Sesame Street Birthday Party

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My friend has a daughter who turned two ten days before my little girl.  We decided to do a combined birthday party.  It was so fun and our daughters loved every minute of the party.  We did a Sesame Street themed party.  Here are some of the things we had at the party:

Sesame Street Sign

Sugar Cookie Bars

Sugar Cookie Bars

                             1 Cup Butter, room temperature

                             2 Cups Sugar

                             4 Eggs

                             2 tsp. Vanilla

                             5 Cups Flour

                             1 tsp. Salt

                             1/2 tsp. Baking soda

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.  Mix butter and sugar together until fluffy.  Add eggs, one at a time.  Add vanilla and mix until well combined.  In a separate bowl add the dry ingredients and stir.  Then slowly add the dry ingredients to your mixer.  Once all of the ingredients are incorporated, spread the dough onto a well greased cookie sheet (I use my hands to spread the dough out since it is so tough).  Bake at 375 for 10-15 minutes or until a toothpick comes out clean (it won't really be golden brown).  Let the cookies cool and then frost them.

Basic Sugar Cookie Frosting

                             4 Cups Powdered Sugar

                             4 tsp. Vanilla

                             1/2 Cup Butter, softened

                             3-4 tsp. Milk

Peanut M&M's 

They were the perfect little addition for the table since they are Sesame Street colors.

Giant Elmo Balloon
 We bought it on Amazon for $12.  The kids loved it, until it got body slammed by some boys and popped.  I also saw the other day at the Dollar Tree that they have a normal sized Mylar balloon that's Elmo's head.  It's only a dollar!  That's a steal.

Fishing with Dorothy 
The children fished over a sheet and would catch a prize.

Sesame Street Bowling

The kids loved rolling and throwing the ball and the "pins".  

Oscar's Trash Basketball 

Elmo and Big Bird Party Favors

Sesame Street Character Oreo Pops

Cookie Monster Cake
We got this at Smith's for about $15, which was a great deal considering we didn't have to spend the time decorating it ourselves!

Candy Corn Wreath

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I know these have been around a lot lately on the internet, but I love them so I had to make one to share with you.  To make the wreath, I bought a foam tube at Home Depot that is in the plumbing section for 97 cents.  I then cut the tube to the size that I wanted and then used duct tape to keep the two ends together.  The one issue I ran into by doing this method was that it didn't stay a perfect circle.  I've also heard of doing the same thing using a swim noodle.  I just didn't want to spend $5 on a foam wreath when I could get away with only spending $1.

Next, I wrapped the wreath with black duct tape.  Then I hot glued candy corns onto the wreath.  Just a warning, this will take you a while haha.  I changed the direction the candy corns were facing each row.  Then I wanted to make my wreath a little different than all of the other candy corn wreaths out there, so I added a little sign that says "Trick or Treat" on it.  I purchased a really thin piece of wood at Robert's for $1.80 or so.  It was way longer than I wanted, but it was the right thickness and width.  I broke the wood so it would have rough edges.  I then outlined Trick or Treat on wood and painted around the words.  I decided that I liked the plain wood look for the letters rather than painting them in a different color.  I sanded down the sign a little bit so it would have a distressed/scary look to it.  Then all I had to do was tie a ribbon to the top so I could hang it.  I've seen where people have used a really thick ribbon to hang their wreath, which I think looks nice, but I didn't think it would look as good because of my sign.

I have talked to a few people who made these last year and their wreaths actually ended up melting!  So you may want to preserve your wreath.

Vintage Earring Holder

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The other day I was trying to sort through all of my earrings.  When I finished finding the different pairs and deciding which ones I'd actually like to keep, I had nowhere to put them other than in a ziplock bag.  I decided right then and there that I was going to make something to organize my earrings.  I've had plenty of jewelry boxes in my day, but my earrings still didn't seem that organized in them.  I had seen some framed jewelry holders floating around the internet.  This one was my inspiration.  I loved the look of the lace. 

I kept my eye out for an oval frame....but I couldn't find any that were a very good price.  I headed to DI and found a long and skinny frame that I thought would work and it was only $3 (I actually ended up liking better than the oval frame look).  I had purchased some lace at Hobby Lobby.  The lace was 50% off so the two rolls cost me a total of $2.50.  I have lots of lace left over and look forward to using it for some other projects.  I just love lace!  Next I got some Ivory spray paint at Walmart for $3.50.  So that brings my total cost to $9, but I have plenty of lace and spray paint left over that I'll be able to use for other projects.

This is what the frame looked like to begin with.

 I spray painted the frame and then antiqued it a bit.

 Then I simply attached my lace.  I used hot glue because that's what I had, but if you have a staple gun, I'm sure that would be more secure.  The hot glue seems to be holding up just fine so far though.

 I hung it up on the wall and hung my earrings and it was done.  Such an easy, quick craft!

Soap Dispenser Jack-O-Lantern

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I've seen a lot of fun Halloween decorations in stores lately.  I can't believe it's that time of year already!  While I was at the dollar store I saw a soap dispenser that is supposed to look like an orange and thought it would make a great Halloween decoration.  I simply got a black sharpie marker and drew a jack-o-lantern face on the soap dispenser.  SO easy and it only cost $1.  Yay!

Design Seeds

Pin It I LOVE Design Seeds.  It is a great website with different color swatches.  Whether you need to find colors for a room or to help you figure out what to wear for family pictures, this site will help you immensely!  There are pages and pages of swatches, so there is one that is bound to be calling out your name. 

