Superhero Birthday Party

Since we began to homeschool I haven’t done any crafts… it kind of hurts on the inside but we’re still figuring out our rhythm and I love my little girl too much to do a shody job. However, we can never go small on a birthday. My dad always had big over the top celebrations for my brother and I and our friends so I try to follow in suit… Here I present our Superhero party – my favorite party we’ve ever had.

I made each kid a cape and mask. I went through lots of cape choices, but in the end I settled on making my own pattern that fit two across the width of the fabric I had. I used this picture to help. I cut out two shapes of that one in black and one in blue or purple (depending on if it was a boy or a girl) and just sewed around the edge with right sides in. I left a 7 inch gap at the bottom of the cape and then turned inside out. I pushed the frayed edges in and just topstitched the bottom edge. I sewed on velcro and we were good to go. I used wonder under to make stars with their initials on it but I didn’t top stitch at all – I just ironed it on. I used lining that I got at Jomar for $1 – $1.50 a yard. It was awesome. We had 22 little kids though so I still probably spent $30 for the fabric. For C’s cape I did the same but in pink satin and a cool sparkly silver fabric and I made it reversible. I should have topstitched her’s but she was the last cape I made and I was all done with capes by then! I also made her little wrist guard things and a mask that was really hard to make and pretty messed up, but she didn’t care. Let me know if you want the directions to either. We had a little photoshoot so here are some of the pictures.

Then I found this great website Create your own comic – It’s by Marvel ( I was a huge X-men fan growing up) and you can make your own comics with their characters. I then took the .jpg into photoshop and added c’s pictures from her photoshoot and we printed it out and framed it at the party. This would be a great present for your child if you had the patience you could make a whole comic book. Here’s ours.

The party was just after lunch so we just had horrible snacky food. I just made cupcakes and then used the same trick as the rockstar birthday. I made regular sugar cookies and added some cocoa to some. I just used tube icing to make the faces.
Here are some more pictures.
The reason this party was pretty enjoyable for me, usually I’m running around like a chicken without a head. We set up the party to be superhero training. There were six stations and the kids could go to them if they wanted or they could just play around. I got lots of ideas and inspiration from the following websites. Please check them all out. By the way I found most of them through Pinterest… if you have not already checked it out you definitely should!
Elegant Affairs
Designergirl 007
Our cups runneth over
One Charming Party
Create my Event
Dear Blog
We had 6 stations set up. And the certificate had the matching pictures so they ccould go up to my mom when they finished and get a sticker on their certificate. I got the certificate from Elegant Affairs which is an awesome website. The first station was monkey flying. We have this super monkey that you can fling with his arms, there was a water control station where they used waterguns to shoot ping pongs off of golf tees, there was running where I just set up cones for them to run around, light saving where they went through a tunnel set up to retrieve some glow sticks, there was building jumping which is just boxes covered in wrapping paper (it helped that we just moved a month before), and the final station was mind control where they had to guess how many m&ms in a bottle and the winner got to keep the bottle.And here are some pictures of us doing the stations.

Oh, I forgot to say that I made wrist bands for each kid. I just glued velcro onto rectangles of matching felt. As they came into the house they had to make their wristbands before they could get their cape and mask. Oh I also had two older boys that helped out with the light saving station and the water control station – they were a big help!

Then they all “graduated” from Superhero training. So we were going on our first mission. Here is a picture of them with their superhero listening ears (sorry I feel I should cover up or blur the faces of kids that don’t belong to me). Their mission was to find “Herbie” he is a kind alien who ate all the candy that was for the party and we have to find him quickly or he’s going to get sick. Luckily his superpower is that he leaves a picture of himself when ever he leaves that spot.

I would just tape the pictures around the house so that they would find the picture of Herbie in the toilet inside the dishwaser and then they would know to go to the toilet next. It definitely helps when you’re planning to write the place you are going to hide the picture on the back. It was a little crazy to have all those kids running through the house and at one point the little birthday girl got ran over and wasn’t a happy camper, but it got better when we took Herbie outside and decided to do some superhero medical work on him. I couldn’t have them thinking it was okay to beat up a little alien so I said that we need to get the candy out of Herbie and he’s not human so anyway we can do it won’t hurt him, and then they lined up and we hit the pinata.

