Cookies for Church Picnic

Our church's annual Labor Day picnic is this weekend and I signed up to bring some dessert. (Of course.)  I was thinking of various cookie designs - sunshine? picnic basket? - but I decided to try something I've never tried before.  I made the church logo with frosting!

These layered design cookies take several days to make due to drying time.  I baked the cookies one day, did the white frosting base another day, and finished up the logo part today.  I did the logo in three steps.  First I piped the "SBC" with a #7 tip in the blue frosting.  Then I piped the brown part of the compass with a #3 tip.  Finally, I added the blue compass points with a #3 tip.



 

It was fun to try something new.  And I think my church family will get a kick out of seeing them.

{Pinterest Success} Mockingjay T-shirt with Freezer Paper Stencil and Bleach Pen

I've seen quite a few cool Hunger Games t-shirt ideas popping up on Pinterest and I've been wanting to make one for a while.  One of the ideas involved using a freezer paper stencil and a bleach pen. That's the one I tried today.

Seriously, the hardest part of this project was finding freezer paper!  No luck at Walmart, Kmart or Target in my town.  Finally found some at my local grocery store and I bought a giant roll.  (I keep seeing cool projects involving freezer paper stencils so I figured I'd better buy a lot of it!)

I followed the directions found here on the Average Jane Crafter blog.  Her tutorial was perfect with great photos and easy-to-follow instructions.

I unearthed a too-small navy t-shirt from the bottom of the drawer and used it as my test subject.  Here's what it looked like with the stencil on it just before I bleached it.

I was afraid that, when I rinsed the shirt, I'd end up with bleach spots all over the place.  And I worried that, when I chucked the shirt in the wash, I'd inadvertently bleach stuff that I didn't want bleached.  But none of that happened.  It turned out cool!  I like the gritty imperfectness of the image.

 

Now I'll have to try again with a t-shirt that actually fits me....

Wizard101 Birthday Party

My son turned 7 this weekend and he wanted a Wizard101-themed birthday party.  Wizard101 is an online game that the whole family can play together.  We can even play with family members that live on the other side of the state!  Yay for technology.

Decorations
The main decoration was on the wall in the kitchen where most of the party stuff happens.  I strung some (Christmas) lights, made a banner, and hung some maps from the game on the wall.

I incorporated images of the birthday boy's game character onto the purple and yellow banner.  The maps are screen shots from the game, printed out and taped onto some black wrapping paper.  (Just hit your PrntScr key to generate screen shots. You can also download some wallpapers from the Wizard101 site here to use as decorations for your party.)

Anyone who has played Wizard101 knows you have to keep track of your health, mana and energy.  So they should recognize this:

I just pulled various-sized glass jars from the recycling bin and filled them with water and food coloring.  I typed the numbers in Word, printed them, and cut them out.  I used the numbers from his birth date and age to make this decoration.

The health, mana & energy globes were displayed on the mantel with an owl (dressed up like Gamma from the game) and a wizard hat.

My mother made the Bartleby tree by forming his face out of green & brown clay and sticking it on an old tree-shaped toy.  She also made signs of her characters standing in front of each of the schools in Ravenwood and set up the signs around the grandfather tree.  (And now you see where I get my crafting tendencies!)

Activities
You advance in Wizard101 by completing "quests" so I designed 4 quests for the kids to complete.

As the kids arrived, they were directed to the "crafting tables" where they could make a necklace with the school symbol of their choice and a wand.  For the necklaces, I printed multiple copies of the school symbols and punched them out with a 1" circle punch.  The kids glued the symbols into a bottle cap.  I helped them punch a hole in the bottle cap and attach a jump ring, then they threaded the bottle cap charm onto a ball-chain necklace. 

For the wands, my husband provided some sticks from the yard and the kids decorated them with all sorts of craft supplies. I gave them foam shapes, ribbons, feathers, sequins and jewels, pipe cleaners, colored tape, and anything else I could find in the craft closet.

Kids making wands at the party

After dinner, I announced that the cake and ice cream had been stolen! I involved the grandpas as the "bad guys". The kids divided into two teams. One team had to recover the ice cream by finding 5 "potion ingredients" (beads in small canisters) to make a potion to put the dragon (plastic toy) to sleep and get his key. The other team had to recover the cupcakes by finding 5 puzzle pieces, and assembling the puzzle to get the password. With the key and the password, they could enter the dungeon (kitchen) and have cake and ice cream.

Two teams working on their quests

The birthday boy requested chocolate cupcakes with purple frosting and yellow stars & moons like Merle Ambrose's hat.  I made little picks with the school symbols on them to stick in the cupcakes as well.

Food
My son is a big fan of chicken drumsticks.  We love to battle against the prince and barons in Colossus Boulevard because they use drumsticks as their wands.  That was the inspiration for the main course for dinner.  Then I was looking at some of the "pet snacks" I had collected and decided I could use those as party food, too!  Here are the labels I made for the food table.

