Project Runway Birthday Party

Bear had her birthday party a few weeks ago. Since she loves to design clothes she knew she wanted to have something with a design theme. Finally it was decided. 

A PROJECT RUNWAY PARTY.

First off we had to make the invites. I decided to try and make a magazine cover. This is what I came up with.

The Front

The back

 As usual there was a lot of prep involved. First I started off with the traditional birthday banner. But this time I made the banner look like a bunch of little dresses. You can't see it that well but this banner says "____'S YEARLY FASHIONS." Then above it I put a picture of ages 1year through 10 years above it. This was her decade birthday and I wanted to make it special.

For the rest of the decor I bought different kinds of fabrics and cut out a bunch of poster board templates and then covered them with  the fabric. Then stuck the dresses on the walls as well as cut some circles out of paper to look like buttons.

My Love and I had just went to IKEA and found some cork trivets that I ended up painting to look like giant buttons too.

 

A little more fun miscellaneous decorations included these marshmallow treats that my mom made. The girls loved them.

 

My mom also made these cute little waters to go with the party. 

I had the invitation blown up at Kinko's for $2 and put one of Bear's designs next to it.

  

This year for the cake I was going to try and attempt to make a 3D dress form but didn't want to mess with fondant so I opted for a runway.

The entire table scape.

And of course we couldn't have a Project Runway Birthday without a runway. With some staging from our church, a couple of tents and some sheets. Wa- la we had a runway.  

This is the welcome sign that the guest saw when they arrived at the party sign.

When all the guest arrived we started out with our first thing on the agenda. Bear has never been fond of games at parties. She is more of a craft girl. So for the craft I tried to find a no sew project. I wanted to stay with the design them. We ended up making some no sew totes. The whole tote is made out of knots.

After the totes were done each of the girls did do a little sewing. I had them make a felt flower and sew a button on it. This was Bear's finished tote. Cute right? Just 3 knots!

After the totes were made came the Project Runway Challenge. It was soooo much fun. Each of the girls were handed a bag

 

Each bag was filled with these exact same supplies. I also had a "community" bin that was filled with high heels, different colored duck tape and a few other supplies that anyone could use.

After each designer had their bag they were told that they had 35 minutes to design an outfit that they had to model down the runway. Luckily some of the high school girls from our youth group stopped by and helped the girls. Each of them designed their own outfit.

My Love was the host of the fashion show. He did great.

Bear started the show off with her design and her trademark pose.

 The designers all modeling their designs.

 Then it was time for the guest to leave each of the girls got one of these cookies that I tried to make look like dresses.

We attached them to some design kit things that we had gotten from the dollar store wrapped in fabric. Bear also designed a hair clip for each of the girls and attached it to the favor. They also of course took home their homemade purses as the part of the favors.

Ikea Makeover

So guess what?! I went to IKEA for the first time this weekend! My Love and I just decided to have an IKA date. It was super fun too. So many things to look at.

We weren't going to IKEA for anything special but then I saw these. They are trash baskets.

I have been looking for new wall pockets for a while. I made these a while back for the kids. Its a place for them to put all their school papers and homework folders in. I got so tired of them all over the counter. 

I really liked this system. It was working great but every time we opened the refrigerator we seem to open it a little too wide and they were getting cracked and busted up.

So out with the old. 

And in with the new. Thanks IKEA. I just hung them on the wall but leaving the top part empty I laminated some scrap paper with the kids names on it and placed it on the top of each trash can. These ones are so much more roomier for the kids to put all their paperwork, folders and even books in.

Another special find was these cork trivets. They were super cheap and I had been looking for something that was a circle just about this big too. It was for Bear's Runway birthday party. I saw these and knew they would be perfect. 

And they were. They made perfect giant buttons. Here's a little sneak peak of Bear's birthday party.

Monster Pillow Pet

Monkey loves monsters. The nice ones, that is. Since he is really into Pillow Pets as well I wanted to make one for him for his birthday. I bought some fabric and made this little creepy guy. He loved it.

