Manic Mama Miles

Saturday, February 4, 2017

Wild About Peyton

For Peyton's 2nd birthday, we had a safari themed party. Peyton loves animals, so it was a perfect theme for her. The theme was gold, wooden & animal print. Since her birthday is in the dead heat of summer, we had kiddie pools, slip & slides & sprinklers set up outside.

The main table was a sweets table with some delicious sweet treats.

The backdrop is a gold tablecloth with jungle garland from Oriental Trading. To make the banner, I used my circle cutter & then my scalloped press around the edges. For the letters, I had foam animal print sheets from Oriental Trading. I used my cricut to cut out the letters for the banner.

I have several crates around, so I used those on the table, as well as an elephant & giraffe that I bought from a girl off of Facebook for $10. They were a big hit with the girls & were perfect for the party.

I bought the cheetah tablecloth at Hobby Lobby & the gold tableskirt from Party City.

I also bought these jungle leafs from Oriental trading. I used them to showcase some of our favorite pictures of Baby P from her 2nd year. These two painting have been in the playroom since I found them at a thrift store when Addy was a baby. I ordered the safari hats, binoculars & little animal print cars from Oriental trading. The kids loved playing with the cars & getting in with the theme of the party by dressing up.

Check out this link for more info on the food from this party...
Wild About Peyton Food

Friday, January 27, 2017

Addy's 4th Frozenfest Birthday Party Food

For Addy's 4th Frozenfest Birthday party, naturally we had to have some Frozen themed foods.

For the food cards, I used glitter cardstock & some labels I found on Pinterest. I stuck the food cards in white Styrofoam "snowballs". I shaved the bottom of the ball flat & then made a slit to fit the food cards in.

We had powdered donut trees on each side of the cake. The trees were made out of Styrofoam cones, covered in tinfoil & then the donuts were stuck in with toothpicks.

For the cake, I just made a round cake with Aqua Funfetti icing & silver sprinkles. Then I just decorated with rock candy, a number 4, & some of the Frozen gang.

The "Frost Bites" were marshmallows dipped in blue icing & rolled in silver sprinkles. I was lucky that Funfetti began making colored icing before this party because I used the heck out of the aqua icing.

We had "snowballs" (white cheddar cheeseballs) & "Olaf's arms" (pretzel sticks).

We enjoyed "Frozen Hearts" (strawberries)

"We finish each other's Sandwiches" (ham & cheese sandwiches with the snowflake cookie cutter)

"Kristoff"s Krispies" (rice krispie treats dipped in the aqua Funfetti icing & rolled in silver sprinkles).

We had "Sven Snacks", "Olaf's Buttons" & "Olaf's Noses"

For cupcakes, I made Aqua Funfetti cupcakes with Aqua Funfetti icing. I found some sugared snowflakes at Party City & just added them to the cupcakes.

Click Below for More Info on This Party
Addy's 4th Frozenfest Birthday
Addy's 4th Frozenfest Birthday Decorations
Addy's 4th Frozenfest Birthday Food
Movie Clapboard for Addy's 4th Frozenfest Birthday
Marquee Sign for Addy's 4th Frozenfest Birthday

Thursday, October 6, 2016

Marquee Sign for Addy's 4th Frozenfest Birthday Party

If you remember from Addy's Elmo Carnival, I like some lights as part of the table centerpiece decoration. So Addy's 4th Frozenfest birthday party was no exception. Since it was a movie themed, I wanted to do a marquee sign.

I started with a giant piece of foam core. Then I marked the edges or where I wanted to cut.

I drew out some shapes of what I wanted to cut, then used an exacto knife to cut the edges off. Hallelujah, I didn't cut myself. Small victories.

After I had the shape of the sign I wanted, I used the cardboard that holds the lights as a guide to space out how far apart I wanted them. This is very similar to the Addy lights I did at the Elmo carnival.

Once I made all the circles for the holes, I took scissors & stabbed them through & then kinda turned them in a circle shape until I made a hole big enough to fit the lights through. Spoiler alert, making holes in this foam core was so much easier than making holes in the wooden letters from the Elmo Carnival.

Before putting the lights in, I finished the front of the sign. I had bought blue foam core & I used my Cricut to cut the letters out of glittered scrapbook paper. Then I took the spray adhesive & a little silver glitter to finish off the sign & make it a little more sparkly for my sparkly girl Addy.

