My Creative Blog:
Birthdays

My daughter turned four on Sunday. Please hold on while I choke back tears and try my hardest to turn back time.

How does that happen so fast? Ugh. Anyway, she is like every other four year old girl on the face of the planet very into the Disney movie, Tangled. Because we were so busy trying to get our kitchen cabinets finished for her party, I pretty much forgot about decorating and games until 11 PM the night before her party. Even so, I was able to pull together a cute birthday display and wanted to share where I got all the FREE, adorable ideas and printables in case you know a little girl having a birthday soon.: )

We already had that giant table-turned-chalkboard that Monica made on our first Nate Show challenge, so I used it as a backdrop for our display. I found a huge amount of free printables that I used to make the pennant banner, and the sails for my little jello boats, plus a few other things not shown from Paging Supermom. Honestly their Tangled collection is so stinkin' adorable, and it's FREE to boot! Make sure you take a look at the super cute invitations they have too! Campbell loved it.

I have to say though, that the best part of the display was the cake, and I can't take any credit for it at all. There is a sweet story behind this cake (and the cupcakes that aren't shown): A beautiful 13-year old girl created this cake as a means to raise money for the adoption of her little sister from Haiti. (You can read about their journey to adopting Seraphina who has a life-threatening disease called Sickle Cell Anemia, here.) Her name is Sydney, and she's started a fundraiser called Penelope's Cakes, and accepts donations for the cakes she creates. She does a fabulous job ( my family loved the chocolate cake!), and Campbell was so excited when she saw it for the first time! If you have a need for a cake for special occasion (or just because you're hungry for cake), please think of Penelope's Cakes. My hope is that they'll get so many requests for cakes that Seraphina will come home to her family before the end of the year so she can get the healthcare she so needs.

Honestly, there is NO way I could have done anything like this! That little lady is so talented!
Is it possible to force best-friendship on children? If so, we're doing a really good job with Monica's 3rd, Kira, and Campbell. Love those two.

To end the party, we thought it would be fun to release flying lanterns into the sky just like they do in Tangled. We found these lanterns for 98 cents each and they were so awesome. Per several online suggestions, we decided to tie a long string to the lantern (about 50 feet long) so that they didn't fly away and start a forest fire. (Our fire department is literally right behind our neighborhood and we fear their wrath!)

Kids and adults alike were in awe. Too cool.

All in all, it was a fun day and a great celebration of my sweet girl.
What are your kids crushing on these days?

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Ok, this is the last thing I'll write about Charlie's 2nd birthday party- I promise!: ) We were super excited when we were asked to do a project using the new Tulip Tie Dye Kit. True story: when I first met Monica she wore a lot of tie dye t-shirts. For a Bucks County girl like me, that was really strange, but all that tie dye know-how came in pretty handy for this project!

This kit is really cool. Instead of the old-fashioned method, they provide you with five squeeze bottles so you can place the dye exactly where you want it. Of course, we didn't use it that way. We're rebels like that. We used a dropcloth for the pennant banner and the sign because we thought it would give this project an aged look, plus it's cheap! Lay down the plastic cover over the surface you're going to be working on.

Make sure you wear protective gear…

…and dress the part. You don't want to get this dye everywhere. (Not that we did, or anything Nope, not us. We're clean project-doers.)

Create a template for your pennant and trace it onto the dropcloth. We cut out about 10 triangles.

It was really easy to mix the dye because you just add water to the powder in the squeeze bottles provided. No mess…at least, at first.

We decided on dip-dying our pennants, so we poured the dye into bowls and dipped the tips into the dye. We held it there until it was sufficiently saturated, pulled it out and wrung it out a bit.

Then we laid them out to dry before we dipped the other ends. (Note the towel we destroyed in this process in the right hand corner.)

They got this great blue jean and weathered red color almost immediately and we were so excited! The colors were perfect for my All-American boy themed party.

For the sign, we measured a 2x3 piece of dropcloth and cut it out.

Monica used the traditional method of twisting and tying random sections with rubber bands,

and then dipping them in the dye. After the drop cloth was dyed, we wrapped it in a plastic bag and let it soak in over night (just follow the directions on the box and you can't mess up!)

The next day, we hot-glued rope to the backs of the pennants right along the seam of the dropcloth. That made it easy to glue on a straight line!

We left a lot of rope at either end so we could tie our pennant banner up when we hung it.

You're supposed to wash these after your done, but we didn't think they would get a lot of wear and tear, so we skipped this step. We just ironed it a bit before writing"Happy Birthday Charlie!" on it with sharpie.


We hung them up at the party and were thrilled with the way they look!

I have plans to hang the pennant banner in Charlie's new reading nook, but that will have to wait until after vacation next week.

This was a fun project (albeit, very messy!) For tons more tie dye inspiration and how-to's check out Tulip Tie Dye at these places:
Twitter: http://twitter.com/ilovetocreate (@ilovetocreate) Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/ilovetocreate and http://www.facebook.com/ILoveTulipFashionArt Pinterest: http://pinterest.com/ilovetocreate When was the last time, you tie dyed? Did you ever consider trying it out for home decor?