Monster Birthday Party

A Monster Party! This is what Monkey wanted for his birthday party this year.I thought it was a cute idea and was excited to get started. Although it seems like the inevitable happened again. My kids pick these random parties that stores don't sell decorations for. Which in turn means I have to try and come up with something. I enjoy the challenge. Sometimes :)

This was the invitation I made.

Monkey wanted to pose with his monster shirt I made him just for the party.

Monkey's birthday banner.

Most of the decorations came from the dollar store combined with the fabric store. These were little hanging monsters that I made out of foam balls and covered them with felt.The decorations were pretty simple. I didn't have much of a imagination for this party. I was going to just do mainly streamers and balloons but then a couple of days before the party these popped in my mind while we were eating dinner on paper plates.

I had a ton of felt leftover from the monster balls so I decided to cover paper plates with felt and make different faces on them. Then tape them to the cabinets and walls. They turned out kinda funny.I looked everywhere for a "pin the eyeball on the monster" game but had no luck. I ended up painting this guy and then just cut out a bunch of eyeballs and called it a day. I am no artist so luckily this guy was really simple to paint.

I forgot to get a picture of the table scape but I did take this picture before hand. These were again from the dollar store. They are dusters which I glued some felt eyeballs and mouths to. Wa-la....Monsters!This was the cake. I thought this was going to be the easiest cake ever to make. I mean really. How could I go wrong? Well, I decided to use cool whip for the frosting to make it extra easy. Uh...big mistake! Note to self.....cool whip melts almost instantly with food coloring in it. It was horrible. I ended up scraping all the cool whip off the next morning and covered the cake with a pudding frosting. Thank goodness for Dream whip!I honestly had no creativity for the garage. I just couldn't think of what to do. So there really wasn't any decorations. I did manage to set up a little "Monster Craft" area. I cut a bunch of shapes out and the kids made monster after monster. Too Cute! Here are a few of the monsters that the kids made.

One of the games we played was of course....Pin the Eyeball on the Monster! Instead of using a blindfold we used monster eyeballs. This was hilarious on the kids.

When it was time for the kids to leave they all got one of these. Their very own stuffed Monster with a mini coloring book. I tried to make all of them different so that no one had the same one.

This was the one that Monkey wanted.After everyone left the cousins stayed and hung out a little longer.

A Handmade Christmas

Now that Christmas is over I can blog about some of the handmade Christmas gifts that I made this year. I try to always make a handmade gifts for the kids and their cousins if I can get my act together. Last year I didn't do too well but this year I went to work. Thought I would share some of them. I really like how some of them turned out. Others well...you'll see.

This one here was for my niece. Its a take-n-go Tic-Tac-Toe Game. I think she really liked it.This one was for my nephew. Its for his hot wheels. I know he has a lot of them. Its an organizer for him to hang on his door or I guess really anywhere. There are little individual pockets for his cars.Here is an animal scarf I made for my niece. It turned out more creepy than cute. It looked like a cute idea when I saw it online but when I was done making it it just looked creepy. I guess I should have figured out that it was going to look a little creepy when I had to cut the stuffed animal in half.Here's a little blanket and some burpies that my baby Nephew got for Christmas.

My mom and my Aunt got these heat/cold rice packs. I think I might make one for me. They smelt so good!Both my mother-n-law and sister-n-law got these sugar rubs. Here's another that I want to make for myself.One of the gifts I made for my kids was this. It looks like just a sack right?


Its a Lego Sack! So far this is solving all our problems with Lego's in the carpet. No more Lego's in my vacuum. All he has to do is open up his sack and when he's done well, just close it. This is making clean up so much faster and easier now. Yay!Last but not least my hubs and I bought Snuggies for the kids a few months back. They were on clearance for $3 at CVS. We bought one for each of the kids. To make them a little more personable I sewd their names on them. They are using them everyday and every night.

Well there's our homemade Christmas this year. I was lucky to find most of these ideas on the Internet. I wish I had more time to do things like this. Its was so much fun. Finding the time is difficult but I really do love making things like this.