Monkey Canvas

Still working on more Monkey Party items.  I have so many ideas I saved from the internet that I wanted to use.  I wanted something substantial to put over the dessert table and I came across this picture that inspired me:

I decided to take some pictures of my daughter in an adorable monkey suit my sister let me borrow, and mount them to stretched canvas to place over the table.  It really was an easy task and I had it done in under an hour I'd say.

Supplies you'll need:
Photos you want to use
Stretched canvas in the same size as your photos (I used 11x14 pictures)
Modge Podge
Foam brush, bowl/container to pour Modge Podge into

The first step is to coat your bare canvas with the Modge Podge using a foam brush. I was fairy liberal in my use, because I wanted to make sure the photo stuck well. I placed my photo on top of the canvas and smoothed it out with my hand and made sure it was evenly lined up on all sides. Let that dry completely. (mine took about 15-20 minutes)
Then you need to put another layer of Modge Podge directly on top of your photo.  I tried to put a thick enough layer on to cover it all, but without leaving a lot of "lines" with the brush. It's going to look pretty cloudy to begin with but trust me, it will dry clear.

After it's dry (again, maybe 1/2 hr or so), you'll have a beautiful canvas picture to hang, without the price tag of an actual canvas photo. I made 2 pictures this size and it cost me about $10 to make it. (I printed my photos online using a discount code, bought the Modge Podge at Michael's using a 50% off coupon and got 2 canvas' in a pkg for $5) I can't wait to hang them up at her party!!

Next will be to make a bunting to stretch above the photos just like my first inspiration picture.

Monkey See, Monkey Do...

Today's post is about making cupcake toppers for our upcoming monkey luau party for our daughter's 3rd birthday.  I try to decide well in advance what the theme of their next party is going to be so that I have plenty of time to research ideas and pick things up as I go, rather than a huge expense all at once.  This years party inspiration started when I found this party line:

And yes, it was 50% off at the time too--Yippee!!  A friend mentioned it had a luau feel to it and I loved it so much I decided to go with it! So, Monkey Luau it is! =)

I only have one month until the big day so I started a couple days ago making things.  First up, cupcake toppers.  I rely on my trusty Cricut and SVG files for these.  First I had to decide what size I wanted them to be. I believe I went with 3" (keeping proportions) and cut those out, as well as their coordinating bellies, faces & ears.

This is what they looked like after they were cut. Please ignore my nasty Cricut mat, it's really on its last leg, but I'm making sure it's gets well used because, well, I'm cheap thrifty like that!
Next I had to piece them together.  Now this was the tedious part. Usually for small things like this I use my small Xyron machine, but for some reason it's MIA. Boo!  The only other thing I had on hand was a scrapbook gel glue. A little messy, but worked well enough.  Here they are after I attached those bellies and such:

I planned on then just adding mouths by hand & wiggly eyes, but they just looked so BORING to me! Hmmm, what did they need? I KNOW!!! HULA SKIRTS! What's a luau without grass skirts, right?  And boy, I thought the last step was tedious, this was even worse. LOL  I set my Cricut to cut out 1" wide trapezoids and then I had to hand cut fringe onto them to look like skirts. Boy, Martha Stewart had a great idea when she came out with fringe scissors. But alas, since I don't have any, I got to hand cut 24 mini grass skirts.  I then added a paper flower to the monkeys ear and WHALA!!!

 So, what do you think??  Apparently my daughter is in love with them because every time she sees them she runs and hugs me and says, "Thank you Mommy! Thank you for my monkeys!!"

A Vintage Strawberry Shortcake Party

It really doesn't take much to railroad sway my children into a specific party theme each year because let's face it, they're still too young to catch on!  So for my oldest daughter's 4th birthday in October (yes, I'm super duper lazy behind when it comes to blog posts) I was able to talk her into a Strawberry Shortcake party.. And not that new, modernized Strawberry Shortcake that's out now, the adorable, vintage Strawberry Shortcake from the 80's (and whom my childhood bedroom just happened to be decorated in). Really, why do they have to change things? (shaking head)
So now the fun started--Can you believe my mother just happened to have saved the Strawberry Shortcake candle from my sister's 6th birthday party?? Here it is:

 She also happened to have a large roll of vintage SS ribbon that I used on my cupcake toppers and the kids goody baskets.

I found the image on Google, and imported it to Microsoft Office and made round labels that I then cut out with a circle hand punch. Aren't they pretty? :)

So I'm not going to go into all these details on how everything is/was made unless someone asks for the details. I'm just going to go ahead and post the rest of the pictures from the party. I make as much, if not everything, by myself and take such pride in creating these parties for my babies. 

