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Monday, December 22, 2014

Elmo Carnival Birthday - The Invitation


For Addy's 3rd birthday, we had an Elmo Carnival. It was a very fun party & there was a lot that went into the planning.  As you have probably noticed throughout this blog, my parties usually go one of two ways...either I throw them together super last minute or I plan them for like a year.  This was one of those year-long planned out events...mostly because I took long breaks in the planning.  

I come up with ideas in a strange way.  For this party, I decided on the carnival idea because while at a consignment sale in September 2013, I found a popcorn maker that reminded me of a carnival & thus, this party was born. : )  I didn't want to just do a carnival, but wanted to also incorporate something Addy loves.  There is a lot of red in carnival themed parties & what else is red?  Elmo.  So I decided to combo the two.  The first thing I did (besides buy the sweet ass $2 popcorn maker) was work on the invitation.
 I got the inspiration for the Elmo face invitation & the envelope here at Inspire, Design & Create.   I loved the idea of an Elmo face, with the party information on the back.  I wasn't exactly sure how to make the Elmo face & definitely didn't trust myself to freehand it, so upon a search of Pinterest, I found a template at scribd.com.   I printed off the template & traced it onto red cardstock paper.  I then used the bottom of a round salt shaker to trace a circle & cut out white circles for eyes & orange circles for noses.  I used a sharpie for the eyes & the mouths.   
When it came to the invitation information, I saw some super cute ideas at Bringing Home Ezra.  I loved the ideas of the different fonts for the invitation.  So here are the different fonts I used.  For the "COME ONE, COME ALL" I used the Algerian font that you can find in Microsoft Word.  For ADDY's 3rd BIRTHDAY", I used the Bernard MT Condensed font from Word.  For "It's An" I used Brush Script from Word.  For "ELMO CARNIVAL", I went to http://www.fontspace.com/rick-mueller/coffee-tin & downloaded the Coffee Tin font.  It was perfect for this invitation.  Is it weird that I had never gone & downloaded a font before?  I hadn't, but I was super excited to find this one.  : )  For the "ADMIT ONE", I again used the Algerian & this time I bolded it.  & for the "FOOD, GAMES & PRIZES", I used the Bernard MT Condensed again.  Finishing up the invite with the date is the Algerian again, this time non-bolded.  

My other dominant color for the party besides the red & white stripes was pink, so I found some striped pink paper at Hobby Lobby & printed off the invitation wording onto it.  To make it "ticket-looking", I just cut sort of a J (or a backwards J if it was the other side) out of the corners.  

So naturally, I don't know what I did with the photos of the envelopes I used, but here is another shot of the super cute ideas at Inspire, Create & Design.  I did similar envelopes, but I just used the extra white circles & orange noses from the invitation faces & used those on the back on the envelopes too.  Then on the front of the envelopes, they had the addresses & then "G is for Gabriela", "N is for Nolan" & so forth for each kid invited.  
If you want to have a carnival party or if your kid is obsessed with Elmo the way mine was this past year, then Pinterest is your friend.  We went to another Elmo party about a month after Addy's party & there were tons of super cute ideas from Pinterest there too.  What did we do before Pinterest guys?  Probably got a lot more work done... ; )

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Saturday, December 6, 2014

The Next Chapter: Book Pedestal Cupcake Stands

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For the Book Themed Baby Shower, I used books as risers for different dimensions on my table.  I also wanted to use books as cupcake pedestals & I saw this great idea here from Anders Ruff.  I started with a few old books that I no longer read.  I found paperbacks to be the best for this project.  The first step was to take off the cover. 
Then, you just fold each page in half.  I recommend not using books of more than 200 pages.  That was a good amount.  For the book pinwheel that you will see at the bottom of this page, I had a short book that they were recycling at work that I thought would be a great height for some other pedestals...yeah it was 660 pages so after I folded each of those pages in half, I was not interested in making another one that size to use as another pedestal so I used it as a pinwheel instead.  : )


Here is what the top of the pedestal winds up looking like.  
And here is what the side looks like.  How cool is that?
This was my "dry run" where I put all my post its around the table where every decoration & food item is going to go until I am satisfied with the set up.  OCD?  Uh yes, very.  : )  You can see one of the pedestals here on the left side of the picture.  Another was put on the right side when I moved that book. 
To showcase the cute mini-book cupcakes, I put some books I have around my house on top of these pedestals & then set the cupcakes on top of the books.
Here is the "pinwheel" I was talking about earlier...all 660 pages.  Yikes.  Now that's dedication.  : ) 


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The Next Chapter: Book Baby Shower Banner

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For the Book Themed Baby Shower, I made a banner for about $1.  Here is how.  First I found a book at Goodwill for 50 cents that had some picture pages, but also lots of pages with just words.  
I knew I wanted to spell out "The Next Chapter", so I cut out a page of words-only for each letter I needed.  Then I took all the pages with pictures & cut the pictures out & then cut the pages into 4ths.  I did this based on the size of my letters I would be using.