Dried Orange Art

Pin It A while ago I mentioned that I had seen a tutorial on how to dry oranges on Delia Creates well I finally used mine!  I put my dried oranges in a few picture frames and hung them above the window in my kitchen.  The two small picture frames could be bigger, but I got them for 10 cents each at Walmart....so I'm not complaining!  The larger frame was also from Walmart and was $3.  Here's the finished product.

To dry your oranges, cut them into the same you want.  Cut them about 1/4" thick.  Lay them on a cookie sheet lined with foil and bake at 250 degrees for about 5-6 hours.  Depending on the thickness of your oranges, it may take longer.  After a couple hours flip over the oranges.  You may want to flip them back over after another few hours.

To make these, I simply cut out some cream paper to fit the frames and then hot glue the dried oranges onto the paper.  Really easy!

Easter Topiary

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I bought some plastic Easter eggs at the dollar store the other day and wanted to figure out something fun to do with them.  I came up with this Easter topiary.  My husband said it looks like something from Dr. Seuss ha.  I think it's fun and considering it only cost me a dollar to make - I think it turned out pretty well.

Supplies:
- Plastic Eggs
- Wire hanger
- Basket
- Tissue paper
- Plain paper
- Plastic cup
- Hot glue
- Tacky glue - Elmer's glue would work fine too
- Wire cutters

Here's how you make it:

Just like with my Valentine's Kissing Ball, I made a ball out of plain paper. 

 I cut up some tissue paper into squares - don't worry if they aren't all perfect or the same size

 Take one square and put it on a pencil like the picture below.  Dip the bottom of the paper in glue (I used Tacky glue, but Elmer's would work too).

Before you glue on the tissue paper, make a hole in the ball where your wire will be glued inside.  Use the pencil to press the paper onto your ball. Put the pieces of tissue paper close together so there aren't any gaps. 

 The plastic eggs came with two holes - one at the top and one at the bottom, which are the perfect size for a wire hanger to be "threaded" through.  I used wire cutters to cut up a hanger.  I then hot glued the wire hanger inside of my topiary.

 Lastly, I used a small plastic cup - since that's what I had lying around for the base of my topiary.  I hot glued the last egg to the bottom of the cup.  I put the topiary inside an Easter basket and used white tissue paper to fill the basket - I think some of that fake grass would be cute in the basket, I just didn't have any at the time.  Here is the finished product:

Cardboard Easter Sign

Pin It I made a quick Easter sign the other day using cardboard that I had lying around the house.  I wish I had a Cricut or a Silhouette machine so I could have cut out some cute letters to put on it, but instead I just painted on the letters quickly.  They aren't cute, but they get the point across :)  Here's what I did:

I made an Easter egg "stencil" that I traced onto the cardboard.  Then I cut out the sign.

 I then used my acrylic paints to paint the egg shapes.

 Lastly, I painted the word Easter along the eggs.  I didn't have to make a base because the cardboard actually curled a bit after painting so it stands on its own.

Multi Canvas Painting

Pin It A while back I decided to do a painting for my wall.  I really liked the multi-canvas look.  After searching the web and seeing many different styles of paintings, I decided to do this one of my own.  It was going to be cheaper and it would be fun to have something I painted on the wall.  This is how it turned out: 

It was based off of this painting....I changed the colors so they wouldn't be so vibrant and obviously mine isn't nearly as good, but considering it was my first acrylic painting, I was pretty pleased.

Glass Jars Filled With Love

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 I had some empty glass jars sitting around that were just wanting to become a Valentine's Day decoration.  So I decided to fill them with white, pink and red things :)

I had a package of different sized styrofoam balls.

 I painted the balls pink and red and also left some white (I also included some deals of the day in this picture for you haha)

 I placed the colored balls in two small glass containers and for the large contained, I layered different colors of tissue paper.  Super simple, but still a fun Valentine's Day decoration for our apartment.

Snuggly Owl

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A while ago I saw the cutest little stuffed owl on Make It and Love It  She had created a tutorial with the pattern and everything which can be found HERE This is her owl:

 
I put in on my list of things to do and I finally got around to making some.  My cousin was having a baby shower for her twins and I thought it these cute owls would be a fun gift rather than getting her clothes - not to mention, they were quite a bit cheaper than buying two outfits.

I decided to make her two owls (one for the boy and one for the girl) and to make one for my daughter at the same time.  I bought a huge bag of stuffing for $9 at Walmart and used extra fabric my mom had lying around.  I did do one thing differently from her pattern.  I didn't sew the 3 inch strip of fabric between the front and back pieces.  I did this because I wanted them to be more pillow like.  Here are the owls I made.

These are the two owls I made for Jessica's twins:

When I finished the owls, I decided that I wanted to have some little baby owls for my daughter's room too, so I made up a smaller pattern and sewed 4 baby owls.  Here are all of the owls I made for her room:

I just couldn't resist and HAD to make a little "branch" pillow for the owls too :)

I love them!  The pattern is really easy to follow.  I have received several emails from people wanting the small owl pattern so HERE it is!

Faux Metal Hearts

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When I went to DI I found these wooden hearts for 50 cents each.  They were painted different colors, and while the colors weren't horrible, they definitely needed some touching up.  I decided to try out some metal looking paint.  I really like how they turned out, though I don't think they look super metalic since the wood grain is still visible.  Here's what I did:

These are what they looked like to begin with.

 I painted them with black acrylic paint first so they had a good base.

 Then I painted them with metallic acrylic paint.  I originally had them set up like this, but it felt too cluttered or something. 

So I changed them to this set up.