BOO-Marks for Halloween

Hi all, I hope your week has been going well.  We made it through Sandy without losing any power or damage to our home.  I really think that we picked the perfect house because in the 8 years we have owned this house we have never lost power!!!  Amazing I know.  I have spent the time getting ready for Halloween.  I made our costumes this year, so I was finishing up those.  I will share those tomorrow or later in the week.  Today I am sharing the Boo-marks I made for my daughters treat bags at her school Halloween party.  Get it Boo-marks, bookmarks.  My daughter has started chapter books this year and has been begging me to make her some bookmarks for her books.  I thought that this would be the perfect non-edible treat for the favor bags.  So here they are:

I made three for each child in the class (a total of 42).  Here is how to make these bookmarks:

• Cut a 3" x 6" sheet of cardstock and fold in half to make a 3" x 3" card
• Cut each card in half diagonally - when you cut, you will end up with one section that stays together and the other section ends up being two triangles
• Cut a 3" x 0.5" sheet of cardstock and fold in half width wise to close the end of the card - I used two strips to adhere the single triangles together
• Decorate as desired
• The tags are from Happy Hauntings cut at 2"
• The monster and spider is from Create a Critter 2 cut at 1.5"
• The ghost is from Simply Charmed cut at 1.5"

Here is what the bookmarks look like on a book.  The ghost is my favorite because of the googly eyes.  They sound complicated to make, but once you do one they are quick to put together.  

Here is a picture of them packaged for the favor bags.  I made the toppers using my Cricut Markers and the Happy Hauntings spooky font.  Here is a picture of what my craft space looks like when I am working on a project of this size:

Super messy huh!!!  I will clean it up tomorrow when the girls are at school.  So that is all I have for you tonight.  I hope you have a safe and Happy Halloween.  Thanks for stopping buy.

Cake-Pop Favors

Hi all, Happy Friday.  Hope your week was fun.  Ours was the end of the Birthday madness month around here.  We celebrated our youngest daughter's third Birthday Tuesday.  We had a fun family day at a local fall festival.  Today I have to share with you the cake pop favors I made for the kids birthdays at school.  I think cake pops are the perfect treats for kids at school because they are really only two bites of cake.  So here they are:

The toppers above I made by cutting the base tag from the Birthday Bash cartridge at 2.5 ".  The circle part of the tag is actually made using the Avery round labels and their online design software.  It was a quick and easy way to make a bunch of tags at once using my printer.

These tags are made using the same base tag as above.  I then used my Cricut markers and my Cricut to draw the images and text on the orange circles.  I used the Create-a-Critter cartridge for the pumpkin and the Once Upon a Princess cartridge for the text.  I think these came out super cute.

We that is all I have for you today.  We are off to get pumpkins for carving tonight.  There is supposedly a big storm headed this way for next week so want to get this done today.  Next week I will share the costumes I made for my girls and I.  I think they are coming along great and will be very cute.  Have a great weekend.

Fall in Skyline Drive

Hi all just thought I would drop in to share some great photos I took at Skyline Drive today.  The colors were absolutely phenomenal.  From bright yellows to deep reds and everything in between.  It was inspiring, and I may be incorporating some of these colors in future projects.  So here they are:

Thanks for stopping by.  Hopefully you can find some inspiration in your neck of the woods!!!

Cupcake Party: Part 4 - Cupcake Game

Happy Friday everyone!!!  So excited it is the weekend.  We are going to enjoy some quiet family time, maybe check out the fall foliage on Sky Line Drive.  So today is the last installment of the cupcake decorating party series.  I am going to share with you a giant felt cupcake that I made for the kids to play pin the sprinkles on the cupcake.  It was super easy to make, and incredibly inexpensive.  I am talking, I only spent about $5 to purchase the felt needed for this project. 

So the way I made this was I decided that the whole game should be about 3' tall.  My youngest is only 38" and I wanted her and her friends to be able to reach everything.  I then made myself a small sketch on paper and followed it as a guide when I cut the felt.  I then hand cut all the sprinkles and the cherry out of different colored felt.  We hung it on the wall, put a blind fold on the kids and spun them until they were pretty dizzy.  All the kids had a blast playing the game and it gave some friends time to put out all the decorating supplies for the real cupcakes.  Here is my cutie playing.

So that is it, super easy and super cute.  I may try to make some felt envelopes this weekend for the girls to play mail with.  I have a ton leftover.  I will leave you with some other photos from the party.  I hope you have a great weekend.

Cupcake Party: Part 3 - Table Decor and Favor Boxes

Good Evening everyone, hopefully your day was great.  I personally am looking forward to the weekend.  Well tonight I am back with some more cupcake decorating party details.  I am going to share with you the table decor and favor box decorations that I did. 