Once I had the picture size, I took a piece of scrapbook paper that I had gotten at Hobby Lobby for another party for around 50 cents & I used my stencils to spell out my letters.  Once I had all the letters traced, I cut them out & glued them onto the pictures that I had cut up.  I then took the words-only pages & put my picture/letter combo on top.  The words-only pages were larger than what I wanted to use, so I just centered everything & cut off the excess to make a square background.  They wound up looking like this.
I then took my hole punch & some ribbon around the house & tied the letters together.  On the ends, I used clear craft line (you can also use fishing line) to attach the banner to my old window with a thumb tack.  Besides the light reflecting horribly in these pictures, the banner turned out really cute & was so cheap. 


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The Next Chapter: Book Baby Shower Decorations

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In keeping with the theme, books are  what I also used to decorate for the Book Themed Baby Shower.  I have tons of books around my house, so I used them to sit the food stands on to give the table some dimension.  

These are books that I have collected over the years to read or either ones I have gotten at thrift shops because I thought they looked neat.  If you aren't going to get the books to read, I suggest going to Goodwill or a thrift shop because you can find books as cheap as $1, sometimes less.  The book that I set the fruit salad on is one that has old maps & atlas pages in it.  This is the book I used pages from to make my old window map project that you can see here.  It also had lots of pages that just listed different cities and towns.  I took those pages out and used it as the paper on the serving dishes.

I found this G that looks like a book at where else?  Hobby Lobby. : )  I loved how it looked like an old book & of course I bought it when they had wood decor 50% off.  The book pinwheel was made the same way as the cupcake pedestal stands which you can find the instructions for here.  Here is where you can find info on the mini-book cupcake picks.  
Part of the decorations & gifts along with the rest of the books on the table was this crate full of books.  I use this crate & a white one for so many parties.  I highly recommend everyone find some good crates because they are so versatile for decorations.  
Above the crate of books was the book banner that you can find more info on here.  Happy reading & partying everyone. : ) 

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The Next Chapter: Mini-Book Cupcakes

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One of my favorite little things about the Book Themed Baby Shower were these little mini-book cupcake books.  These were super easy to make.  I googled children's books & found this page where you could sign up to join a club where you receive children's books.  This is a snapshot of what the page looked like. 
 All I did was print that page off (use cardstock paper if you have any, I was out so I just used regular printer paper & it worked fine).  I then just cut out the little books & taped them onto a toothpick & all finished!





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The Next Chapter: Book Themed Baby Shower

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One of my dear friends from law school is having a baby girl in January. She is currently living up in DC, but came down for the Thanksgiving holidays. She really wanted to fill up the baby's bookshelves, so we had her a baby book shower. I have to say, I am in love with this baby shower because I love books. My mom was a librarian when I was growing up & is now a director of a library nearby. I grew up surrounded by books at home & when I went to work with my mom. There are books all over my house, both for adults & for kids. I believe that time with books is a very special time & I was so excited for us to fill up Baby Graham's bookshelves. Something else I was excited about? How many cute ideas you can do with a book shower. First things first, I decided on a menu that would go along with the books I wanted to use as decorations on the table.  I knew I wanted it to be a brunch because who doesn't love a good brunch?  To me, brunch signifies a day I don't have to go to work, so I love it even more. : )  Luckily, there are so many cute books to go with a brunch. 

The Very Hungry Caterpillar & Clementine - Fruit Salad

If You Give a Moose a Muffin - Muffins

Green Eggs & Ham - Mini Quiches

If You Give a Dog a Donut - Donuts

Of course we had to have some sweets.
If You Give a Mouse a Cookie - Cookies

The Giving Tree - Caramel Apple Cupcakes

We also had a couple of snack foods.
Counting Kisses - Hershey's kisses

One Fish Two Fish Red Fish Blue Fish - Rainbow Goldfish

Pinkalicious - pink lemonade

I also made breakfast casseroles & southern crockpot grits even though I didn't have books that went along with those dishes because in the South, you can't really have a brunch without grits. I had some extra books set up in front of those dishes, mostly to fill space.  This shower was so much fun to put together & so much fun to host.  Books can get expensive, so I checked out Goodwill where children's books are 50 cent.  You can't beat that.  I found some in perfect shape.  I also found some great books at Ollie's Outlet where books are usually under $5.  For the other books, we split them up & got most off of Amazon because they have great prices.  I obviously used the books as decorations, but for other decorations from this party, check out here for the book baby shower banner, here for the mini-books cupcake picks & here for the book pedestal cupcake stands.  Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

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