My little pony birthday

I never gave you a full look at the My Little Pony Party from this summer. I have featured many if the ideas in my "Pinned it:Nailed it" blog entries but wanted to put them all together in one place for you to view. 

The biggest decoration hung in the kitchen. A giant crepe paper rainbow coming from tissue part clouds. 

On the wall next to it you can see several paper fans. I used light weight 12x12 coordinating colors of paper and made lots of them and hung them all over the house. Tutorials for how to make them can be found all over the web. 

I printed several My Little Pony graphics from online and mounted them on colorful cardstock. 

These cute little guys below hung off the fireplace mantel. I used my paper punch to cut the circles, printed and hand cut the pony graphics, then sewed them on my sewing machine.

Below: On the right: More examples of printed and mounted graphics with some tissue paper poms for a cute centerpiece. One the left: I splurged and get the pony balloons. 

I wanted the silverware and straws to be displayed in a cute way on the buffet. I used down polka dotted paper and made a little cone, cut off the bottoms,  places it in a glass, then dropped in the silverware. It added some color and spunk.

The pony table decorations were a Pinterest inspiration. Originally in a ball jar I decided to use sprinkles in the bottom of a juice glass and add the small plastic pony.

Outside we setup a special tent for the kiddos. Inside we had a picnic table with two buckets of crayons and papers with a blank pony template with "design your own pony" written on it.

Some kids drew existing ponies and some designed new creations. 

Here are some printed graphics that I mounted on paper fans. These hung outside on the kids tent.

The cake and cupcakes were from a local bakery. It was a great deal and tasted wonderful!

To add to the fun we also had a photo booth. I used my Cricut to cut out beards, glasses, hats, thought bubbles, and lots more!

The background was made from a simple white plastic table cloth, some paper dot garland, and a few paper fans (made from colorful wrapping paper)

I made a cute little centerpiece from some online printed graphics. I used a bowl and put foam inside. Wrapped the bowl with polka dot tissue paper and covered the top with coordinating pink. Then I put the graphics on sticks and put them in. 

I made a pair of giant paper fans. This one with a #5. The "partner" to this one was on the front door decorated with cute crepe paper twists. (I forgot to take a picture of it.😕)

The party was a huge success! A lot of work went into it and it'll be awhile before I do another big one like this but it was well worth the effort!

3D Butterfly Art

This was a total Pintrest steal. The pin was originally from Etsy but I wasn't going to pay $25 for a project I could make at home.

Supplies:

Canvas

Paint

Cardstock in a range of similar hues

Cricut machine or a punch to cut out shapes

Coat an 8x8 mounted canvas it with black spray paint.

Cut out 15 to 20 of each butterfly in each shade at 1" each.

Use small Glue Dots to adhear the paper to painted canvas. If you use regular glue the paper may, and probably will, fall off easily.

To make the process faster I put multiple butterflies on the glue dot strips at once so I could work faster.

I chose to make a heart shape. You could make this become any shape you'd like. Start by placing one in the bottom and then work your way up using each hue.

When I got to the top I had a few butterflies "break off from the pack" and fly away. Just for a fun effect.

Finished product.

Valentines Door Decor

My daughter took this picture while we were in the midst of this craft. Thought I would share it. It gives you a sneak peak at my crafting desk… This area was semi clean, usually you can't even see the surface of the desk. 

Step one in this project is to cut out hearts. I used my Cricut machine and cut out a variety of 2" 2 1/2 " and 3" hearts in different shades of red and pink.

Punch holes in the hearts. Some in the top some in the side. It gives the finished product more variety.

Pick a ribbon, thread or twine. I chose to use a twine I had picked up during the holidays from the dollar bin at Target. The red and white lent well to the Valentine color theme.

Thread a heart on to a length of thread and tie to securely at the bottom.

Thread second heart on and tie above first heart, continue repeating this process.

After the first strand was totally finished I wised up and found it was easier to just thread a small loop through the heart over the area I wanted the heart located....

…then just simply pull the string through. 

Much faster!

We hung four of these I front of my daughter door.

The Lovable Raccoon

Supplies:

Construction paper

Scissors

Glue

Cut 1 large heart about the size of an 8x10 paper for the head.

Cut 2 medium black hearts about 4x4ish for the eyes.

cut 2 small hearts (3x3ish) in the same color as the face.

Cut 2 tiny black hearts to go inside the ears and 1 tiny black heart to make the nose.

NOT pictured but need are 2 one inch white circles for the eyeballs.

Attach ears to top of head.

Add small black heart for inner ear.

Add large black hearts for eye background and tiny nose at the bottom of the heart/face.

Add whites of the eyes.

Add small black circle (cut from scrap black or just use a marker) for center of eye . 

Finished products.

Never have raccoons been so loveable!

Construction Party

A friend of ours had a construction themed party for their 3 year old son. The decorations were out of this world! She said that pintrest ideas gave her some inspireation and she filled in the rest with her own ideas. 

It was sooooo cute I asked her if I could photograph some of the items to share with all of you. 

So here is a peek at a Construction Birthday Party. 

When you entered the party there was a great traffic barricade made by Michelle's father and the black tape of the sidewalk made it feel like a street. 

Inside the kitchen was construction central with construction themed signs she purchased, handmade tissue paper balls in coordinating colors, toy construction equipment, and themed food. 

All the food featured fun labels that tied it into the theme

 and the use of black polka dot ribbon made it pop.

Clementines: Boulders         Wrecking Balls: Gum balls
Lumber: wafer cookies        Nuts and Bolts: Chex mix

Below are more  examples of themed food. I love how the tortilla chips were placed in the dump truck, construction cookies (forgot to ask where they were made) and of course, cups of dirt with worms and all. 

Bottom left picture show the favor bag that was passed out. A little shovel tied inside
of a bag with Reeses Pieces and a tag that said "I Dig You".

Michelle did a great job using the traditional yellow, orange, and black construction  

colors to tie in the theme and make it bright and festive. 

Even the utensils were tied into the theme. Each set of utensils were tied together with ribbon and a little "tools" label. 

In this last picture you can see that the fun continued outdoors. A sandbox with bulldozers to play with and a cut out to take your picture in. Also in the picture you can see the little yellow hard hat on the ground. Each child that attended got a hat with their name written on it. 

Way to go Michelle. This was on the best decorated theme parties I have ever been too. I look forward to seeing more of your creative ideas! 

Halloween Decorations

I love to decorate for Halloween. I used to go way overboard but the last few years I have found that keeping it simple is much easier and makes me just as happy. Here is a peek at my front porch. 

This witch is one of my favorite things. My mother in law saw the idea in Martha Stewart magazine and had her husband make it. He made one for me as well. He simple drew it on plywood, cut it out, and painted it black. Mine is about 5 feet tall and is hinged to fold in half for easy storage. On the back are two hooks that a metal pole slides through and into the ground to hold the witch up. Under the hand is a little hook that the lantern attaches too.  

I found a plastic black cauldron to set in front of her and have orange lights it is so it "glows" at night. For added fun I also put purple lights in the lantern.

Above is my little pumpkin patch. I picked up the sign from JoAnn's many years ago. It is versatile because it works at halloween with the spiderweb. After halloween the web and Jack-O-Lanturn (not carved yet at time of this picture) will get tossed out and I keep the gourds and uncarved pumpkins sign since they are still make with the seasonal decor.  These will stay out through Thanksgiving day. 

P.S. the mum in the container should be more colorful but it is a bit dry because I haven't been faithful at giving it water. Oops.