Ice Skating Party

This past weekend we had a super small, low key ice skating party for Lily. Since it was only four little friends and Lily, I decided to make most of the goody bag treats. I made:

Felt flower barrettes






Maya modeling one of the barrettes.

These are super easy to make and are the same ones I made for Lily's Rapunzel costume. You cut a circle of felt, cut petals around the outside of the circle, cut it into a spiral, roll it up, and hot glue the end. I ordered a million silver clips from amazon, hot glued ribbon onto each clip, then hot glued the flower onto the ribbon wrapped clip.

White chocolate snowflake lollipops:





These are easy, too, especially if you go to the craft store and buy a squeeze bottle in the candy section. You can melt the Wilton melting wafers in the squeeze bottle in the microwave (make sure you leave the lid off), squeeze the melted wafers neatly into the plastic candy molds, stick the sticks in them, wait until they harden, and wrap in cute ribbon bags. I'll definitely use this craft for future treats!

Stamped treat bags:





These muslin bags were super cheap on amazon. I found an ice skate stamp and just stamped directly on the muslin. I made the tags with card stock, punches and letter stamps. Each letter stamp went with the guest's name. Finally, I ordered some handmade personalized name stamps for each girl from etsy and the goody bags were complete. Cute, easy, and not filled with dollar aisle toys.

For this party, Lily requested a winter Cinderella cake so I got a Cinderella Hallmark ornament from ebay and went from there.

I found a recipe for sugar snowflakes from Betty Crocker and Pete and I made those a day ahead.






Tip on the snowflakes: make sure you make them on the thick side, otherwise they'll crumble and break, like many of ours did, much to my dismay. When they said "delicate" in the recipe, they weren't foolin'!

I used another cook's illustrated recipe for the cake, but for this one decided to put cherry preserves in between the cake layers. Yum. That was a good call.



I made a real buttercream frosting and tinted it blue with food coloring. Don't even ask how many sticks of butter are in the buttercream recipe. Your arteries would clog immediately if I told you.



After Christmas I found some gumballs that look like snowballs in the clearance section in the craft store.



So I put them around the base of the cake as a border and decorated the top with the sugar snowflakes.







I really liked this cake and even though most of our snowflakes broke I am happy with how it turned out. I was nice though and let people eat it. The buttercream isn't as smooth as the fondant, but it tastes hella better.





And now for some nothing to do with crafts, but "look at my stinkin' talented kid" pics.


Lily skating on her own. She's a quick learner. She must have gotten that from me.






And I think Maya is pretty cute, too. And I'm sure she got that from me.

Coming up soon--more Valentine's Day and some scrapbook layouts! You can hardly wait, can you??

Big Old Carnival Circus Party

This past summer, Maya turned two and I, being crazy, decided to throw an over the top carnival circus themed birthday party complete with animal cupcakes, games, a candy table and multiple buntings. The fact that I even know what a bunting is just further confirms my craziness. Don't worry, by the end of this post you'll know what a bunting is too, so you can share in my craziness. I designed, printed, mailed, sewed, decorated, baked, ordered, assembled, inflated, planned, and frosted for months and was finally ready. The guests arrived and about 15 minutes later so did the thunderstorm. We were packed like sardines in our decked out Florida room, watching the skies turn black and hoping like hell that we weren't going to lose power or that the bounce house wasn't going to blow to Oz. A few hours later, after my house was covered in a sticky candy coating, things mellowed out a bit and the kids were able to bounce for awhile. It was fine, but not the Martha Stewartesque soiree I was envisioning, cause I'm pretty sure it never rains on Martha's parade. Anyway, for this party I made:





Paper pinwheels with directions found Here. I stuck them in green floral foam that I shoved into metal buckets from Target's dollar aisle.



Two big buntings that required no sewing. Until I get my sewing machine you'll see lots of crafts that don't require sewing. Shocking, I know. I ordered the fabric from etsy, made a cardboard flag template, cut them out with pinking shears, laid them out on this double sided quilting binding and then used Heat and Bond to adhere the flags to the binding. Voila!


Another bunting shot.



A candy table. Complete with wooden circus animals and super buttery, salty, greasy popcorn. I ordered lots of the candy from Oriental Trading Co. cause their prices are the bomb. I used a bunch of different clear plastic and glass containers, and again busted out the green floral foam to help make the lollipops stand up.


Candy table close up.



I cheated on the cake, but you'll see later that I made up for it with the cupcakes. I ordered a plain white frosted Costco cake and decorated with a smaller bunting made with fabric, baker's twine and wooden dowels.


The birthday girl with her cake.



See why I cheated on the cake? I saw these cupcakes in this cookbook and I was pretty sure I wasn't going to make them. I've made a cupcake from that book before, and it was super cute but super time consuming. The day before the party I was feeling pretty good about the prep, so I decided to whip them up really quick. Well, they weren't quick, but luckily my mom had taken the girls for the day so I spent a few, um, like 5, hours making them. I changed the poodle design into a polar bear. It was pretty much an accident due to the fact that my first poodle looked nothing like a poodle.And I'm not sure poodles frequent the circus all that frequently. Just sayin'


Polar Bear


Lion


Monkey


Elephant


Clown. The clowns' heads are stuck in the cupcake with pretzel sticks. Do not, I repeat, do not stick the heads in the cupcakes until just before the party. The pretzels got all soggy from being in the moist delicious cupcakes and the clowns had leaning heads all day. Sucked.


Maya liked the cupcakes.

When all was said and done the party was fine, thunderstorm and all. This marks the second year in a row that my Indian Summer baby's birthday party has been thwarted by crap weather. I totally love that all the prep and work got over shadowed by mother nature--again. Totally. Next year, I'll go all low key and then it will be perfect weather, I just know it. Or maybe by then I'll convince Husband to move to Maui where its always 75 and sunny.


The girls. Before the storm.