toy story party

My son wanted a spider man birthday party this year...well, somehow I convinced him that a Toy Story party would be fun and he went with it!!  I had fun decorating and planning.  Here are a few of the things I made and did for the party...

Here is the centerpiece I made, using the Toy Story cricut cartridge.  I pieced together each character and glued them to a straw and arranged them in the mini bucket.  I think it was super cute and I kept the faces so that I could put them in his scrapbook!

 

Then I got the crazy idea to make 20 of the Toy Story Logo to put on the goodie bags, which I'm pretty sure they probably got thrown in the trash when the kids got home, but that's ok...I had fun making them!

 

With the help of my kids, we searched thru our toy room and came up with a bunch of Toy Story related toys...Mr & Mrs Potato Head, little green army men, blocks (which I used to spell out my son's name) and other fun stuff.  I really wanted to put out a pink piggy bank that looked like Hamm, without having the spend $20 to get the actual character at Target, so I found at the Dollar Tree a plastic bank, which happened to be red.  I painted it pink and painted the expression on it to look just like Hamm from the movie.  The little green aliens are from a game they have.  

The biggest dilemma for me was what I would do for a cake.  I didn't dare attempt anything that was to look like Woody or Buzz, and all the ideas I found online were using fondant, which I have no clue, time or talent to learn how.  My sister gave me the idea to make a Mr. Potato head cake, but without being completely satisfied with the potential outcome, I decided on Mr. Potato head cupcakes!  And the little green alien cupcakes too!  I got to take a fun trip to the candy store in the mall to shop for the pieces and here's some of the variety of candy I used!

I wasn't sure what I would use for his hat, but the candy store had just what i needed, then I was SO excited when I saw the gummy lips and flowers, perfect for Mrs. Potato Head!  Chocolate licorice for the mustache, jelly beans for the ears and nose, the blue and white candies are peppermint patty candies...I used the white for the eyes and the blue for the shoes.  The candy cigarettes were perfect for the arms!  And they are SO yummy!!!  Brings me back to my younger days when we thought we were so cool buying them and "smoking" them!!  I also had a thin piece of black licorice that I used for Mr's eyebrows.

 

And here are my little green alien cupcakes.  Same peppermit patty eyes and a cheerio for the mouth.  Jelly Bellys for the antennas. (I ran out of green towards the end, but improvised with green M&Ms).

 

 

new logo!!

My awesome friend, Lauren, from Ten23Designs, designed me this perfect logo for my "shop"!  I love it...right now it's on my facebook page and I will be printing up some business cards with the logo so when I go to craft shows, I can hand them to people when they buy something AND, eventually i'll figure out how to get the logo on my blog to make everything cohesive!  Anyways, I LOVE MY NEW LOGO!!!

getting scrappy

Well, I admit it, I am HORRIBLE at taking pictures of my crafts!!  I have done a lot of experimenting with different settings and different lightings and I JUST CAN'T GET IT RIGHT!!!  uggh.  i think it's b/c i don't know my camera as well as I should. 

Anyway, I had not scrapped in forever!  So I made it my mission to at the least get the kits I had from conventions and workshops used up.  It did make a good dent in my pictures and a good dent in my layouts that were just sitting here...

Aside from the horrible lighting on these, I really like how they turned out!  I believe you can click on them to see the pic bigger for more details!

 And here is my HUGE stack of pages that still need to be put in albums...that is my least favorite part...but I do love them once they are actually in!!

Paint Chip Notebooks

My friend Lauren, requested some notebooks to be made for her daughter's 3rd birthday party.  The theme was Color Me and everything there was so bright and colorful!  What a neat idea!  She gave me a stack of bright colored paint chips and I went to town...40 books in all!!

Card books

The whole world already knows that Pinterest is a great source of inspiration...right?!?! Well, months ago I saw THIS great idea for something to do with all of your Christmas cards. So, I got to work and created my own 2011 Xmas cards book.



I put the card we sent out to everyone on the first page...



It's nice because I'm able to keep all the cards from the year, including the fun photo cards...



And all the beautifully hand made cards...



And then I got a little obsessed and started going thru the kids cards from their births and their birthdays and made a book for each year and I plan to do this on each birthday for them so they can have a book for each year. Who knows if they will someday appreciate them, but for now, it's fun for me :)

I love the way their birth books came out...I was able to include their birth announcements, cards from when they were born, notes from flowers that we got sent and cards from their baptisms. These books are very special to me now.













And here are some quick shots of their birthday books. I tried to stay somewhat with the theme of their parties, or what they were into that year...





If anyone has any great and wonderful tips on taking better pics of things, please let me know! I always seem to get the coloring off and/or a weird glare or just bad lighting over all. I tried to edit a bit in photoshop, but the colors are a bit off and dark. They look way different in real life!

Valentine's Day Projects

Here is a look at what I was working on for Valentine's Day this year!

The theme for the kids was Dinosaurs..."You're Dino-mite!" I found some plastic dinosaurs at Target that I picked up and then use the Create-a-Critter Cricut cartridge to put together these cute Valentines. For Colin's class, I tied a bow around the toy dinosaurs and attached them to the Valentine.





Colin was quite amused with them...



By the time I got done with his 7 for his classmates, I still had 18 to do for Brandon's class and I decided not to tie the dinosaur on because it was taking forever. I ended up just putting them in plastic baggies with the Valentine, dinosaur and a chocolate candy. They actually turned out really cute, and man, I forgot to take a pic of the final product, but here's the rest of the cards...



For Colin's teacher, I made her a scrapbook, with the help of the other mom's. We each asked our kids why they love their teacher and they came up with their own answers. It's always cute to hear what a 3 or 4 year old will say! I made the book with my bind-it-all and then used Valentine's paper that I got at the Dollar Spot at Target and each mom gave me a picture of their kid to use for the book.











I also made a few mini Valentine's albums, which were featured at a MOPS fundraiser as a Make-and-Take. I got to teach a bunch of girls how to make them and they got to take them home with them. Here's the one I used as a sample...




And my neighbor asked me to make a few for her for her kid's teachers and I thought they turned out super cute!!