Herbie got hit off of his string and still wouldn’t open. I guess I can’t complain about the clearance from Target $6.99 – and by the way I saw him again at Target last week and he was $14.99 I couldn’t believe it! Oh one more thing I found these absolutely adorable printouts through pinterest. These are so cute I want to put them everywhere, but we just settled for the goodie bags. We also had a little section set up where they could take pictures. We still had lots of cardboard from moving.

Weight Watcher

My mother-in-law helped me lose about 12 pounds by helping me track my points for a couple of days. Apparently 12-15 points worth of almonds a day isn’t helpful to losing weight. For Mother’s day I made her a little holder for her new points plus calculator. You can have the calculator subttract points through out the day from your total but she likes pencil and paper and just uses it to calculate individual item’s points. So I made her this little holder. If you would like to make it – leave a comment and I can tell you the measurements.

I actually made it from C’s old navy skirt that doesn’t fit anymore so that’s why there is a cute bow on it – it was on the skirt and I just left it on. I cut two pieces of cardboard in that rounded rectangle shape and then put the two pieces of fabric on top and traced out a pattern, I knew that with the pad and then calculator it would be thick so I left extra for the fold which turned into the pen holder.
I then cut out two pieces of thin elastic and put it inbetween the rightsides of the two ouside pieces of fabric. I also put in a little strip for the closing. You’ll see in the last picture. I then sewed around three sides and then inside outed it. Then I put in the cardboard and topstiched all the way around, this was the most difficult part. I’m sorry I didn’t take pictures through out but I was afraid it wouldn’t even work.

The calculator closes even with the elastic inside it, which is nice since then you don’t have to take it out of the holder.

I then closed it up and sewed on a little snap… I would definitely do velcro next time.

Baseball game

I have such girly girls it is often hard for me to think of things for boys… in the past I’ve made monster foam pieces and I made a tushie truck taker and car cozy – and this CHristmas I made a couple, including a personalized rubix cube. But I really don’t have much expereince. K had a boy’s birthday party and we had gotten some cool car crafts at JoAnn’s but I wanted to add a little extra. So here it is. A personalized baseball game.

The game is played by following the rules of baseball, but the two players each roll the dice and then you add up the two numbers to see what happens on each “pitch”. Here is a whole write up about it from a school district in Washington. I just shrunk the rules and numbers and putt it in the metal tin(after I laminated it) and then also printed out a field. I put the boys picture on the magnets with two different team hats and added two dice in and a dry erase marker on the outside for keeping score and track of outs. Hopefully he plays.

Fairy pegs

Our “cousin” is turning 7 and well we just wanted to make her something fun and I knew that she liked Tinker bell, we bought her a little tinker bell make up kit (because my girls love make up and I wanted to spread the joy) and well we wanted to add a little bit extra. So here is our fairy holder playmat and fairies.

I printed out this picture of the “major” fairies… no vidia because she’s mean. But there is Fawn, Rosetta, Silvermist, TInkerbell, and Iridessa. It would have been nice if I lined them up under their picture. I just used a thin sharpie for their faces and tried copying the outfits with cheap felt and hot glue.
The hair was a little bit tricy and I wish I took pictures along the way but it was late. elow is a picture of tinkerbell’s bun, it’s my favorite. Pretty much I’d cover the top and sides and the back in two or three different pieces.

I try to involve the girls as much as I can to instill a love of making presents instead of buying everything.. .but sometimes it comes back to haunt me. K said they look weird with no arms… really they need arms???  Well I found this amazing woman who makes lots of peg dolls, really beautiful artistic ones and some even with arms.. I can’t find the link to her blog, but I will – the small object also has amazing peg dolls that I like to droll over.  So my husband got out the itty bitty drill bit and went to town on the bamboo skewers. I sanded them down, and they were all different sizes but I just went with it.

The arms move and everything. You drill a hole through each arm and the body and put a wire through to hold it. I tried to make it cute and curly, but I definitely should have had a larger gauge wire. To make the wings I just drew in sharpie on my laminator sheet and put some glue sick over it and glitter – honestly I just prayed that my stupidity wouldn’t ruin my laminator which I love… and thankfully it didn’t – totally works, just don’t use too much!

