Banner for Retirement Party

My dad recently retired so I made him this banner.

 

 

The scalloped squares were cut from kraft cardstock, the lacy squares were cut from a beige cardstock and the letters were cut from a chocolate brown cardstock.  All the shapes and letters were cut on my Cricut using my Art Philosophy and Artiste cartridges from Close to My Heart.

 

I sponged brown ink onto the lacy squares to give them more dimension.  And I sponged brown ink on the edges of the letters.  I attached the letters with dimensional adhesive to make them stand out more.

 

For the two end pieces of the banner, I chose to use hearts because my dad's last day of work happened to be Valentine's Day.

 

 

The beige hearts were cut using my Cricut and then sponged with brown ink.  The smaller items on the end pieces were stamped into beige cardstock, cut out with scissors, and attached.

 

Avengers Captain America Birthday

My super husband just had a birthday.  He's been watching Avengers cartoons with the boys lately, so we threw him a Captain America birthday party.

I was able to recycle the banner I made for his Angry Birds-themed party last year.  I added Captain America shields, made out of layered card stock, to the ends of the banner.

I set the table with Captain America napkins and blow-outs.  Plus, now that Disney and Marvel are the same company, they feature some fabulous free printable party decorations at family.go.com,  including coloring pages, masks, and the little guys you can see on my table in the photo below.

I kept the food fun and easy.  I made Wasp's Wings (hot wings, and some not-so-hot wings for the  kids), and Thor Hammers (pretzel sticks in chunks of cheese).  I set out various salad ingredients and said, "Avengers, Assemble! (your own salad)."

Since we are having another birthday party this weekend involving cake, I wanted to make something different for dessert.  So red, white and blue Jello!  (Well, the white part isn't actually Jello; it's Cool Whip.)

 

I also made Patriotic Popcorn for the kids' bedtime snack. I can't believe I forgot to take a picture of it because it turned out super cute.  You can find the directions online at Bloom Designs. I used red and blue mini M&M's and red, white, and blue sprinkles along with the popcorn and melted white chocolate.  I will definitely be making this again with her ideas for other holidays and colors.

 

So that's it!  After dinner, he opened his gifts and the boys "helped" him put together the Captain America Lego set he got.

 

Celebrate the Release of the Breaking Dawn Part 2 with a Twilight Vampire Party

Getting ready to see the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 in theaters next week?  Gather all your vampire girlfriends and watch Part One together at a black-and-white-themed party!

I transformed my family room into a haunt fitting for vampires, covering my kids' Star Wars posters with Bella, Edward, and Jacob.

I also covered my husband's Red Wings posters with black and white fabric and hung some white Christmas lights over that.  (The white fabric is my mother-in-law's old curtains she wasn't using, and the black fabric is a sheet.)  Unfortunately, my camera showed no love for this project and refused to take an un-blurry photo of it.

The food table was the most dramatic part. I bought a white sheer curtain on clearance and hung it with multiple strands of white icicle lights behind it to make the backdrop. I placed an arrangement of black & white flowers and white feathers along with two black taper candles on the table.

The food even fit with the black-and-white theme.  I served cupcakes, Oreos, popcorn, cheese & crackers, and chocolate fangs.

Around the room were other small touches, like white candles, a white feather boa, and the sheet music for Bella's Lullaby was placed on the piano.  I made little collages of Bella and Edward from each of the previous four movies and hung them on the wall leading down into the family room.

I had prepared two quizzes for my guests: one to sort the vampires into their various covens, and one to match the vampires to their special gift.

The guest with the most correct answers won this gift bag filled with vampy prizes. 

After the party, my guests received a little party favor bag. 

I made some wrappers featuring each of the book covers in the Twilight series and used them to cover some Hershey's Nuggets candies.  I think they turned out cute, although the shiny silver wrappers made it difficult to take a picture!

Here we are at the party!  Some friends even dressed like members of the Volturi.  I love that the camera decided to give us all red eye and I didn't bother to fix it.

To see my black and white invitation to this party, click here.

To see last year's Twilight party, click here.

To print your own copy of the quizzes, here they are!

Free printable vampire quizzes for Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2 party activity.

Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn part 2 Party Invitation

Only a few weeks left until the premiere of the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 2!  Whenever a "part 2" of a movie comes out, it's almost required to get together with friends and watch "part 1", right?  Yeah, I think so, too.  So I'm planning a little black and white soiree next week for all my Twi-hard friends.  Here is the invitation I made for the party.

 

To make these, I purchased a package of blank black cards and envelopes from the craft store.  I layered a piece of grey cardstock and a piece of black & grey dotted cardstock on the front with a lacy ribbon where the 2 pieces join.  The flower was made by punching circles from pages in my Twilight book. (Yes, I destroyed a book.  But I still have the digital version on my e-reader!)  I found a tutorial for making the book page flowers on Under The Table and Dreaming by Stephanie Lynn who actually made book page flower ornaments!  Then, to finish it off, I hand-wrote the word "forever" on a scrap of black cardstock with a white gel pen, snipped the ends like a little flag, and tucked it in under the flower.

For the inside of the invitation, I typed up the party details in Photoshop Elements and printed them out on white cardstock.  You need a white gel pen to address the envelopes, or maybe white stick-on address labels.  Obviously, regular pen won't show up on black envelopes!

The invitation is just a preview of the party to come!  I'm sticking to a black-and-white color scheme and I plan to use some other book page crafts for the decorations.  I'll be sharing more over the next couple weeks.

To see last year's Breaking Dawn part 1 party, go here.

(Edited to add: to see this year's Breaking Dawn Part 2 party, go here.)

Strawberry Lemonade Party

We had a little Strawberry-Lemonade birthday celebration for my mom-in-law at our house last night.  I made this banner in honor of the occasion.

The banner was made with layered shapes cut from the Art Philosophy Cricut cartridge from Close To My Heart.  I cut out circle tags on white cardstock, flower tags on yellow cardstock (resembles a lemon slice) and letters on pink cardstock.  To assemble, I threaded yellow ribbon through the white circle tags to form the structure. Then I glued a yellow "lemon slice" on each circle.  I sponged pink ink on the edges of the pink letters and attached them with foam dimensional tape.

It looked a little plain, so I added the pink tissue paper flowers and the yellow crepe paper streamers.  Tissue poms are cheap and easy and quick to make.  My kind of craft!

Tissue Paper Flowers:
Started with 20" x 20" pink tissue paper.
Stack 5 sheets.
Accordion fold into 1 long strip
Cut folded  paper into two halves
Round the edges with scissors
Staple each in the middle
Carefully separate the layers of paper
Fluff
Tape to wall

(If you want to make a full sphere, I'd suggest starting with 10 sheets of tissue instead of 5, so it would be nice and full.  Also, you'll want to add the hanging string at the same time you add the staples -- BEFORE you fluff.)


Because it was a Strawberry Lemonade party, all the food had lemon or strawberries in it.  I made little labels for the food on my computer (font = Minya Nouvelle) and printed them out on white cardstock.

Life has handed us a few "lemons" lately, and it was refreshing to pause and celebrate some sweetness.

My Husband's Angry Bird-day Party

My husband is one of those math and science-type guys so he understands things like "trajectory".  Which is probably why he enjoys the Angry Birds game.  My boys love it, too, so I decided that Brad's birthday should have an Angry Birds theme.

The boys jumped on board with the idea and, one day when they had a half-day of school, we spent the afternoon crafting our own Angry Birds as well as some Angry Bird Launchers!

We started out trying to make our own pom poms out of yarn but the boys got easily frustrated with wrapping the yarn around the circle template.  So I pulled out my bag of ready-made pom poms, and turned them loose with craft supplies and glue.  Googly eyes, of course, make everything more fun.  Then the kids used pipe cleaners to make bird beaks and pig ears and snouts.

The launchers were inspired by this blog post that has been popping up on Pinterest a lot lately.  I used yogurt containers instead of plastic cups.

Here are my boys during the party launching the pom pom birds at the pig fortress.  I think they might have enjoyed this just as much as playing the iPad game!

I had fun making decorations, too.  My friend told me about those bird faces and I simply cut them out and taped them on some balloons and on the birthday present. (You can download the balloon templates here.) The banner says "Happy Angry Bird Day" and that was made with my Cricut.

