Annalise's Rainbow Birthday Party

My sweetest little munchkin turned 2 and we celebrated by having a rainbow-themed 2nd birthday party! We had about 50 guests so our little home was full and happy. :)

I made rainbow invitations,

and she wore her first nail polish! (With which she is now obsessed.)

The front door had a rainbow welcome wreath (I adapted MADE's acorn wreath with kidney beans because that's what they had at the dollar store!)

There was another rainbow welcome sign to greet the guests as they came in.

Rainbow letters spelled out 'TWO' to go in the frames I like to switch out for holidays and special occasions.

There were rainbow paper pom poms for the ceiling and the cat helped a lot with that part. He laid on the tissue paper I was trying to use.

Annalise helped by discovering the Windex somewhere and cleaning things that didn't need cleaning.

With the scraps from the bigger pom poms I made little ones to scatter on the mantel,

which also sported a cardstock pennant banner with Annalise's name on it.

The rainbow pinwheels came in two packs from the dollar store, and poked out of thrifted milk-glass bud vases.

The cardstock banners adorned windows and sliding doors too.

The treat table had lots of yummy rainbowy goodness.




There were Rainbow Twizzlers,

rainbow Otter Pops,

and a fruits-and-veggies dollar-store tray with that had six compartments which would have been perfect if I'd added the pineapple and blueberries like I'd planned. :)

The party favors were giant rainbow lollipops from the dollar store that got decorated with a customized rainbowy message I printed on sticker paper.

Chips and beverages were served in rainbow platters and pitchers we happened to get for our wedding,

and you had your choice of plenty of colors of plates and utensils!

I decorated plain cups with personalized stickers,

and for those just wanting water, there were customized water bottles! (Water-bottle label tutorial HERE)

I'm a sucker for details- the bottles sported personalized nutrition facts with her name, age, and birthdate too. :)

Dave barbecued hot dogs and hamburgers and there were other goodies too. (Including rainbow goldfishfish crackers- which actually only come in three colors.)

And the yummiest part- the cupcakes!

They were piled up with fluffy white (cloud-like!) frosting and sprinkled with rainbow sprinkles.

The handmade cupcake toppers on lollipop sticks matched the theme.

The cake itself was Pillsbury's Rainbow Funfetti.

Annalise danced and conducted the music as her guests sang to her,

but was strangely wary of her rainbow candles. She let Daddy do the honors of blowing them out.

Thanks to all her friends and family, Annalise had a blast at her rainbow party!

And it ended the way any good party should. :)

(Please note she cuddled off to sleep with daddy's iPhone like a teddy bear.)  :)

Linking to www.tatertotsandjello.com

Customized Water Bottle Labels

Annalise turned two yesterday! The theme of her birthday party was RAINBOWS!

One of my favorite things to do for parties is customized water bottle labels. You can buy vinyl waterproof labels to print on that are over a buck apiece, or you can make them for free if you have clear packing tape and some paper! I think they add such a cute touch. I designed mine in Photoshop and printed them out, but you could use scrapbook paper and stamps or stickers, or a simpler program like Word too. This time I used Aquafina bottles, but usually I go with the Kirkland brand of water bottles from Costco. Any brand would work and the labels are generally about 8 inches long. I printed out my labels on plain printer paper and sliced them apart.

In my opinion, the key to making the labels look good on the bottle is having them appear shiny and vinyl-like, the way the real ones are. To achieve that effect, I use a technique I learned years ago- clear packing tape! It is 2 inches thick, so I made my labels a bit thinner than two inches, so the tape can extend beyond them all the way around. I laid out the tape and put each label face-down on top of it.

Accidental ripples or bubbles can be easily smoothed out with your fingers. You can see that the label is a little less wide than the tape, which allows it to stick to the bottle all the way around.

Much better!

 

And I like to add "nutrition" facts and bar codes to make them look more authentic. :)

More Rainbow Party details to come! :)

Diaper Cake

Dave's mom called me up a few weeks ago and asked me if I knew of a good idea for a centerpiece for a baby shower she was throwing.

"DIAPER CAKE!" I shouted into the phone. Because I love them. About two years ago, I threw my friend a baby shower and made my first diaper cake then. The picture I have of it isn't that great.

(To see the details of the rest of the shower, look HERE on our family blog.)

I've improved my technique a bit since then and Dave's mom Becky and I had fun putting it together on her dining room table. While we worked, Grandpa taught Annalise how to garden.

(In the end he said she did very well, except that she didn't quite understand the concept of leaving the flowers IN the ground after they were planted there, and also apparently thought it might be helpful to stomp on them after the planting was through to make sure they were really securely nailed down.)

Inside the house, Becky had assembled the list of dollar-store goods I'd suggested. The shower was for boy/girl twins (like Dave and his sis!) so the colors were pink and blue.

We used an entire jumbo box of Costco's smallest-sized diapers- all 216 of them. We started rolling,

and put a tiny rubber band around each to hold them together. It didn't matter that all they had were black rubber bands (or that the diapers weren't the right colors) because they got covered up later.

For the base, we tied six rolled diapers in a circle with curling ribbon. Then we added another layer of rolled diapers around that and tied it again. We did that a bunch of times until we had a huge circle.

We made the smaller layers the same way and plopped them on top.

We wrapped wide blue and pink sheer ribbon around the outside of the layers (NOT-sheer would have been better but the dollar store only has what it has!) and used the crinkly paper to look like frosting. Becky had only bought one bag of it though and it wasn't enough because we wound up making the cake so big, so we made do with putting plain white paper through the paper shredder and it worked great! We did that with some pink crepe paper too, arranged the baby blocks, and put some cute stuffed animals on top. Yay!

The little hugging bunny and monkey were so sweet. :)

I heard it was quite a hit! To transport it, they slid it onto some sturdy cardboard and carefully drove it away. :)

A Homemade Toddler Gift

In late May, I had not done or thought about any crafts in months. Dave's mom's birthday was approaching though and for the first time in what felt like forever, my nausea, fatigue, and general weariness and misery gave way to a tiny crumb of crafty interest. Annalise had never done a craft before but I thought perhaps it was worth attempting. I baked some sugar cookies and made some icing in colors that wouldn't look bad if combined and set up a little cookie station for her.

She had never used a paintbrush before and became very grumpy when I tried to guide her hand. So we stared at her would-be project for a few minutes and I thought perhaps she would reject the whole idea. But then she picked up a brush and started off tentatively.

After a tiny swipe she took a cookie break.

Newly replenished, she forged on with gusto.

The final product:

And what is a birthday without a bouquet of flowers? My original idea was to trace Annalise's hands a bunch of times on a paper, have her color them, and then cut them out to make a bouquet of handprint flowers. Unfortunately she screeched and resisted so intensely upon the first tracing attempt that we settled for one handprint flower and several others that didn't require tracing or in any other way bothering her highly headstrong self.

I stabbed pipe cleaners through her flowers, tied them together and paired them with the cookies and her homemade card. Her first little art project was a success! Grandma loved it. :)

I'm Alive!

I haven't checked the blog or my emails from it in five months. I owe millions of people responses and answers and replies. I am getting to them now! :) I have some crafts to share. I am excited to make a comeback!