nautical dad {saturday creations post}

Party update: It's 5am here, and whisper quiet.  In a few hours, a gaggle of girls will be here to celebrate Sofia's 8th birthday... I may be taking a few instagram pictures of the day, if you want to check them out.  But, I won't be able to share too much or post to the blog for at least a few weeks: I crafted the party using brand new CSS stamps and dies!  I can't wait for our upcoming May release - it's all so cute!  I am on pins and needles to show off Sofia's spa party with you!

For now, though, I can definitely share this one with you - another Saturday Creations post with Precious Remembrance:

I thought it would be fun to take some of the images from the mom & dad set and do something a little different with them.

I stamped the border onto a sheet of blue cardstock, cut it apart into strips, and then adhered them under the boat.

The ship is from an adorable little set by "my cute stamps" - ahoy.  (Full disclosure:  when paper smooches came out with their "wicked nauticool" set, I was itching to have it.  It's adorable.  Then, there was this flash of remembering that I already have my own nautical set.... that I've probably only used once... that (in my opinion) has a cuter sailboat.  sigh.  Do you ever do that?  I obviously have too.many.stamps.)

I stamped the sails onto white cardstock, filled them with a text background, and cut them out.  The base of the boat was stamped onto red carstock in the same light ink.  I wanted to cut it out without showing off the stamp outline at all.



The clouds were stamped onto pieces of masking paper and then just placed onto the card-front as masks.  I blended inks for the sky before sewing my boat into place.

I hope you like my nautical dad card, and get inspired to look at your own stamp sets a little differently!

bright-monster-circus-party.... what?

That's exactly what I thought when a client first emailed me asking for invitations to a "vintage circus meets neon monster halloween party."  She had seen the party I threw for Thomas, and asked if I would create something for her.  (on a side note, I love a party mash-up!  My bestie threw her daughter a polka-dot-monster-barbie party one year, and it was hysterical...)

There were some negotiations over the monster colors... since neon scares me... and I came up with these invites:

She emailed me a picture of the beautiful black and white awning that would be a main focus of the party, so I replicated that in the striped background... I cut strips of black card-stock and adhered them to my white card-stock base.   I then stamped my monster scene, and paper-pieced the 2 not-so-scary monsters to add the pop of color that would marry the monsters with the vintage circus theme...  and all of the personal party info?  Hidden in the "très circus" ticket-strip at the top:

 Once unfolded and flipped over, the guest will be able to see all the what-where-whens of the party...

I have already started creating more goodies for this party, and I can't wait to share! 

For now, have a great day!  Thanks for popping by!

Monster party, part 2.

Hi, all!

Today, I'm walking you through Thomas' 5 year-old monster party: the decor, the activities, and the party favors.  If you missed all the food talk and dessert table decor, click *here* for yesterday's post.

When the kids walked in, I had monster coloring pages, crayons, glue sticks and googly-eyes waiting for them... (too bad I wasn't in photographer mode yet!)

After lunch, a rousing game of "Pin the Eye on the Monster":

(I'm pretty sure my nephew was cheating.  He said he was "re-arranging.")

I picked up some foam-core board at the dollar-store and painted my best monster onto it (based on the stamp set that I was using throughout the party, from my cute stamps)  I also added the same newsprint background that I had running through the party.

Next up?  Monster-cookie-decorating.  I baked sugar cookies into monster shapes (my daughter was right, they were deranged gingerbread men... but once those icing eyes went on, no one could tell the difference!)

 I think my nephew was the star of the show - but how cute is he, all concentrated on his cookie?

After that huge dose of sugar, what better way to keep the party rolling, than with a hubby-hosted monster-dance-party??  My hubs picked out all the tracks, and we got alll kinds of crazy:

Yeah, that's me with the dustpan (!)  The sprinkles were everywhere, but when "Thriller" came on, I couldn't help it.  And check my friends Bethany and Josh gettin' their grooves on... so when I show you the next picture, of their son, you'll understand that awesomeness runs in the family:

After dancing came dessert.  My Thomas specifically said he didn't care for a large cake, so we handed him a cupcake while all the kids crowded around to sing "happy birthday."  I love that smile!  (It's his awkward "I'll just stand here while everyone is staring at me"-smile... hee.)

Before the party wound down, we had some photo-booth fun:

(The silly mouths can be found *here.*)

As a parting gift, the kids got to take home a new, home-sewn, pet monster,

A fry-box of yummy treats,

and these:

I stamped images from the "eeek! it's a monster" set onto adhesive sheets, and punched them out. 

A special thank you to Tanya for grabbing my camera and snapping some of the shots while I was busy elsewhere :)

If you're still here, thanks for reading all the way to the end!  And thank you, thank you, thank you to everyone who's left me sweet comments on the monster party decor so far!

Thank goodness Maia's party this Saturday is just for dessert :)  

Monster party, spotlight on food.