And here the ladies are individually. Even though Tinkerbell is probably my least favorite of the fairies, I think she came out the best out of them all… it’s all about the face and hair.

And here is the holder. I made it really quickly with felt and just sewed up the bottom for the holder spot and then sewed the green on and then after that I shamelessly just hot glued the other stuff on. Thankfully the birthday girl liked it!

It all rolls up with velcro – hot glued onto a ribbon.

Craft Fail and a win

My oldest daughter started kindergarten this year, and it was bitter sweet for me. I’m so excited she’s growing up, but it is a little unnerving letting her go and begin to spend so much time with other influences. In walks an adorable freckled girl who is shy, sweet, and oh so kind. She and K became quick friends. They have such similar personalities, look (except coloring), little sisters and a need to adhere to the rules. It has been such a blessing to have her be K’s best little friend at school. Sadly we are moving back home this summer and they will part so we knew we had to make her something fabulous for her birthday. I wanted to make little dolls of the two friends that actually had their photos on the dolls that way our little friend would always have a K doll to cuddle with even after we are gone… but there’s a reason that people don’t make dolls like that.
Here are some examples of what I was hoping to achieve but didn’t suceed in..It’s Me doll and  Miss my Mommy Dolls and there are those with the whole body printed on a pillow like the Daddy Dolls.
I tried to take the girls and make them plush and as you can see it was a complete plush failure! So I turned to the queen of doll making Hillary Lang. She has an amazing blog and website that you can get lost in. Please check them out.
I bought the Kit, Chloe, and Louise pattern ($15) and follow the directions. It was easy even for someone like me who only had one doll making experience.
So here are the pictures that say a thousand words. Also on Hillary Langs website she sells one pattern as a Make-a-long story which gave me the idea to take the dolls to the girls school and give them a little photoshoot – I can’t say how amazing their teachers are and I can’t believe I forgot to take a picture of the dolls and the teachers – doh!!!!  I printed out the pictures on my ink jet, laminated them, and then glued them into a blank board book from Oriental Trading. Each doll has a back pack with toothpick pencils inside that K made. I also made them their Kindergarten folders with real homework inside. I hope you like it.

These folders were my favorite part!

Enchanted forest and fairies

I’m not a blogger, but for some reason I feel the need to post lately. This is a project the girls and I did in January when we were out of school for what seemed like weeks. We were inspired by a Constructive playthings toy.
Unfortunately this adorable toy came with a $90 price tag. We had some left over foam board from our halloween projects for Horton Hears a Who (you can see below).

So the girls and I ventured off to make our own. The pieces of foam board are 2 for a $1 at the Dollar tree which made this whole thing cost under $4 with the fairies. I’m not really sure quite how to describe our creative process so here are lots of pictures and a couple of words.

I just drew a cartoony tree shape and went from there. I used a pond shaped piece for the bottom and a curvy oval for the cross piece. I actually traced them on paper so if you want a copy I can scan them all in and send them to you. To stand up the pieces I traced around the bottom and used the blade to carve out slits. I used hot glue which filled in all the space where I made the holes too big. It was alot of trial an error, but all together only took 40 minutes. The next part was hard – do I do it myself and have it look nice or let them decorate it. So I went in the middle. They did most of the begining steps and then I watercolored on top of it. Oh and we put a swing in. I made two holes with a compass end and put hemp through it to a foam board rectangle.

My oldest wanted to have her try at making shapes out of the foam board so she made this doghose for the fairy land. You can also see all of the “graffiti” over the forest. Luckily the watercolor covered most of it up and both of the girls painted with me.

Surprisingly watercolor looked great on the foam board, but if you don’t paint on bothsides it warps. The tree that we painted both sides of stayed straight but the other one warped in toward the side with the paint. We also made these little fairies. They sell these little clothes pins at Michaels and we used our coupon to buy them. Yay… less than $2. We decorated a whole bunch. The petal wings were the idea of my 3 year old, and she made the one by herself. Sometimes I forget that they teach me as much as I teach them.

