I love this outfit my mom sent to Miss Petrie for her summer preschool program.

After school, we went to a party for our little friend Lily.  Her mom hired a clown.  The clown was an incredible face painter!

I once knew a man who dated Gates McFadden, who played Dr. Beverly Crusher on Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Apparently, Gates attended clown college in Paris.  I never quite felt the same way about clowns after I knew there were specialized colleges for their training.

My dad used to make us all sit quietly and watch Star Trek: TNG every Saturday evening.  My parents wanted to make sure that we were well-versed in all things nerdy.

Have a great stardate!

We had a blast at Chuck E. Cheese’s!  Miss Petrie and her friends played really hard, ate pizza and enjoyed a delicious horse cake.  This cake was not only tasty, but beautiful as well.  I felt a little guilty cutting into something so pretty.

She loved the gifts she received from our generous friends.

If you are seven months pregnant, I highly recommend hosting a party at a location that is not your home.  It was so nice to show up, order food, socialize, and leave when we were done.

I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving weekend.  We enjoyed time with Mr. Petrie’s family.  I’ll show you some trip pictures later this week.

Have a great day.

Thanks to Poppies at Play for hosting Creative Cats Friday!

Miss Petrie’s birthday is right around the corner and I needed to get invitations out for her party.  She loves horses and I just got her birthday photos taken, so we combined the two elements into her birthday invitation.

She liked a galloping horse stamp (thanks for lending it to us, Amy!) and I stamped it in blue and embossed it with a clear rainbow powder.  The photo was punched out with a 1 3/4″ circle punch to personalize it.

I had some adorable small envelopes from the Dollar Tree that I’ve been wanting to use for a while.  This postage pony stamp (thanks again, Amy!) coordinated the envelope with the inside of the card.

I didn’t buy anything for this project but it did take some time to do.  When Miss Petrie Deux comes this winter I’m not sure I’ll be able to do these types of projects for our family and friends.  But I’m glad to be able to do this now.

Check out a homemade horse button for the birthday schwag bag.

Have a wonderful weekend, friends.

Miss Petrie’s birthday is coming up very soon and I’ve started working on some of the small details for her party.  I bought these photo pins at Hobby Lobby this summer.

I cut out some denim-polka dot paper to use as the background for the stamp.

I stamped a horse onto white cardstock and punched out the head area using my 1 3/4” circle punch.

Here’s the almost finished pin.  I still need to add blue ribbon to give it a little more texture.

I made 12 pins.  A 12-pack of plastic pins was $1 (on sale), blue ribbon was $1 and all the other supplies were on hand.  That comes out to $.17 per pin plus labor.  Miss Petrie thought these pins were great and kept trying to steal them away from me!

I’ll post pictures of the totally finished pins soon and the rest of the schwag bag.

Have a great day.

Our little friend Luke recently turned four and his very creative mom threw him a fire station party.  I love how the party was frugal and had so many special, homemade touches.

We started the party with a tour of a local fire station. The fire fighters showed a fire truck and ambulance and let all the kids sit in the driver's seat. The kids also got to hold a hose and try on fire fighter gear.

We then went to Luke's house where his mom had set up crafts. Shoe boxes painted red were transformed into fire trucks. Notice the cute dalmation-y table cloth.

Some more dalmation love: white t-shirts could be paw-stamped with black fabric paint.

A fire truck birthday cake

When it was time to go, the kids got a goody bag filled with fire fighter coloring pages, a Matchbox fire truck and candy. Did I mention that the fire fighters also gave the kids a goody bag and a hat?

I am always blown away by how much creativity and effort goes into planning a kid’s birthday party.  

Have a fun day!

I threw a shower for a friend this past Monday.  You might recall the lollipop shower invitation I made.  

I hung pre-made baby boy shower decorations from the track lights in the hallway.

More pre-made baby boy decorations and some stars to pull in the orange color.

I made this banner welcoming baby Jackson. I love this coordinating paper. It's boyish but not just plain blue!

