Sienna's Artsy Birthday Party!

Wow, this was a fun and inexpensive party to plan! Since it's a theme all around being creative, it worked that I really had to be creative to pull it together! So here's some of the things I did:

First off, as posted before, here are the invites


Sienna's Artist's Beret
I made it without a pattern, but I basically just measured a radius of 2-3 inches bigger than her head, Then cut a 2-3"Xthe end circumfrance of the big circle length of a strip, sewed elastic to one of the long ends of the strip, then sewed the other end to the cricle, wrong sides out, then turned it inside out to reveal the simple beret!

Here are some random pics of the food and decor

Click Here for a tutorial on the Pom Poms.

Ribbon garland on the table

The cheese and grape skewers were made by using cookie cutters. Make sure the cheese is thick enough, they tend to break apart if they are too thin.

Here is the pallet cake I made (two round cakes stacked, then carved out and frosted to look like a pallet.

The table cloth, I splatter-painted myself. You could use a variety of paints, but I used watered-down acryllic paints, and a sylicone baster.

The activities:

Play dough station (homemade)Click Here for the recipe, with a handprint station next to it


Drawing on the wall (Freezer Paper on the wall with crayons so kids could draw on it)

Noodle and Fruit Loops Necklaces (Penne Pasta painted with watercolors)

And of course, The party favors... A Do-it-Yourself Sock Puppet kit!

Karen's "Kim Anderson" Baby Shower

I know I've posted quite a bit about this already, but I just wanted to post how it all turned out and came together. As I said before, the theme was the Kim Anderson photos of little kids with roses and adult clothes. It was a fun theme to do, because we had to stretch our minds to think up different things that we could do for it. As posted before, I did the Invites, the party favors, and I made a fun little dish. Shawnte', my sister-in-law, did the cake, and Shasta, my other sister-in-law did the games. It was a lot of fun, and I think it was a success! Here's some pictures of the event:




This is the cake Shawnte' made. It's a little newsies cap, to go along with the theme!


I made the dish in the middle, they are snails made from refrigerated breadstick dough, and rolled up like a snail. Before you roll it up, you brush marinara sauce over the breadstick lightly. You have to roll a little bit in front under for the head too. Then you poke holes in the head once they are cooked, and put carot slivers in them. It helps when you cook it, if you put a couple of toothpicks in the "shell" to avoid tip-overs.

Sienna's Birthday Party Invites

Here they are in all their glory. Pretty simple and straight forward. I splatter painted them, and took her picture myself. The rest is probably easy to figure out.


Below is the the picture under the vellum:

Mosquito Net

This one I've been done with for quite some time, but I realized it was on my "to-do" list on this blog, and that I hadn't posted about it yet! It was really pretty simple. This project was for Sienna's "room". Right now she's still in a corner of the office, but this summer she'll have her own room, so I've been starting a line of projects in preparation for this. I've always loved the look of mosquito nets in little girls rooms, but unfortunately they are really expensive even for plain white ones. So I decided to make one myself. This saves TONS of money, and you get it just the way you want! I used 6 yards of tulle for this, ribbon of choice, and an embroidery hoop. First, you need to cut your tulle. It will already be folded in half length-wise, so fold the height in half, so it is now 3 yards tall. Cut along that fold, then cut along the length-wise folds on each 3 yard peice. You should have 4 9-foot peices. Next, loosen the embroidery hoop to where you can easily place fabric between the 2 circles. Place the 4 peices of tulle in the embroidery hoop, around the edge. There should be one piece of tulle per quarter of the hoop. You should have about 2 feet above the hoop and the majority left hanging below the hoop. Fold over the top in half, and tuck tuck that edge into the hoop, so you have about one foot above the hoop. Then, you get some ribbon or string, and string it through the fold that you just made at the top. Sinch it together and tie it together in a bow, so you can hang it from it's loops. You may want to double knot it. Straighten out the cone at the top, so it's to your desired tightness. Also, since the embroidery hoop has the bigger part on the back, you will need to make sure you tighten the top so that the knot is closer to the back as shown in the picture below, so that the balance is even. Then, trim the hoop with ribbon however you like!

Party Favors!!!

As promised, here are the party favors for Karen's shower. To my dismay, they don't even make the tradition candy bars anymore... the kind that have foil wrappers with a paper wrapper over it. I made due with what I had though. I used Kit Kat Bars, wrapped them with paper with the little saying, "Thank you for sharing this special occasion with us!" on it. Then I cut several squares of plain white fabric for the diaper (after measuring how much it would take to cover the Kit Kat Bar, they're about 6 inch squares) which I put on just like you would a cloth diaper. Something that made it easier was glueing the corners down onto the front BEFORE pinning them, then just putting the safety pin on for garnish. The roses were from 2 mini rose wreaths from the dollar store. When I pulled them off of the wreath, I was left with only the buds, but I wanted a full stem. So I pulled off the fake baby's breath and cut the tops off of them, and I used their stems to hot-glue to the rose buds. Then I just slipped the roses into the diapers. And that was that!