I then put in the lights from the back & dropped the cord down in between the two pieces of snow roll on the backdrop.

Movie Clapboard for Addy's 4th Frozenfest Birthday Party

As you can see, this movie clapboard was initially done for the first scheduled party day pre-1000 year flood. This clapboard was pretty easy, except for keeping things even. I used my cricut to cut out all the letters & the lines. Then I cut out the arrow parts from cardboard. This is just a piece of foam core board I had around the house from a previous project. I spray painted it great & used some of the spray on snow to give it a little texture. The worst part of this was trying to keep all the letters even. My OCD was out of control with this. I also didn't estimate correctly how far apart to space the letters, so I had to do them a couple of times. But in the end, it worked out ok & was a cute part of the decorations for Addy's 4th Frozenfest Birthday Party!

Addy's 4th Frozenfest Birthday Party Decorations

For the decorations for Addy's 4th Frozenfest Birthday party, I was able to use a lot of things I had already for Christmas. I am a little Christmas crazy, so any excuse to have more Christmas ornaments, I'm cool with. I started planning this party immediately after Addy's Elmo's birthday when she turned 3, so I just waited until after Christmas & bought a bunch of stuff at super cheap prices.

I started the backdrop with a giant man's suit box. I cut it up & taped it up really well to stabilize it some. I will say, I did not love this backdrop. It was a little heavy so it was hard to stand up. So...I did something a little crazy & I hope my husband isn't reading this. I actually nailed two small nails through the backdrop into the wall to keep it stable. That wall is full of nail holes anyway & we really only go in there for parties where that wall is covered, so that's okay right? Ha. But anywho...

After I taped it all up, I covered it in a light blue Dollar Tree tablecloth.

Then I took a "snow roll" that I had gotten at Walmart for like 90% off after Christmas & I covered the backdrop with that as well.

Then I went to work attaching things to the backdrop. See the silver things? They were random clear plastic movie reels that we had found at work cleaning stuff out. They were tossing them, so I took them home & spray painted them silver. I took those & all of the silver & blue snowflake ornaments I had gotten on sale & I attached them to the backdrop. Now by attached, I mean I sewed those suckers on. I'm not going to lie, it sucked. I used the clear fishing line that I use for a ton of my party stuff & a heavy duty sewing needle.

I just took the clear string & sewed it back & forth through the cardboard backdrop, attaching the reels & snowflakes. It sucked, but it wound up looking cute.

I also used the clear string to make an icicle banner for the top. I also tied white snowflake ribbon in between every other icicle to space them out a little.

Since it was a movie themed party, I made a marquee sign for the centerpiece. You can find out more info on that here.

For the rest of the decorations, I used a movie clapboard I made (see more info on that here), part of Addy's Frozen castle she had gotten the Christmas before, some sparkly blue trees from Hobby Lobby, a table runner I got on super sale & some silver candles.

Addy's 4th Frozenfest Birthday Party

Full disclosure, this party is a year old. We actually just celebrated Addy's 5th birthday, but I'm slightly (ok ridiculously) behind, so here we go. Addy was obsessed with Frozen last year. Not much has changed. Everyone was doing Frozen parties then, so I decided to change it up just a little & plan a Frozen Drive-In Movie party. The idea was to have the food table set up indoors & then watch the movie outside on our new blow-up movie screen that I had requested as my birthday present. I was gong to make little boxes for them to sit in & it was going to be a great fun time outdoors. October is when weather gets halfway decent in South Carolina...except for this year...when we had the 1000 year flood. Addy's outdoor party was scheduled right in the middle of the flood. We moved it to the next weekend, but everything was still so messed up from the flood, we weren't able to do anything inside. So we had the party inside & we put Frozen on the playroom TV. Improvising at it's finest. Ha. But the kid's still had a great time & really weren't the wiser as to what the original plans were.

I'm going to do a separate post on decorations, but this is what the main party table looked like in the daytime. This was our first nighttime birthday party. Initially that was so it would be dark enough for the movie. Small lesson learned, when kids eat tons of chocolate & sweets this late, they will stay up past midnight. Sorry friends. I was that parent this party. Whoops.

In addition to the main food table, I wanted a "concessions stand" for the movie. That was set up in the kitchen & consisted of popcorn, cracker jacks, chips & candy.