For one of the games I wrapped this small fishbowl with a diaper and guests had to guess how many poops were in the baby's diaper.

As a parting gift, I gave each mom a picture of their child with a clip I covered in ribbon. I added a magnet to the back of the clip.

I was so busy hosting the shower I didn’t take any pictures during the shower!  I think everyone had a fun time and the mom-to-be got lots of diapers (it was a diaper shower).  The shower was combined with playgroup, so we had lots of three and four year olds enjoying running the house for a few hours.  It was total chaos!  I was ready to pass out when the last guest left.

Have a great Friday!

Thanks to Kelly’s Korner for hosting Show Us Your Life- Baby Showers!

A couple of weeks ago we had a shower for our good friend, Aja.  You may remember the invitation I made, the shower favors and the baby gift.  The shower was lots of fun with cute games and excellent food.  All of the gifts to the mom-to-be were really thoughtful and adorable.  Now we’re just waiting for baby Logan to make his appearance!

What kind of party would it be without balloons?

The colorful animal centerpiece.

A clothesline around the dining room table.

A delicious cake and cupcakes were gobbled up in a matter of minutes.

Aja opens up tiny baby outfits.

Thanks for coming to the shower!

See you on Monday with more on my parent’s renovation.

Yesterday I made shower parting gifts for my friend’s shower.  I had bought white ink a couple of months ago and I’ve really wanted to use it, but hadn’t yet.  I thought this would be a good opportunity to try out white ink on black paper.

The supplies:

I traced the tag size I wanted, stamped the image onto the black paper, and used clear powder to emboss the stamp image.  White ink is really water-y, so I needed to emboss the image so it wouldn’t smear.

I have a special tag maker that gives the tag a metal frame.  I think the tag looks more complete with the frame.

I printed out a saying on the back of the tag.

"Sweets in anticipation of sweet baby Logan."

I thought and thought about what kind of sweet treat to include in the gift bag.  At the store today, I saw these fluffy, chocolate chip meringues and knew they would be perfect.  I tied a white ribbon around the bag and attached the tag to the ribbon.

It took me a couple of hours to make the tags, but I think they really make the gifts look unique.  I had all of the supplies on hand, so the only money I spent was on the meringues.  

I hope you have a light and fluffy weekend!

My friend had a party for her little girl, Charlotte, and the theme was Olivia.  I helped my friend get the parting gifts decorated with Olivia wrappers.

My friend bought all of the wrappers on the internet and they were personalized with her daughter’s name and birthday.  There were waterproof water bottle wrappers, large and small chocolate bar wrappers, Hershey’s Kisses stickers, and microwaveable popcorn wrappers.  Everything held on well with tape.  Miss Petrie particularly liked the water bottles and we had to pilfer an extra.

I made our little friend an Olivia card using an Olivia book dust jacket (maybe you remember how I take all our dust jackets off and try to re-use them when crafting).  

The party was so much fun and the cake was incredible (a fondant Olivia), but I forgot to take my camera!

Enjoy your day.

My friend is having a baby boy this fall and my playgroup is throwing her a diaper shower.  I wanted to do something fun, but different, for her invitation.  I’ve seen dressed up candy all over blogland and so I bought some big, flat lollipops to use as the base for my invitation.

I stamped the cute monkey design onto a circle slightly bigger than the candy.

I added embossing powder over the stamp. This powder was clear with sparkles.

After I took off the excess powder, I heated the powder with an embossing gun. The gun sets your stamp and slightly raises the image.

I used a small “j” stamp on the monkey’s pocket (for the baby’s name) and colored in the monkey’s ears.  Orange is a good counterpoint to blue and adds a touch of the unexpected.  I put the pertinent information on the back of the lollipop.  The cardstock circles are glue gunned onto the lollipop wrapper.

The ribbon added a finishing touch (and I had it in my stash).  I’m passing out the invitations to the invitees today.

Have an interesting week!