Karen's Baby Shower Invites

My Sister-in-law, Karen, is expecting a baby boy in August. Together, this is her and her husband's 7th child. But it's been awhile since they've had a child, and of course, now have gotten rid of all of their baby gear. So, of course we found it necessary to throw her a shower! The theme Karen wanted was the Kim Anderson photography, the black and white pictures of the little kids in big-people clothes. I was in charge of the invites and favors (I'll post about the favors later). I really wanted to incorporate the pictures in the invites, and not just the color scheme we were going for (Black, White and Red), so that when people got the invitations, they knew what to expect. I couldn't think of a way to do this, since I'm pretty sure it's illegal to just print them off of your computer and use them, plus I thought that wouldn't look great anyway. I also thought about just getting a bunch of the pictures, but that would get kind of spendy, plus probably a lot of time to wait for them to be delivered. After studying the pictures for awhile online, I figured out what I would do. I figured, "Hey, I've got a little boy, why don't I just re-create these pictures?" So after narrowing it down to two that I liked, I decided to sort of mix them into one for the shot I would take of Breck.

Here are the two pictures that I chose, first of all:


And here's what I came up with:


And here are what the invites turned out like:



It was pretty fun, and now I have a super-cute picture of Breck from it!

Millions of Beanies, Beanies for Me

My friends Alyssa and Lyndee decided this summer to share their talents, and open a booth in the Farmer's Market here in Moscow. Alyssa makes these adorable bows (Bitty Bowtique) and Lyndee makes these awesome purses! Well, they successfully recruited me, though I've never done anything like this before, and am a bit lacking in the confidence to do it! I will be making baby beanines for them, so night and day everyday, I've been working my now-nimble fingers to try to get enough beanies to sell! It went pretty well for my first week, can't wait til next time!

Yes, another one.

What'd you expect when I have a little girl, a new little neice and friends who share all their bow-making secrets with me? This one happened to be for baby Sarah, who just left North Idaho last week! Boo hoo! She looked smashing in it though, though the bow was about the size of her head!

P.S. If you think you've seen a lot of bows, just wait 'til the next post when I over-do you on beanies!

Another Beanie

This one is the exact same one that I made for the auction that I mentioned a couple of months ago. The only thing that is different is the color of the button. If you know how to crochet you could pretty much figure it out.

Crocheted headband

This was a fun little project. I didn't come up with it myself, however, I got it from this great site. She has other really neat corcheted flower accessories on there too, all with patterns.

Smocked Dress

This was something that was actually a test run for later, but I was so happy with the way it turned out, that I just continued to make it. I wanted to test out smocking material to make a little dress for Sienna. It's actually pretty easy, I didn't use a pattern, but you don't need one. All you need is measurements.
1. Measure around your little girl's chest. Take one inch away from that, and cute 4 peices of elastic to that length. (I used 1/4 inch elastic)
2. Cut a peice of fabric that is about twice the length of the elastic. Crop it wherever you want it to hit on her leg.
3. Hem the top BEFORE you start sewing on the elastic.
4. Sew the elastic to the fabric by stretching it as you sew it down, so that the elastic reaches the end of the fabric. Continue with all 4 pieces of elastic, and this will create the smocked look.
5. Hem the bottom.
6. Fold in half wrong side out so that elastic edges meet.
7. Hem and sew the sides together.
8. Turn right side out, and you pretty much have it, all you need are straps, if you like, which I just did by sewing strips of material each side (one below right shoulder in front, one below right shoulder in back, etc.) and tied them together in a bow where they meet.
9. I put ribbon around the bottom, but you can do whatever you want!
*You can buy fabric at most fabric stores that has already been smocked, which might make this a bit easier. However, doing it yourself allows you to have whatever fabric you want!

Itty Bitty Booties 2

Here's some more itty-bitty booties I made for a friend who just had a little girl. If you want a free pattern, refer to the previous itty-bitty booties post.

St. Patty's Hair Bow

Well, St. Patty's Day has yet again come and gone. We all decked out in our best green attire, ate green food, and relaxed. Sienna had a cute new little green shirt, and you can imagine my horror when I realized I had nothing to put in her hair! :) So I made her a little bow. It was just the typical nylon head band (cut both ends of a knee-high nylon, then glue them together in a band) then I did the same thing with the bows that I did in my bow post below, except I skewed them to the side to get a figure 8 AFTER they were glued into a loop. Then I just tied a knot and trimmed it for the top bow. Simple Simple!

Breck's Birthday Party

Breck's birthday theme this year was a "bee" theme. It was so much fun to do, I wish I could do it again! We had games like "Pin the Stinger on the Bee", Singing time (including some bee songs), a "who knows Breck best" game. We ended the fun by watching "Bee Movie".


The invitation




I made this cake with the Wilton's wondermold pan. It's the one that looks like a bottom of a dress, but I figured it kind of looked like a beehive too!


Deviled bees: Make regular deviled eggs, then dye some seperate mayonaise black, then pipe it through with regular frosting bags and tip(small round tip)


The pretzels were made by getting both white and milk chocolate melties, melting them, dying the chocolate black, and the white chocolate yellow, then dipping them in. I did some yellow, some black, then some yellow with black stripes.


You can see the pin the stinger in the background.


I stamped and colored this paper for the "who knows Breck" game


Sorry this is sideways, my computer was acting up when I tried to make it right, but this is the song sheet.


These are the party favors. You can get these boxes at Michaels, thay have all dorts of colors. I used black scrapbook paper for the top, with yellow ribbon, and a bee stamp in the corner. I filled them with "Bit o' Honey"s

Breck's Invites

Here are the invites for Breck's 2nd Birthday Party!