These are pic of the tables and the individual place settings that I did for the kids.  I decided that the first activity would be for the kids to decorate their chef hats.  As I mentioned in the first post, I got the aprons and hats as a set on Amazon for about $5 each.  I also scored and 80 count box of Crayola Fabric markers on Amazon for $40.  If you have ever looked at the cost of fabric markers at the crafts stores you will know that this is a steal.  They usually end of being about $5 a marker at the big box craft stores.  All the kids had a blast decorating thier hats, and to see their individual creativity was great.  As you can see in the photo above, I also made place cards for each child.  I used my Cricut Imagine, the Kate's ABCs cartridge and the Cupcake Lite cartridge to make these.  I then used Stickles to decorate the cupcakes printed on the cards.  My Imagine actually worked this time, and both print and cut the place cards. 

Here is the favor boxes.  I purchased pastry boxes designed to hold four cupcakes.  For the tag I again used my Imagine to print and cut the top layer.  I then cut the base layer in pink paper on my Expression.  Then I used hot glue to adhere the blue ribbon bows.  It was simple and I think added a special touch to the plain boxes.  Of course my cute little model makes it look fantastic.  She was so proud of the cupcakes she decorated all by here self. 


 So that is all I have for tonight.  Tomorrow will be my last installment, where I will share with you a Giant Cupcake game that I made for the kiddos.  Hope you have a calming evening. 

Cupcake Party: Part 2 - Banners in Pic Monkey

Hi all, well I am back with Part 2 of my cupcake decorating party installment.  Today I am going to show you the banners I made as the background for the food table at the party.  I am not sure they are called banners or posters, whatever you call them, they came out great and were easy to make.  Here is the pic:

So I used Pic Monkey, the free online photo editing software.  This software is really cool with all the editing it allows you to do for free.  To start the posters I used some free Chevron images I found on Pinterest here. I uploaded the color I wanted to Pic Monkey and then added the labels and text.  Kimbo over at A Girl & a Glue Gun did a fabulous tutorial on Pic Monkey.  So after I had done all my editing I sent the files to my hubby, who is part owner of an Architecture firm, and he printed them on their color plotter.  You could also go to staples or an online printing company.  I made the banners 2' x 3'.  I think they came out pretty cute, and made an impact in the room.  Unfortunately, as you can see from the photo, we were not allowed to remove the original artwork from the walls before decorating.  They were actually screwed into the wall!!!. 

So that is all I have today.  Tomorrow I will share with you some of the table decor and favor box decorations.  Hope you have a fabulous day. 

Cupcake Decorating Birthday Party: Part 1

Good Evening everyone.  I am back as promised with the details from our Girls birthday party that we held this weekend.  It ended up being a great party.  All the planning and effort that went into it really paid off.  As I mentioned in an earlier post, we decided to have a cupcake decorating party.  There ended up being 19 kids between the ages of 3 and 7.  Crazy I know!!!  With that many children I decided to rent our Community Center.  We have almost white carpet through out our entire house, so there was NO way I was going to let 19 kids decorate cupcakes in our house.  Here is a picture of the room after I completed decorating. 

We hung pom-poms from the beams in the room.  I actually looked at purchasing these until I found out they cost $19.99 for only six of them.  I found a great tutorial here on Martha Stewart's website on how to make them.  I ended up making 10 multicolored pom-poms for about $8.00.  I then set up a seat for each child with their personalized aprons.  Here is a pic of the aprons I made for our girls.

 

I actually made one of these for each child, personalized with their name.  I forgot to take a picture of all of them in the rush to get them finished.  I found the aprons along with hats for about $5 each on Amazon.  I used Expressions Vinyl heat transfer vinyl and my Cricut to make these.  Here is another post on how I use this vinyl.  As a side note, I want to say, only because I have used it so much, that I am kind of getting disappointed with this heat transfer vinyl.  It doesn't seem to hold on well after washing.  Not sure if I am doing it wrong, or if that is the way all heat transfer vinyl is.  I may try a couple other brands in my next projects.  It looks really good on the first wearing but after that I have not had much luck.  Let me know if you have any ideas or info on this.  

With that I also had to make a couple bibs for the babies that were coming.  These did come out super cute as were the models wearing them!!!  Here is a photo of my adorable niece wearing one.

So that is all I have tonight.  I decided that I would break up the party details into several posts.  If I had not, this post would be a mile long.   Tomorrow I will be sharing some banners that I designed on Pic Monkey.  With that I will leave you with a photo of my sweet girls blowing out their birthday candles.  Hope you have a wonderful evening. 

Party Success

Hi all, wow I can not believe I have not posted in almost three weeks.  It has birthday craziness around here.  I have been crafting up a storm for the girls cupcake decorating party.  The party was yesterday and it was a big success.  I can't wait to share all the deets with you.  I am in the process of editing some of the photos so it will be sometime this week.  My youngest daughter's actual birthday is next week so I will be doing some more crafting for that, but definitely not as intense as the last week.  I also plan to make our Halloween costumes this year, so I can't wait to share that with you as well.  So with that I will leave you with a photo of my sweet Big Girls on the morning of thier party.  Hope you have a great start to your week, and stay tuned for some details of the big party.