Since there were only 6 of us, I didn't want to make a whole cake.  So we had cupcakes! I feel the red bird's pain: I also have to deal with a unibrow.  I bet that's why he's so angry.

 Happy birthday, Brad.  I hoped to make this party as cool as you are! xoxo

Celebrate the Twilight Saga: Breaking Dawn Part 1 video release with a viewing party!

We only have to wait one more week until the video release date for Breaking Dawn Part 1!  Will you be running to the store at midnight on February 11?  Will you be hosting a viewing party next weekend for your vampire-loving friends?  Or is a Twilight-themed Valentine party in your future?

This is a very fun theme to develop into a party. Plus, it's fairly easy to do so inexpensively using black and red sparkly things you probably already own.  Here's a look at the party I hosted just prior to the release of Breaking Dawn Part 1 in theaters this past November.  I hope it inspires you to do a Twilight party!

Invitation:

Because the movie features the long-awaited wedding of Bella & Edward, I styled my party invitation to look like their wedding invitation.

I arranged the text using Photoshop Elements and printed it on white cardstock.  Then I layered red cardstock, the invitation, and vellum and attached them with 2 white brads at the top.  (Sorry, the vellum makes it a little hard to read in the photo.)

Party Food:

For the party I served "Bat Wings" (hot wings), "Fangs" (blue corn chips) & Salsa, and Bread"stakes".  For dessert we had Werewolf Kibble (Chex Muddy Buddies), Bella's Twizzlers (both red and black), and Red Velvet Vampire Cupcakes.  I made little signs for each dish and nestled them into plastic fangs on the buffet table.

To drink, I served black cherry cola.  I covered the bottles with blood type labels which I think are so perfect for a vampire party!  You can download the labels for yourself from the Hostess with the Mostess Blog.

Unfortunately, I didn't snap a photo of the bottles with the cola in them before the party so you'll have to use your imagination with the photo of empty bottles.  (The black cherry cola really did look like blood.)

My photo of the buffet table came out all blurry which is a bummer.

The breadsticks, chips & salsa and hot wings are in the front, and the desserts are elevated behind them.  I dressed up the table with a chess board, some red candles and a feather boa.  Breaking Dawn fans will get the references.

Party Decorations:

Behind the buffet table I hung a banner that I made using sparkly paper and glitter.  I also hung red Christmas lights and two tissue paper pom-poms made with Martha Stewart's instructions.

On my piano I displayed the four Twilight books along with an apple, a white tulip, red ribbon, and a white chess piece.  Red and black candles were arranged on top of the piano along with a sparkly red beaded garland and velvety red fabric.  All of these things I already owned.

Behind the couch we have 4 poster frames that usually hold Red Wings posters.  Although those matched the party colors, they didn't match the theme!  So I covered them up with photos and movie quotes from each of the four Twilight movies.  The black is a cut-up black plastic tablecloth which cost $1.  The red is wrapping paper that I already had.  The movie still photos were found using Google search.

Here's a better look at each poster. You can click on the images to make them larger.

Twilight and New Moon posters

Download Hostess with the Mostess' Twilight movie quotes here.
Download Hostess with the Mostess' New Moon movie quotes here.

Eclipse and Breaking Dawn posters

Download Hostess with the Mostess' Eclipse movie quotes here.

I made my own Breaking Dawn movie quotes but, since I've had my party, Hostess with the Mostess has published her version.  You can download them here.

Party Activities:

As each guest arrived, she had to choose if she was Team Edward or Team Jacob (or both!).  I made necklaces out of Sculpey clay for everyone to wear.

We divided into teams and played movie trivia from the first three movies.  Then we watched Eclipse.

Party Favors:

As each guest left, I gave her a party favor bag featuring an apple cookie, a chocolate chess piece, a white tulip and tied with a red ribbon, referencing the 4 book covers.  I also included a plastic set of fangs and a note that said, "Fangs for coming."

Blogger won't let me upload my nice 8 1/2 x 11 .pdf, but here's a .jpg of the tags if you want to use them for your party.  Just click on the image to see it larger.  Right-click and select "save image as".

"Fangs" for checking out my party.  Leave a comment if you had your own party.  I'd love to see it!  My friends are already asking if I'm going to throw another party when Breaking Dawn Part 2 is released and I'm always looking for ideas.