The "fire crackers" were Doritos and the "crackers" were saltine crackers.  I cut carrots and cucumbers into sticks and named them "Moolinda Wu's Veggie Wands".

We offered Sprite and Root Beer to drink and I made some labels to wrap around the 2-liter bottles as well.

Favor Bags
The party favors were packaged in blue paper lunch sacks.  I printed labels for them with the Ravenwood crest and each child's name.  The prizes inside were a wizard rubber ducky, a bouncy ball, a glow stick, candy that looks like potion bottles, and Cracker Jacks (with a pet snack label).

It was so much fun to put this party together for my sweet 7-year-old.  And I think the kids enjoyed themselves, too!

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.

Picking a color palette for your room

I am getting a bit tired of the colors in my bedroom.  When we moved in here 11 years ago, we painted the walls a lovely blue that was reminiscent of the Colorado skies we had just left.  I still really like the color, but I think I'm ready for a change.

I'm pretty good at knowing when I DON'T like a color, but pretty bad at knowing which color(s) I would like instead.  But then I saw an ad in a magazine for MyColortopia.com.  You can upload a photo with colors that inspire you, and the website will generate a color palette of Glidden paint colors for you.

One of my favorite things to look at is Lake Michigan.  The blues of the sky and the water plus the browns of the sand make me happy.  So I dug around in some old photos of trips to Lake Michigan and I found these two that might work.

I went to MyColortopia.com, scrolled down to the box labeled "My Image Inspiration" and clicked on "Go To Tool".  Then I was prompted to upload my photo (2MB max). Once the photo thumbnail was visible, I could drag the little crop box around my photo until the colors I liked best were in the box.  I clicked on "Show Colors" and it gave me several options to choose as my favorite main color.  (See the middle column in the screen capture below.)

My favorite color from those options was "Creamy Blueberry" so I selected that color, and the website generated three 3-color palettes using that color.  If you mouse over each of the colors in the palette, the Glidden paint color name appears. You have the option at this point to print the information, or email it to yourself or pin it to Pinterest.

I took a screen capture and made my own little reference card in Photoshop that showed the photo and the three palette options - along with the Glidden paint color names.

And here are the results I got after uploading the beach picture.

I liked a couple of the paint colors from this photo. The one that matched the sky (Blue Marina) is very similar to the current color on my walls so I was curious to see what Glidden would pair with it.  And then I also generated a palette using "Deep Blue Shadow" that matched the water in the photo.

That was a fun little exercise!  But I'm no closer to knowing what to do with my room because I like all these palettes!  If I had to pick a favorite right now it would be the middle option for the lighthouse picture (silver dust - buttered sweet corn - creamy blueberry).  But then what?  Do I paint the walls Creamy Blueberry?  That might be a bit much.  Maybe the walls are Silver Dust and the curtains/bedding are Creamy Blueberry and the accents are Buttered Sweet Corn?  Any suggestions?

Patriotic Banner From Old Jeans

We recently went on a family road trip that involved 8 hours of driving each way.  I am unable to read in the car without getting sick, but I've discovered that I can sew!  I made a couple little craft kits to take with me to pass the time more quickly.

This little project took up much of the drive home.  It's a patriotic pennant banner made from old jeans and felt.

Of course, because I made this craft in the car, I didn't photograph any of the steps.  But I don't think it's too hard to figure out how I made this.

My kit consisted of

• a couple of legs cut from old pairs of jeans, both dark and light wash
• red felt
• red and white embroidery floss
• patterns for the pennants, the stars, and the letters (I cut those shapes out of cardstock using my Cricut and used the cardstock shapes as patterns when cutting the fabric.)
• scissors, pins and a needle

Step 1: Cut everything out using the patterns. (5 pennants from the darker wash jean, 5 of the bigger size star from the lighter wash jean, 2 smaller size stars and the USA letters from red felt)

Step 2: Fray the edges of the pennants by pulling out some threads.

Step 3: Attach the light denim stars to the pennants with a straight stitch using 3 strands white embroidery floss.

Step 4: Blanket stitch the red felt letters and stars onto the denim stars using 3 strands of red embroidery floss.

When I got home, I stitched the pennants to a red and blue ribbon using my sewing machine.  Now my mantle is all ready for the 4th of July.  And maybe even the olympics!



Patriotic Star Cookies

I had (got) to bring a treat to my Bible study this week so I made star-shaped cookies and frosted them in red, white, and blue.  I did the outlining, but let my kids do most of the flooding.  The ladies at church were so impressed when I told them that my boys had frosted the cookies.  It's all about the squeeze bottles.

I made the boys stick to solid colors for the cookies that I was bringing to church, but then I let them loose on another batch of cookies.  Armed with outline and flood icing plus sprinkles, they had a lot of fun.  I love watching them be creative!

Have you ever seen such a festive collection of cookies?