We just wrapped them in fabric, used sharpies for features and hotglued on yarn for hair. Take note – too much hair and they fall over.

felt face, fun and Fashion Design

I made this little felt “paper doll” for my daughter’s birthday gift. She already had a felt board so I made the figure and cut out some clothes. This is actually really easy to do. I used photoshop (you can use picnik if you don’t have photoshop or elements). I found a paper doll body that I liked and then put her face on top. I printed it out on printable fusible fabric. I cut out the ”leotard part” of the body and left some felt around the edge so that the felt clothes would stick on better. Then I ironed it on to felt. My tip is a quick one for those with girls with long hair. I cut extra felt and sandwiched it between the photo and the main felt that way I can still put clothes all the way up to her neck without covering her hair. Hopefully you’ll understand better with the pictures. Let me know if you want better details.

This is her with no clothes on and here is a lacrosse outfit I made using a plastic bag, sharpies,parchment paper and felt. You can see how the uniform can go under her hair (that’s the extra piece of felt underneath.  So the coolest thing about this felt doll is that has enabled my daughter to become a little fashion designer. I used regular white paper and made an outline of the doll’s body for her. I put it under a piece cut from a plain white grocery bag and I have her draw some clothes and color it in. I carefully cut it out. I put parchment paper ontop and iron it to white felt. I then cut the white felt out and she has clothes for her doll that she designed. It’s going pretty well, but I wish it was easier to cut the plastic she has trouble doing it and is frustrated that I have to do it…. YAY independent spirit.
Here is a picture of the paper body form underneath and then we drew the outline of this dress together and she’s coloring it in.

Now I have to tell you about the amazing woman who showed us all the joys of ironing plastic bags to all kinds of fabric. Please check out Filth Wizardry. She is awesome and I would love it if she were my mom. Besides the cool accent, she has too little girls that have been exposed to so many awesome open-ended creative adventures. Read the whole blog. Here is her specific post on Alpha mom that I used for how to iron on plastic bags to felt.
My 3 year old wanted to get in on the action so she described an outfit she wanted me to make for Madeline (her felt doll – no personalized one yet – maybe for Christmas). It’s my favorite, but I made it a little small when I was outlining – The felt sticks wonderfully.

And here is a free form objects from my youngest.

Rockstar Birthday Party ideas

I am obsessed with craft blogs. I don’t think a day goes by where I’m not looking at some for ideas. Sadly, I never have time to post the actiities and crafts we do at our house on this blog. This time I wanted to give back and hopefully some of these ideas will be helpful to someone out there. I love HWTM and found several cool ideas for a rockstar party. The parties are gorgeous, but I think they are probably expensive since they get cookies from one place and cakes from another. So here is my take on a party where you can do it yourself… for under $75 the budget my husband gave me. We often make the birthday presents so I count the party as a present.
We started off the party with a rockstar photoshoot. I took a plain target black t shirt and appliqued a guitar on it. For the gloves I took black stockings and cutoff the legs. At the heel I cut a hole and I cut a large hole at the toes. I sewed the fabric into a ruffle and then sewed it on to the edge of the stockings. Let me know if you want a picture tutorial ( I need to make a pair for my younger daughter).

I then took the pictures and made them into 11×14 color posters at Staples. I made 6 and they were only $1.10 each. I also printed out 3 pages of pictures for the drink labels. All together I spent around $10 at Staples.
I’m notorious for using images I see on the internet through Google search because I never ever ever sell anything. It’s always just for my family. I’ve used some images in these posters. I’m hoping that since it was only for my printing that it is okay. Please let me know what you think about that? I’m starting to think if I’m feeling weird about it, it’s probably not a good idea.
I’m usually stictly an evite type of girl, but K’s teachers are super cool and will distribute invitations if you invite everyone or just all the girls or all the boys, etc. We invited all the girls. My father in law gave me these ID badge holders this summer for the girls to use so I just printed out the invitation to look like a backstage pass and then we tied rockstar ribbon on top ribbon was $2.00 at JoAnn’s after discount.

