Birthday Bash 2011

Tomorrow is our birthday!! 

And since we won’t be able to share our cake with you, we came up with something even better….

We want you to celebrate our birthday with us!   Get ready to celebrate in style with a birthday bash full of giveaways!

For the next 11 days, we’ll be featuring some of our favorite things and giving you a chance to win them!  We’re so excited for our birthday this year and we’re thrilled to be sharing our day with all of you!  So, make sure you stop by our blog daily to check out each giveaway and enter for a chance to win some of our favorite products!!

Birthday Banner

The best part about this banner is that it can be customized to fit any birthday theme!  For our big day, it was customized with superheroes!

My little one is obsessed with anything involving superheroes.  So, I wasn’t surprised when he requested a superhero birthday theme.  {Although, he did make a special request to have some Transformers thrown in the mix!  And just in case you didn’t know, “they’re superheroes too” according to my now four year old!} :)

Want to make your own?

Start out by cutting circles in coordinating scrapbook paper.  My circles are 5 1/2 inches across.  Then, cut out your letters.  {Mine were all cut out using my Cricut and Sure Cuts A Lot 2 software.}

Using scrapbook glue, paste your letters down to your scrapbook paper.

Now for my little guy’s favorite part…the superheroes!  :)  On cardstock, print out images from the web {just do a Google image search and you’ll find any theme you can imagine}.  By putting four images to a page, I was able to fit my superheroes onto the white cardstock circles.  After the images are cut out with a thin margin around the image, glue them to the center of your white circle.  

Then, using a paper punch, punch two holes at the top of each circle.  {I should have had my Cricut cut the holes for me, but didn’t think about it until after they were cut!}  Now, string your letters to spell your birthday message with your superheroes {or other them picture} between each of your words. Twine works great because it rough enough that it keeps the letters from sliding around. 

Now hang up your super cute banner and celebrate your little one!

{Just curious…is anyone else’s little one obsessed with superheroes??!  I’m pretty sure we talk about superheroes for about 95% of the day! :) }

Flower Garden Birthday Party

It’s so hard to believe that my baby is 2!  I know people say this all the time, but they seriously grow up too fast!!  To celebrate her big day we had a flower garden themed birthday party.

This invitation was created in Photoshop.  I’m just starting to learn the program and had lots of fun putting it all together!  Most of the scrapbook elements I used for the invitation came from Shabby Princess and Summertime Designs.  They have so many great free downloads!  After the invitation was created, I uploaded it to Snapfish and sent it to our local Wal-Mart.  (I despise how much I ALWAYS end up spending at Wal-Mart every week and yet I keep coming back….)

The decorations were very simple.  I bought the butterflies at a local store (Each one was only $5…I knew it would cost me more to make them and additional time I didn’t have)  and made the tissue paper pom-poms using Martha Stewart’s tutorial.  That Martha is one crafty lady!  I absolutely love the butterfly and flower garland because it is strung from my kitchen all the way into my living room.  It was a great way to tie both rooms together!

Macie had so much fun at her birthday party (she even decided to change into a new outfit as soon as it was opened….after all, it IS boring to wear the same outfit for too long!!!) and I feel blessed that so many of our family members could come help us celebrate.

 

 

 

Linking up Here…

Butterfly Garland

My little girl turns two this weekend!!  Time goes by WAY too fast!  Since I’m a working mom, I spent the past weekend getting a head start on the decorations.  {{I figured since it could easily double as spring décor that it wasn’t bad to put it up early! =) }}  It was a super simple project that cost me absolutely nothing since I already had all of the materials…love that!

Start off by finding  a bunch of coordinating papers to fit your color scheme.

Since my garland would be seen from both sides, I decided to glue two sheets of cardstock together (patterns on the outside).  After this dries, you’re ready for your next step.  {{Towards the beginning of my project I began to think that it would have been much easier to buy double sided paper but I stuck firm to using what I had!}}

Using my Sure Cuts A Lot 2 program and my Cricut, I cut out butterflies and flowers using my glued double sided scrapbook paper.  I made sure that my images had  punches on them so that my Cricut would cut the holes and I wouldn’t have to punch them later…..definitely saved a lot of time!  Also, if you’re using a Cricut to cut heavy paper, you’ll need to change your pressure to max and your blade depth to 5 or 6.  {{Also, if you’re interested in creating this project and have Sure Cuts A Lot 2, email me and I would  be thrilled to email you my files.}}

After all of my flowers and butterflies were cut out, I strung them using twine.  The twine worked really well because my cut outs didn’t slide at all!  If you look closely you can see where I tied each section.  I alternated butterflies and flowers with 6 on each strand of twine.  Then, I began to tie the stands of 6 together.  I decided to leave my tied pieces long because I liked the look.

I made A LOT of garland…it is strung from my kitchen all the way into my living room.  I will definitely be saving this project…perhaps it will be my spring mantle decoration next year! =)