Upcycled noise makers that I made "my own":

I always make all the hats for the kids and the birthday girl:

The kids (old and young alike) played the Bean Bag Toss and I handmade strawberry bean bags.  We also had a "Pin the strawberry on Strawberry Shortcake's hat" game as well as a pinata.

 I ended up running out of time while decorating this year. The snafu we ran into was another party rented the hall the previous night which is when we usually decorate. They didn't leave until almost 11 p.m. We got in there and decorated for about 3 hrs but had to get home to our girls. I tried to get back early enough the next morning but still ran out of time so I really wasn't happy with the way the dessert table looked. There were supposed to be balloons on either sides of the wall hanging and I would NOT have put the crockpot on there.
The food consisted of strawberry shaped chocolate lollipops, cupcakes, pink snowballs, various strawberry flavored cookies, strawberry swirl lollipops, sandwiches/chips & strawberry banana punch.

I had grandiose plans for the cake, but I'm not a baker by any means, and by 3 am I was fighting with fondant and just so frustrated.  Luckily I had made enough pink buttercream to be able to cover the entire cake so I settled gave up.  In the grand scheme of things, the cake actually fit in better with the vintage feel than what I had planned on making. Oh, that's right, I meant to do that! :)

 Goody baskets for the girls-These are actually Easter baskets I got on clearance after the holiday for .50 each!! What a steal. I added that same vintage strawberry ribbon my mother gave me and added in Strawberry Shortcake coloring books, a strawberry plate, SS banks, bracelets & adorable sunglasses.

 Strawberry shaped bubble containers from the Dollar Tree.

 Here's the room all decorated.  My sister had found me a deal on vintage curtains and a bed canopy that we used to decorate the windows and the dessert table.  They REALLY added to the feel of the room and I think it looked so girly and pretty!

 Happy Birthday banner I made:

 I made/stitched this apron for her to wear.  I got the inspiration (and a few other elements) for the party from Little Pumpkin Grace. 

  I made homemade strawberry freezer jam and strawberry shaped cookies for the adults to take home.  The strawberries came from our summer trip to the strawberry fields.

Happy 4th birthday, my beautiful angel!  The day I became your Mommy was the most blessed day of my life!

 I hope you enjoyed our party pictures. I tend to go overboard when it comes to photographing my kids. I'm still learning and really hope to become a better photographer...someday. Right now I'm just enjoying being Mommy.

MMMmmm, Cheesy Chicken Biscuits

Okay, so living out in the semi-boondocks we don't have access to high speed internet. My mother on the other hand, who actually DOES live in the boondocks, HAS high speed internet--Go figure!! So, I was heading to her house last night to upload a bunch of photos for an online printing deal and needed to have dinner ready for the Hubster and my girls.  I remembered seeing this post from a friend, Cheryl (a.k.a. TidyMom) for Cheesy Chicken Biscuits and I thought it looked so yummy at the time but didn't have biscuits. I happened to get some Pillsbury Grands on sale for $.98 recently so I set off to make her recipe.

Ingredients you'll need:

1 stick butter 
1/2 C. Flour
14 oz. can Chicken Broth 
4-5 Boneless Skinless Chicken Breasts
1 C. Shredded Cheddar Cheese
Salt & Pepper to Taste
Milk (optional)
1 can Pillsbury Grands Biscuits


Cut chicken into bite sized pieces and cook thoroughly in skillet. I added a bit of salt & pepper to this step while the chicken was cooking.

Pour into 9x13 pan.  In a saucepan, simmer butter, chicken broth & salt/pepper until melted.

I turned mine up to a boiling state and added some of the liquid to my measuring cup of flour and whisked them together (I have a HUGE problems with lumps from my flour when I'm trying to make any type of gravy mixture so I learned from my Mom to mix into a paste in a separate container and then slowly whisk into my sauce) and then whisked the flour into the butter/broth combo.  You can add milk to think it out if it's too thick (I needed to).

Pour sauce over chicken in 9x13 pan. Sprinkle the cheddar cheese over the chicken/sauce and top w/ biscuits. Now, I don't know about anyone else, but EVERY.TIME I open a container of these biscuits, they scare the bajeebers out of me when they make that POP noise. It's probably quite comical for anyone standing around me!

Place in the oven and bake according to the directions for the biscuits. It was approximately 13-17 minutes or until golden brown but I would recommend baking it as long as possible without burning the biscuits because the part of the biscuit that sat down in the liquid was still very dough like and almost tasted not cooked to me. So definitely cook as long as possible.

Mmmm, dinner is served! I know my 3 1/2 yr old said she "loved it tons and ate bunches and bunches" so it had to be good (coming from Miss Picky!!) LOL
You could always serve with a side of vegetables if you want but this was filling enough for us with all those biscuits.


