Beach par-tay!

Ok, so not so much a beach party, as a party at the beach house.

You may remember that we spent a few weeks in Virginia Beach just last month.



It was glorious. During that time, both my nephew and my hubby celebrated their birthdays.  My sister brought all kinds of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle decorations to the beach. I totally winged it for my man. And for cheap too, so I thought I'd share.



I picked a spot in the dinning room to stage the desserts. The sideboard was perfect, as was the cutlery box that I propped the cake up onto.

The first thing I bought was a 2$ roll of black and white wrapping paper and went to town, using it as a backdrop and also as bottle wraps.



Now, these bottles. I didn't find them at the house. When on vacation, we like to scout for drinks that are not available to us in Canada. I picked up a 6-pack of Margarita drinks and washed and stored each bottle as they were polished off. I cut lengths of wrapping paper, wrapped them and called it a day.  Just don't look too closely - I was really missing my paper-cutter! My scissor work is questionable, hee hee.



For the cake, I went REALLY fancy. A chocolate cake mix. The only problem was the lack of cake pans. The one I used as a cake stand was the only one I could find. Boo-urns. I pinterested my problem and thankfully found a solution: i baked the layers in the waffle-maker we'd been using all along for breakfast. At 3 minutes per cake layer, this was such a quick solution. While the layers were baking, my sister whipped up the filling and we were done really quickly.



Dudes. These cinammon cookies from Trader Joe's are amazing. I wish we had a Trader Joe's around here!

Back to the party.



The swan centerpiece was hilarious. I had been eyeing it, atop a bookshelf for about a week before I climbed up and brought it down. It matched my color scheme, so I thought, why not? What I didn't expect was everyone asking where the swan came from. Not much of a eye for detail, the rest of them!

I used a leftover square of wrapping paper and a roll of crepe paper to dress up the table.  Let's pretend it all works.



This guy looks pretty happy.

Here's the decor damage:

roll of wrapping paper - 2$
roll of crepe paper - 1$
candles - 1$
chalkboard easel - 2$ with a half-off coupon at michaels
garland of stars - 8$ each (I bought 2 of them on liquidation, but I justified it by knowing I'll use it for christmas decor this year.)

If you wanted to throw a similar party, you could even skip the chalkboard stars and cut a garland out of cardstock. With just a few special touches, you can throw a cute party anywhere you go!



Thanks for stopping by,

♥.

JOYful resolutions {CSS group project}

Happy day-after!

if you're anything like me, you're living inside of a sugar overdose... I still can't believe that Christmas has come and gone!  It was such a wonderful time spent with family and friends, sharing gifts, making memories, and eating more food than we ever thought possible...

As we sail towards the year's end, and start thinking about our new year's resolutions (getinshape*cough*getinshape), some of us over at Clear & Simple are showcasing the limited edition JOY stamp set and offering our own crafty resolutions for 2013.

I've created a little something for the midnight ring-in.  An embellished bottle of bubbly, (actually, sparkling apple juice here, since we'll be serving it to the kids) a little confetti pouch, and re-worked party blowers.

(of note: last year, we set all of the clocks back so that the kids thought they were staying up until midnight with their cousins, when in reality, we had them all in bed by 9pm.  We did a fake countdown and everything.  I don't know if we were bragging a little too loudly, but Sofia found us out.  whoops!  This year, we're staying in and letting our kids stay up as late as they want.  I look forward to watching them drop like flies somewhere around 10:30pm... my husband thinks I'll be falling asleep on the couch by that time and leaving him to entertain the 3 musketeers.... I suspect he may be right.)


To create the embellished "wine" bottle, I cut into a sheet of silver cardstock to spell the word "cheer" (yes, a play on the usual glass-clinking "cheers") using the uppercase alpha dies, and backed it with a piece of very subtly striped patterned paper.  For a bit of extra frill, I adhered a strip of double-stick tape to the back of the patterned paper and gathered a length of white crepe paper, so that it looked ruffled from the front.  A bit more double-stick tape was used to adhere it all to the bottle.  To bring in a bit of blue to my bottle, I stamped a favor flag die-cut with the coordinating frame image, and stamped the "and happiness" sentiment from the limited edition "JOY" stamp set.  Some blingy rhinestones and silver cord finished it off.