My favorite craft of the party was simple with a great wow factor. We made fake rockstar hair clips. I bought the little ones at JoAnn’s (maybe around $2.50 for 15). Then we had these two headband wigs from the dollar store for $1 each. I just cut a chunk of hair and I traced the clip onto some felt. I put the hair on the clip and I hot glued it all over so that it would stay and put the felt on top. It helps to have the clip open when you are doing this. It was fun and easy. I did 14 in 30 minutes. You can definitely take this to the next level if you wanted to givev the hair clips as gifts. First off put the felt on both sides of the clip and decorate the felt. Check out this great post from knit1slip1 for instructions on this. 

Here is a picture of the clip in action.

For the party we had lots of activities planned. The girls came and colored in rockstar magnets ($2.25 at Michael’s with a coupon – how do people live without those 40% off coupons?) Then they all picked out jewelry and put on make up. I gave them little pouches of q-tips (sewed up the edge of pink wrapping paper – you can see it in the bottom picture below) so that noone would share makeup brushes.

 Then I broke the girls into three groups and they went to different stations. One group got their nails painted, one group made heead bands and the final group shot a music video in the “recording studio”  and then we rotated after about 10/15 minutes.
I made 14 white headbands using this tutorial from Jezzeblog. I didn’t do the buttons though, I just added elastic (Check out Tatertots and Jello blog for some inspiration). I didn’t even tuck the ends over ijust sewed with white thread ontop.  I did it over 3 days so it wasn’t so bad and I had all the materials on hand so it was free, but I did by fabric pens at Michael’s for $7(with coupon). I was painting nails at the time so there are no pictures, but here is an after picture of me modeling it since my girls are sleeping. I used my cricut to cutout the names of all the girls on freezer paper and then I ironed them onto each headband. The girls painted that first and then decorated around it with fabric pens. If I did it all over we would just use the fabric pens, the names looked cute, but it was a lot of extra work for not much return. The art work varied greatly since there were 3 year olds and 7 year olds at the party.

The best part of the party was the rockstar videos. It took my husband and I HOURS!!!! to find appropriate songs that were still cool. Lots of people said kidzbop but some of their songs are still inappropriate. We are a little bit over the top in that way. We really only listen to Christian music my daughter definitely wouldn’t know who Justin Beeber was if it wasn’t for her kindergarten friends. We set up all the tutus, musical instruments, and accessories we had out for the girls along with inflatable guitars and microphones ($8.99 and $7.99 on amazon with free shipping yay!) . The girls loved it but my husband quickly learned that a 3 and a half minute song is way too long for a video, he would try and help them come up with ideas of things to do, but mostly they just ran around in circles. I hung up a black plastic table cloth ($1.50) and I made ruffles out of garbage bags as the ruffles on the outer edge. This was my go to decoration. I cut garbage bags in strips and then ran them through my sewing machine pushing up the whole time. They were cute and shiny. I also added some pink vinyl pictures and words from my cricut and we hung up christmas lights for the stage. We moved my younger daughters bed for room and added some ballons.

Then came the part for me trying to be a party planner and making things look nice. I got this pink zebra fabric at joAnn’s for $1.99 a yard and I bought 6 yards of it. It is what I used for my daughters applique, the table cloth, and everything I could think of. So here is the sweets table. The party was from 6:30-9PM so there wasn’t any real food just horrible junk food – parents were warned.
I will have close up pictures in a moment but I want to put links to all the wonderful tutorials I used so that you can use them too. I’m actually only making this monster post because I’m hoping it can help someone out there because it made my now 6 year old so happy and I wouldn’t have been able to do it without the amazing blog world!
PomPoms -Lindsey the lees  and  Hotdiggityklr
Cake stand – There wasn’t a tutorial but I used the picture of the orange and yellow cake stand from froufroufrilly
Cake Pops – The one and only bakerella
Chocolate guitar cupcake toppers – I used the tutorial from hostess blog and ikat bag
Guitar lollipops – Zakka Life (this woman is a genius) These are so cool and so easy – I am cheap though and didn’t want to waste the ink so I only printed out the part of the guitar with the strings and just cut the guitar shape out of sparkly scrapbook paper that I already had.
Here are cool rock star links that I found but didn’t necessarily use:
Rockstar cake
Rockstar ideas
Hannah Montana Party
Flower rings - Mygirls and I  made these and I thought about doing it instead of headbands, but it is mostly for adults to do… but so cute!
Amazing Party
An even more amazing party
You rock Valentine

Here are some more pictures. Again you can see my garbage bag ruffles, the picture of my daughter that I blew up and put in a picture frame, the table cloth and candy. I also made stands for the cake pops and ring pops. I just wrapped styrofoam from some mail we had gotten (I keep everything – much to my husband’s dismay) and made holes in it for the pops and I made slits in the one for the ring pops… I love the way the ring pops look!