Stop by later this week for an installment of Pepperoni & Cheese stuff chicken breasts. Finger lickin' good!

Ahhh, summer at last??

I know I shouldn't even speak those words, because my luck is I'll jinx it, and we'll get a snow storm tomorrow! LOL  I was so surprised by the beautiful, warm weather this morning that I had to put the kids in the car and just take a ride into town so we could put the sunroof up and the windows down and take in all that fresh air! (too bad the price of gas made it only a drive into town) :(    The flowers are starting to bloom in the yard and I can see all the weeds that need pulled already.
Well, a friend alerted me to this blog this morning and OMG, I'm TOTALLY making these pillows for my girls beds. That is, after a trip to Joann Fabrics w/ my 50% off coupon to pick up some fleece!  Aren't they pretty? And just in time for the season. What spring crafts are you working on?

Look Whooo's Turning Two!!

Twice a year I get the pleasure of planning birthday parties for my 2 special little princesses. And each year I'm torn between what theme I should choose, types of goodies for the kids, decorations, etc.  I also always feel a lot of pressure planning parties for our youngest because she's 3 months after all the Christmas hub-bub, and it sort of sneaks up on me.  This year Miss "Buggy" was turning 2. After a bit of searching online I decided on an owl theme.  Funny how quickly things seem to fall into place once that theme is decided on!!

A lot of my inspiration for this party (like the color scheme, pink &green) came from this blog. Once I found it, everything else was cake!

I'm just going to share pictures of "Buggy's" party to start off with, since I didn't take step by step pictures at the time. Our parties really are done on a budget, and I hope others will get some inspiration from me, and know that it doesn't have to cost a lot to be spectacular!!


We started with the invitations. I found an owl SVG online and was able to cut it out with my Cricut. I then layered all the pieces together and glued a piece of paper to the back with all of the party information.

THE CAKE.. For some reason, the cake stresses me out every year.  I don't know why I have this compulsion to make the cake, but I almost feel like if I don't, all the other things I make don't matter?? Yeah, crazy, I know.  I was up the night before the party until 4 am working on this cake. I was extremely happy with it, even though it didn't look exactly like the vision I had in my mind.

The food table. I made the ribbon topiaries, the tissue paper flowers, all of the party hats, miniature fabric owl for all of the kids to take home after the party, owl goodie bags filled with pink, green & white M&M's and Hershey Bars covered with owl wrappers. Whew, that was a mouthful! LOL

I also made owl masks for all of the kids to wear. I don't know why, but I was so excited for these and I think they came out adorable!!

We couldn't get Buggy out of hers! So sweet!

I appliqued an owl I hand cut onto a party dress for Buggy. This was actually my first time w/ a satin stitch on my sewing machine (my husband just got it for me for Christmas to replace the 35 year old machine I've been using) and it certainly didn't come out perfect but I love that she matched the party theme.  She also had these bloomers to go under her dress. Her older sister had to match as well so I ordered her this shirt. They were both made BEAUTIFULLY and I would definitely recommend StickyNoodles to all of you!!

The room looked so pretty after the Hubby & I finished decorating it the night before. Streamers from the ceiling, huge tissue paper flowers that I hung from the center of the room.  We lined the tables w/ tablecovers and I had found this awesome hot pink w/ white polka dots wrapping paper that we used for a runner on all of them. I found all of the owl cups/plates/napkins on Amazon. This line is actually for a 1st Birthday, but most of it didn't have the number on it so I was able to use the dessert plates, the luncheon napkins, balloons, cups, and I even used the Thank You cards (they were folded cards, so I just cut off the front portion and wrote our note on the back of it.)

I made her Happy Birthday banner similar to the invitations. It's actually for sale in my Etsy shop because we have no more use for it, but I'm hoping someone else does.  I also made a smaller banner to go over the food table that read "Look Whooo's Two".

I usually try to make the food match the theme as well, but this year I just decided to do hamburgers & hotdogs since I had so much else to make. Of course, I did make owl cupcakes for the kids to have using this recipe. They were a hit, as well as the owl butter cookies I made:

(please ignore the cookie in the bottom right that appears red. For some reason I could NOT get my meringue powder tinted pink. This is all that would happen) =(  Only my 2nd time making frosted cookies, and while they're still  not perfect, they're a WHOLE lot better than the hot mess the last set of cookies turned out as!

 
All of the kids played "Pin the beak on the owl", & we had wooden owl masks to color after we ate which kept the kids really busy and they loved it.

This was definitely one of the parties I'll remember most. Everything turned out beautifully and I was so proud to be able to provide this party to our baby.  Now, onto the next Birthday......Strawberry Shortcake is it?? =)