* Tie Dye Kits are available at Walmart, Walmart Canada, Michaels, JoAnn, A.C. Moore, Hobby Lobby, Hancock Fabrics, and Meijer. Tulip Tie Dye Kit contents and colors may vary by store. *Disclosure: I was provided with the Tulip Tie Dye Kit and Surface Cover for this project. I wrote this post as part of a paid campaign with iLoveToCreate.com and Blueprint Social. All opinions and photographs are mine.

The other day I mentioned that my favorite decoration from Charlie's All-American boy party was this super easy paper table runner. It's almost laughable how easy this thing was to make, but I figured that some of you like a simple DIY as much as I do, right? In less than 15 minutes, you can make a completely custom table runner for any occasion- the possibilities are endless with this thing! Plus, a paper runner is perfect for something like a kid's birthday party or an outdoor BBQ because it adds some color to your table, but can be thrown out if it gets messy.

Last week I bought a huge roll of drawing paper from Ikea for $4.99. I measured 7 feet of paper, grabbed red and navy paint that I had on hand (I used regular latex paint, but you could easily use acrylic paint-actually that would be easier!), and then used a chalk line to create a straight line on either side of the paper for my stripes. We didn't worry at all about painting a crisp line, because I was going for a rustic feel (that's imperfect, in layman's terms: ).

I also bought a wooden star at Michael's for about 50 cents. Buying an actual stamp that was the right size would have been expensive, and I knew this would work just as well. I hot-glued a stone onto the back for a handle- it's all about using stuff you have! You can find these wooden things in any shape you want so making a runner that fits your theme is easy!

I painted one side of the star…

…and rocked the stamp all around to get full coverage…

…and when I lifted my stamp, this is what I had:

I love the wood grain affect this created!

That's it! I love my paper table runner, and the fact that it took me less than 15 minutes to make allowed me to not feel bad at all to throw it out without batting an eye!

I thought it would be fun to see some other paper table runners people have created around blogland. Some of these things put my little table runner to shame!: )

Pinwheel table runner from Green Wedding Shoes

Crepe Paper runner from Good Housekeeping

DIY Wrapping Paper Runner fromMartha Stewart Weddings
Cheap and cute- just my style!; ) Have a great weekend!

You all know I'm cheap careful with our money, so it should come as no surprise that when I was considering what type of party I should have for my son (Bob the Builder? Veggie Tales?), I decided to go with an All-American Boy party because I could get all the July 4th stuff cheap the day after the holiday (Charlie-man's birthday is the 9th). Even though it was really affordable (yay!), I was really excited about all the cute stuff I got or made for the party. Monica helped me out with a few of the projects and then was there to help set up, so I want to send a big thank you out to her!: )

I made Charlie's invitations on Picmonkey (stay tuned for a tutorial on how to make your own!), and since I didn't have time to mail them because I am a last-minute kind of girl, I just sent them as an attachment to an email. I know that probably breaks all kind of birthday party invitation rules, but I figured my friends and family would love me anyway. I had planned on having the party at a local park so that the kids could play on a big playground, but the weather was supposed to hit 101 degrees, and we Bucks Countians can't handle that kind of heat. Thankfully, a good friends of ours let us move the party to their house so we could be near a pool. Crisis averted! (Or so I thought…)

I hit the jackpot with the Target dollar bins (is there ANYTHING you can't do with supplies from the dollar bin? Seriously, they totally should be paying me!), and cleaned out their fourth of July goodies like big stars, cute pails with handles, adorable sunglasses and a couple of other things I can't think of now.

Changing the location messed with all of the plans I had for decorating, but we managed to tweak some things and come up with this backdrop for our food table (this is pre-food. Darn that I didn't get a picture of it all set up lookin' fine!)

I love this pennant banner that we made, and can't wait to fill you in on how we made it, and what I'm doing with it now that the party is over!

I also made and printed out a few food labels (as if anyone needs help identifying Chick-Fil-A nuggets, right?!). I did these last minute-of course!- and so decided to poke a hole and stick a toothpick through to help the sign stand. Worked like a charm! Monica may have said that this was ingenious.; )

I think this table runner was my favorite feature of the whole party! It was super easy, but deserves a post all of it's own.: )

My mom gave Charlie this chair for Christmas, and I thought it would be the perfect spot for him to open his presents. We added a little banner (from Target) to the bushes behind his chair and two little pinwheels to either side. A red blanket completed our present-opening spot!

Each kid got to choose a pair of sunglasses to take home, and to help them"stay cool".

This is when the drama started. A major storm with lightening, thunder, and high winds blew in fast and knocked down all of the decorations and ended our party rather quickly! I'm thankful for such helpful family and friends who didn't care at all, and helped clean up the place in a hurry!

We took a few minutes to eat our brownie-fruit kebabs (recipe from here).

…and eat our cupcakes, and then wrapped things up.

So, it was not exactly as I had envisioned but it sure was memorable. I love this sweet, funny, little boy more than words can express. Happy birthday, Charlie-man!

Have you ever had any major weather drama during a party? Did it make you wonder why you even bother, too?; )