you go. Better instructions can be found in many places in the internet if you can't understand my description (I know, photos would help)

How To - Wings (this is the quick, easy, cheap version - there are other methods)
-cut tulle into rectangles, roughly 15" x 24" or so (depends on size of children)
-take 2-3 tulle pieces and scrunch together in the center. Either wrap with wire or thread to hold together in center.
-cut 1/4-1/2" elastic into approx 36" length and sew ends together to form a circle. Size will depend on child - you want the loop to fit comfortably around both arms and connect to the wings in back. Attach elastic to center of wings, forming 2 loops for the arm holes.

-wrap center of wings with ribbon to cover up the area where you connected everything together and sew it all together.

Birthday Parties

In case I haven't mentioned it yet, I love throwing elaborate birthday parties for my kids. And in preparation of the next round of parties (Oct and Dec) I am going to recap some that I have put together so far. Hopefully, this will get me even more excited to get going with the rest of the preparations for Kaitlyn's 5th Birthday - which is a little more than 6 weeks away. For those of my friends that think I'm nuts to put this much effort into it, you will be happy to know that I have trimmed my party plans down quite a bit from what I had originally envisioned. :)

Red, White, and Blue

We wanted to get our old friends and their families together so we decided to throw a BBQ. And because it was Alisha, Cheri, and I hosting, of course we went all out.

Cheri found the recipe for this drink last year (from Family Fun?) and has been dieing to try it. Looks really impressive right? We thought so :) It's not too hard to make.

Recipe:

-fill glass 1/3 full with ice cubes and pour in cranberry juice (we found that less than a 1/3 full with the juice worked best)

-add more ice cubes (up to 2/3 line) and pour in blue Gatorade

-add more ice cubes and pour in DIET Sprite

Easy! The whole premise is that the differences in sugar content keep them layered like that. So theoretically you could do this with any number of drinks as long as the one with the largest sugar content is on the bottom and the least sugar is on the top. The only problem with these is that they don't taste all that great. As you are drinking it you taste each one individually and while that may be ok it just doesn't taste like a party drink. Ah well - guess we will keep experimenting with other, better tasting ones and see what we can come up with.

I just have to do my "heights" on the tables. It my favorite table-scaping trick. Just put a few boxes under the tablecloth and you're done.
These are our party favors. We filled them with enough graham crackers, marshmallows, and chocolate for each family to make their own smores at home. (We didn't dare do a campfire with that many kids running around)
The table decorations were pretty easy. Pretty scrapbook paper inside cylindrical vases. A chunk of floral foam inside holds the flags. Simple, elegant - yay! I was thinking afterward that we could have added bows but didn't get around to doing it before the party.

Explosion Box

I'm in a blogging mood today so here is one more. This is an explosion box I made for Sam for Christmas while he was gone.

Here are the pages before I put it all together.
Once it is all put together, when you pull the lid off it all kind of pops open and you can flip through the pages.
Ok I am updating this with instructions for anyone that would like to try it themselves. Sorry I didn't take photos as I put it together but hopefully I can explain everything clearly enough without them. For all of you who are extremely impressed, no I didn't come up with this concept. I am simple recreating the directions I followed. Feel free to ask questions if you get stuck.
-You will need 4 double sided cardstock weight papers.
-The first paper (the one that will be the outside of the box, and the base layer of the photos) should be 12 inches by 12 inches. You will need to score the paper 4 inches in from all 4 sides, and cut out the corners (4x4 squares).
-The next paper trim to 11x11, and score the sides at 3 3/4 inches. Cut out the corners.
-The third paper needs to be trimmed to 10x10. You should score the paper at 3 1/2 inches on each side, and remove the corners.
This will leave you with 3 perfectly layered pieces for your box.
-Embellish and add photos wherever you wish- except the center sections on the largest and middle sized layers. After embellishing, you will attach the layers together at this point.
-The final piece of cardstock is for the lid. Trim your paper to 8x8 inches. Score the edges at 1 and 7/8 inch. This time, only cut one side of the square on the edge. Glue the flap you have created to the inside of the lid. Flip it over, and embellish.

Scrapbook Sketches

My latest (and so far best) cure for scrappers block has been using sketches. My problem has never been picking out the photos or the paper but in feeling creative enough to pull together the layout. And sketches are able to give me a jump start. So I now spend much less time sitting and staring at my pages :) I discovered this a while ago but wasn't blogging at the time. I figured some of you may appreciate the inspiration as well. And no, I don't have a problem feeling like it isn't completely "my work." Sometimes I follow the sketches pretty closely and others I just use bit and pieces, but it's always my own interpretation. And I'm always much happier with these than the ones I have come up with on my own on those days that the ideas weren't flowing.

Here is an example of a sketch. It came from pagemaps.com. That's my favorite site for sketches but there are plenty of other great sites out there.


my interpretation

oh, I wanted to point out that the above layout is also one of my new ideas in action (ok not all My Idea, I stole it but still.. :) ). I want to create a page each year that kind of sums up the year before for each child. I plan to use the same sketch each time to tie them together. And I plan on putting them in their Birthday Book (which I have only just begun to work on - 8 pages down so far!).

and a few other layouts I've put together recently from sketches


the pg on the right is from a sketch, the one on the left I created on my own to work with it.

Circle Sketches

This is one of my new(ish) favorite scrapbook techiniques. I already had an obsession with circles and polka dots on pages and this just feeds into that. I really love how they turn out.

I just start with a sketch like this

And here is the layout!


Another one of my favs.

Maybe one day I'll be good enought to make up my own sketches.