Thomas celebrated his 5th birthday in happy-monster-style this past weekend, and I'm happy to report that all of the adopted monsters got a good night's sleep in their new homes :)

I thought I'd spotlight the food today, and show you our activities, decor, and favors tomorrow.

We had a bit of fun with googly eyes, popping them onto toothpicks, and into some of the food... our little pepper-turned-monster sent my birthday boy into a fit of giggles before the party.

I already showed off my googly-eyed cups, but aren't they even better with stripey straws?  Yes, I thought so too.

Sorry for the wobbly shot, but it's the only one I got of the lunchtime table.  We served everything a 5-year-old-loves-because-his-mommy-won't-let-him-eat-it-normally:  hotdogs wrapped in crescent rolls, chicken nuggets, smiley-faced fries... and some veggies so the other moms wouldn't hate on me too much ;)

Oh, and the blackboard?  hee.  I had fun re-creating the scene from the "eek! a monster" stamp set that I used on all of the decor.  (Full disclosure:  I put Maia in the tub with some toys so that I could have 10 minutes alone to draw this masterpiece, and after about 15 minutes (oops), Maia was crying and Thomas was yelling: "you better come see, mom!"  What I found was a whole lotta yucky mess...sigh.)  Um, back to the food?

My favorite touches were the fry boxes with the pretzels inside.  I got the template *here* and just gave it the same newsprint+monster treatment as our invitations.

The dessert table was so much fun to put together:

 Lemme show you everything a bit closer up:

 The husband-carved-fruit-vomiting monster.  My man was artfully arranging every grape on that platter... I have taught him well...

 I have a few of those cheap, plastic chocolate molds - after dipping the marshmallows and cake pops in the blue candy melts, I used the leftovers to make a batch of these star chocolates.

 Speaking of marshmallows, the one on the top right looks a little shady...

 Mmmm.... eyeballs.  I made cake balls, popped an icing eye on the top and plopped it down into a bowl full of candy worms.  The boys loved it.

 I'm only showing this picture because I can't stop cracking up at the googly-eyed-orange peeking out from behind the cupcakes.

I like to keep things as unified as possible on the dessert tables: I popped some popcorn (my first time on the stove-top!) and drizzled candy coating over it.  It was the perfect sweet-salty snack!

 They were all good.  They all got their treats.

Hope you enjoyed a look at our monster party food!  See you tomorrow for the rest of the party!

monster party sneak peek

Hi peeps!

Everything is almost ready for our monster party tomorrow, and I thought you'd enjoy a few peeks:

It's gonna be fun!

Also, Mirta is featuring my monster party invites on her blog.  She's sweet and funny, and those just happen to be my 2 favorite blogger personality traits :)

Also #2: is it Friday already?  I'm getting really bad at keeping up with my TMKS Thursdays feature.  (If you're just tuning in, that stands for "things my kids said"... I share my funnies, and then you get to share yours!)  Something hilarious I overheard yesterday:  the-now-7-year-old Sofia, in the middle of reading "Beauty and the Beast" out loud to Thomas, yoinked her book out of view and declared: "this part is not appropriate for you, Thomas.  You're too young."  Oh my!  Even now, I'm racking my brain to think of which part she censored... no idea, especially since she was nowhere near the end.  All I know is that I could FEEL her evil-grinning when Thomas let out a disappointed "awwwww."

If you have any stories of your own, share them in the comments.

Have a great weekend!

monster party invitations.

I feel like, if you don't already know what's upcoming in my home, I should share a little schedule of events:

April 21st - sofia's sewing party

April 28th - thomas' monster party

May 4th - maia's cookies 'n milk party

That's 3 weekends in a row, peeps!  It's better than last year, when I had a pirate party one day, tore down those decorations and set up for a ballerina party the very next day.  oy!  This year, I decided to take it a little easier... I'm still DIY-ing everything, but maybe a bit less of everything (I say that now, but I know myself...)

I'm sharing this out of order, but I'm so excited to show y'all!  Thomas asked me for a monster party... but a happy monster party ("no scary monsters, because scaring people is mean, mom."  I may be known for sneaking up behind my kids and making them jump outta their skin... hee!)

It was a happy day when I spotted "my cute stamps" for 50% off... "eek! a monster" was the perfect set to use for our little event.  I stamped the cityline in black ink, and then moved it around and re-stamped a few times without re-inking.  I love how that gives dimension without adding bulk.  I then stamped the monsters above the buildings (a la King-Kong), and colored them in with copics.  For a final touch, I masked the monsters and their flames and stamped PTI's newsprint background overtop.  I stamped off onto scrap paper first, and then onto the invite.  

Then, you open up the card to find this!  I went through all the same steps as on the invite cover.  But wait! there's more!

...and ta-da!  Open up that second fold to show the party information.  The newsprint background is there again, although it looks really light in this photo.

And the monster stuffies?  Yeah, I made 'em :)

Thank goodness they're monsters - they can look all kinds of wonky and still be cute, right?  I love them!

Since I used the generational stamping technique, I'm entering my card into this week's MIM challenge :)

Thanks for peeking!