For the midnight toss (doesn't everyone want confetti at midnight?  uh, maybe not the parent who'll have to clean it up, hee, but we'll allow it anyway...) I cut circles of various sizes from "my style blueprint," "silver," and "a blanc check" cardstocks.  I threw in a little coarse silver glitter at the end.  I knew the package would be ripped into, so no need to make a fancy topper.  A little creative inking (I nabbed the "for" and "midnight" from 2 different sentiments in the favor flags set) gave me a custom sentiment, and I framed it in blue to match the bottle label.  A little ruffling of silver tissue paper and silver cord also tied back into the embellished bottle.



The party blowers will be a sure hit!  I brought home a pack of really gaudy blowers from the Dollar Store, and immediately took them apart to make them more beautiful.  After taking apart the blower, here are the steps:

step 1: cut a length of silver tissue paper to size and wrap around the blower base.  adhere with double-stick tape.
step 2: using the original blower's paper (the part that rolls and unrolls) as a guide, cut a length of computer paper to size and fold as indicated by the original.  stamp a design (from "designer lines") before using scotch-tape to secure the paper closed.  roll the paper, and secure it with a small clothespin (or rubber band, or paper clip or anything like that) for a few hours (this will help it to keep the rolled shape.)
step 3:  secure the base to the blower.  I stamped a strip of white adhesive paper with a starry motif from the "sweet dreams" set and used that to adhere the two together.
step 4: try it out - works like the real thing!

My crafty resolution for 2013 is to collaborate more with other artists.  I have reached out to several local artists, and I hope that party season 2013 will be its best ever ;)

A few of my fellow CSS designers are also sharing their own crafty resolutions: Dana ♥ Lori ♥ CSS

Thanks for stopping by!

black & white damask decorations.

I've been tinkering a little with the blog design... it will be a work in progress, but I hope you like what you see so far.  The tabs at the top will help everything look a little cleaner on the main page, and will (eventually, when I sort through everything) help you to find specific posts faster... and what do you think of the new blog header?  Being so computer-challenged, I was quite proud of myself :)  I even managed to create a matching watermark for my pictures!

A client of mine is getting married next weekend, and asked me to create decorations for her reception's sweet table.  In keeping with her black & white damask theme, I created banners, candy labels, a table sign, and a ruffled banner.

Thanks for peeking!

Milk & Cookies party.

I feel like I could nap for days... party season is officially over at casa Muni... 3 parties, in 3 weekends, for 3 very excited kids... it was crazy and fun all at the same time!

In case you missed out, Sofia kicked it off with her "sew seven" party.

Thomas' monster party is split into part 1 and part 2.

And now... milk & cookies!

We decided to keep things very simple for Maia.  She doesn't really have friends of her own yet, so we invited family to come and celebrate.  I created a *gasp* digital invite:

Staging Maia for a picture was, obviously, the easiest thing in the world.  Just give a kid a cookie...

I dug up some leftover banners from her 1st birthday party last year (it pays to keep party decor...)  The ruffled crepe paper banner and the pom poms worked perfectly.  I created a simple banner using lawn fawn images and other stamps.  Here's a close-up:

Once I settled on a design for the banner, it was easy to continue creating more paper-goodness for the rest of the party.  For starters, everyone got a "cookie report card" - a kraft envelope...

 with all of the recipes inside... and a spot at the bottom to rate each cookie.  And speaking of cookies...

There were very yummy varieties: like peanut butter and jam thumbprints,

 classic chocolate chip...

 sugar cookies with white chocolate icing...

 nutella & marshmallow-filled oatmeal whoopie pies... (ignore the melting marshmallow on the side... I do paper-pretty more than food pretty!)

and... there were some cranberry/white chocolate chip oatmeal cookies that I was obviously too busy scarfing down to photograph.

You know how some people make health resolutions on January 1st?  Not me!  I hold out until after party season.  Time to detox all this sugar :)

ETA:  I had more than a few requests for the recipes!  They've all been abbreviated to fit into the small-ish recipe cards.... HERE YOU GO!

Thanks for looking!

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!