Thursday, April 21, 2011

Alexa's Minnie Birthday Party

Alexa's birthday is on Saturday and she is so excited!  We won (big surprise) a birthday party pack of printables from MooMoo's and Tutu's and decided on a Minnie Mouse Party!  We invited a couple of friends over and had a great time!

Amy brought over their bounce house which was a HIT!

The girls hanging out

mmmm cupcakes.  
Do you love the Zebra decor?  Remember a few weeks ago when I won the CJane motherload?  One of the gifts were these totally awesome zebra striped satin sheets.  The pillowcases made a great table runner!  :)

If you are wondering, yes that is Alexa with unbrushed hair.  And yes, it was her party.  Don't judge me.  :)  It wasn't worth the fight.

We had a fun easter egg hunt


I made all the girls these super cute capes to wear with their initials

They were reversible

And I made these cute Minnie hair clips
I found the idea for these clips at Funky Polka Dot Giraffe and was actually planning on buying them, but her shop was closed so I made them myself.  Not too bad.  :)  By the way, she has the cutest hair clips I have EVER seen.

Here is her banner and another cape
We had a GREAT time and a fun party!

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

New Endeavers

I have decided to separate my creative ideas, recipes and home redo's from my family blog.  This blog will stay specifically to journal my family life.

I would LOVE LOVE LOVE if you came by my new blog to check it out!  It's called Turbo Bubble Gum and it's full of fun!  I will be working with a couple of other crafty chicks, so stop by and say hello!

We will be having a blog warming party with giveaways and easter ideas next week!  Come on by and win some cool stuff!

Monday, April 11, 2011

Scouts!

B-dog in his scout shirt (Thanks Cassie!)
Brandon just started scouts last week.  He is absolutely LOVING it!  He has already finished the belt loop for chess and is working on video games.  haha.

And a little story about B-Dog.  Yesterday he told Ryan he never wants to leave Arizona and will stay living with us forever.  Ryan said, "Don't you want to grow up and get married?"  He said, "How am I supposed to do that?  You never taught me how!"

Saturday, April 02, 2011

Brandon's LEGO Birthday party

Brandon really wanted to have a LEGO birthday party this year.   There are a lot of lego parties out there in blog land, but this was our fun fun party.  First, I found this cute picture here and added text to it on picnik.com.  Then I printed it at Costco for what... 13 cents a pop?  Super cute!  (Stickers added because you didn't really want to see my address and phone number, did you?)
 Here is a picture of his cake.  I baked a small rectangle and used the rest of the batter for 6 cupcakes.  It worked great, but after I saw some cute ideas for large marshmallows, instead.  That would work, too!


We made some juice box labels to look like legos, and drew circles on the plates with sharpies.  Idea found here.  We also used mason jars filled with Duplo blocks for balloon weights and to make the table look pretty.
Ainsley and I made these cute mashmallow pops found at Living Locurto.  Technically, they are cake pops, but I wasn't feeling that ambitious.  So I bought some yellow candy melt at JoAnn's with my 40% off coupon. I cut two small marshmallows and placed one half (sticky side down) on the top of a large marshmallow.  Stuck a stick in, and dipped!  After they dried we used black cake gel to draw faces.  It was really fun!

I was, however, perplexed at how to display them.  I see cake pops everywhere, but I didn't know what to do with them!  I bought some craft styrofoam stuff at the dollar store by the flowers.  I chopped it up and put it in mason jars.  Then I took strips of brightly colored paper and wrapped it around the inside of the jar.  Not perfect, but it worked for me.

The left over candy melt covered some strawberries.  Brandon LOVES chocolate covered strawberries.

We had a guess how many legos are in the jar game.  Wow.  8 year olds are really bad at estimating.  Really bad.
It's funny how Ainsley made sure Brandon wasn't in the house for her party.  But she sure made her presence know at his.  Couldn't get her out of our faces for a minute!  lol
We played a few games like: who can make the highest tower in 3 minutes.  Who can build the strongest bridge, who can build a spaceship, etc.  I had a bunch of bags of legos on the table.  I had a bowl full of candy bars and the winner for each contest chose a candy.  I think everyone got a prize for each contest because we only had 5 boys there.  I just used different awards like "most creative" "Fastest time."

We also did a relay race outside with legos in a spoon.
For party favors, I bought 8 packs of legos for $20 on Amazon.com.  Super deal!  They put their candy bars in the bag as the won prizes.  I also bought some mini lego figurines at lego.com on clearance for like 75 cents a piece.
It was a small and inexpensive party, but just perfect for Brandon!  We had a great time and Brandon was thrilled!