I found these great drinks at walmart for $3 for 6. They are just grape and strawberry crush and the labels came off really easily with a little googone. I don’t usually shop at walmart, but we ended up getting those drinks, the plates, and the wrapping paper that I used for lots of odds and ends all for $18.00. I got the cool straws at the dollar store – I bought two packs, and I made the labels and had them printed out at staples. I made little name tags for the drinks which actually came in very handy!!!

I almost forgot about my most daring adventure. I made sugar cookies with royal icing. I found an amazing tutorial at Brown eyed baker and made guitar cookies. I used Betty Crocker sugar cookie mix, because well… I’m not really a great baker. I spent $2.25 on the mix and $12 on the food dye (but I only used a little bit.)

And finally here are some little extra odds and ends.

The top left picture is a little area I made for the girls to pose and take pictures. I usually use that frame to go around my kids art work so it was really easy just to put the fabric into it. Then I made the girls each a little bag with their initials for a goody bag. Inside was a little bag with all sorts of little rock star odds and ends. I spent about $25 on things for the girls to take home besides the guitars and microphones. And my favorite picture is in the middle on the left. We all watched the music videos together, and I can’t even explain the little girl squeals and laughs and jokes. It was truly a blessing.
Seriously how do you real bloggers do it with these long posts, or daily posts… well I’m thankful. I hope this helped. As for the run down of cost – I went over, but I get an allowance every week for activities with the girls and eating out and we saved it for a little bit to cover the extra. It cost $99.50 not including the food dye. And then I spent about $15 more on candy/refreshments and other odds and ends. So lets say all together it cost $115. I definitely could have cut corners, and next time I’m going to try to stay within budget. I’d love to hear if anyone has any other ideas.

What I made for Christmas part II

I will follow up with some tutorials and links to tuorials for these.

What I made for Christmas (Part I)

I had planned on having a fully handmade Christmas, but it didn’t turn out that way, but I made a lot. Sadly I have to plan better next year because sometimes the handmade gifts cost more than other ones.
So here goes in no particular order:
These little leg warmers are everywhere, but most of the tutorials come from making them from socks, but I wanted to make them from tights.

Also for this little girl I made one of my favorite gifts. At a library sale I bought this book since all the characters in the book were handmade I figured I could recreate it. And when I did and saw how easy it was, I wish I could have bought a whole bunch of the book.

For her and her sister I made these little piggie scarves and hats. I found a tutorial for the scarf here: and I found the hat pattern at Martha Stewart.com

Then for her sister I made some Play Dough. I used this recipe which is awesome   and my daughters helped me to color it.

This I made for our aunt. I had found one of those Longbarger basket ( I totally screwed up the spelling there) and I sewed a little inset for it so that she can take her knitting with her. I also tried to make a needles holder but it was a little lopsided.

These were super easy. I just followed the directions here and used photoshop to set up the pictures.

I’ve been wanting to make this for so long, and I alsmost didn’t make it because it was looking silly at first, but I pressed on and think it came out okay. You can find really cheap stars about $3 at The CHristmas Tree Shoppe if you are lucky enough to find one. The idea is from Scrapbooks etc. In the tutorial they use black and white pictures and different colored papers but I wanted all the red in the pictures so I just used black and white papers… most of which I just printed on computer paper.

Tween boys are hard to make something for so I got them gift cards, but I wanted to give a little something, so here is a photo rubix cube. I just cut the pictures and then modge podged them on, unfortunately one came off while he ws playing with it… so next time I might need to sandpaper first. And the second gift is a flag football set. I bought the flags at the dollar store and then sewed the bag.

To be continued…