Baby Shower - Bless the Nest!

here are some pictures from the Nesting Baby Shower I recently threw for my SIL and nephew.

The invitation

The guest of honor...my SIL

A little birdie made of colored chocolate sitting on a bed on chow mein noodles for the nest atop the cake. I literally had to hand paint SEVERAL of them with food coloring to get a color variation in the next. Then I threw in some coconut for good measure as well.

The table setting with all the goodies and a bird cage for all those gift cards.

Baby Sundaes were a yummy treat!

Especially for big sister, Miss D.

Some nesty goodness... sent my dad to the store to get blue jelly beans...he came back with orange.
To his credit...they were out of blue, but ORANGE? Love you Dad! =)

It was a gift card shower because she was moving across country a couple days later. So we filled some of the time with a couple rounds of bunco! Good times

Dance-Slumber Party Details

The Invitation.....

The Gift CD (with all the music from the dance party!)
The Birthday girl....


The Sweet Treats & Party Decor.....









I had the girls help me with the dipping and sprinkles on the cupcake pops! It was a fun activity~!
The little cupcake bites and cupcake pops were inspired by Bakerella.

Save the Drama for Your Mama!

I'm planning a birthday party...a SLUMBER PARTY for my 10 year old daughter! We have invited like 14 girls or something like that! Why did I label this post "save the drama for your mama!" BECAUSE I REMEMBER slumber parties at that age! So I am going to be wearing a t-shirt that night that says "save the drama for your mama!" It will be perfect! *sidenote...when I was that age my parents would let me have sleepovers with like 25 girls...BLESS THEM!

I have so much to do but I wanted to give you a sneak peek at a couple thingsI have planned. The invitations and some goodies!

here is the invite we sent out...

here are some of the Cupcake Pop goodies I'm planning to make which are inspired by Bakerella.....



stay tuned for more!~

What the birthday girl wants.....

My daughter wants these for her birthday party at school.



I'm gonna give it a shot. I've already eating 3 oreos and the cupcakes aren't even done baking yet. I'll let you know how they turn out

Crazy Busy Weekend!

I don't know about the rest of you, but my Thanksgiving weekend was CRAZY! It started out on Wednesday. We had family fly in from Georgia and so it was off to my parents house for dinner. Then on Thursday we had everybody over to our house for Thanksgiving Dinner. It was 14 people, so that really wasn't huge compared to some years with my hubby's family when we've had 26! Anyhoo....everybody got here on Thursday about 1pm and we ate, and visited until like 9:30 pm. The food was YUMMY! My hubby was the star who took care of the turkey. He cleaned it, basted it, and cut it! (I seasoned it) Isn't it pretty! I made stuffing for the first time and it turned out great! I've never eaten stuffing before, but I actually ate some this time. I did an apple, cranberry, sausage version.

And I did do the little place card idea that I previously posted.

Then the crazy weekend moved onto Friday. I went out and did some grocery shopping for another event that was on the way. Then it was off to my folks again for my Nanny's (gradma's) famous spaghetti dinner. Yumm-O! Two more family members joined us from California and surprised my mom, because we were celebrating her 60th birthday over the weekend as well. After dinner I headed home with my family plus my cousin Allison (20) and my cousin Caroline (13). Together we began the preparations for my mom's big 60th birthday party on Saturday. We did some food prep, baked cupcakes, and I decorated the cake.


Are you tired yet....cuz I was! So I got to bed about 1:30 am and then was up at 8:30 to make breakfast for everybody and get going on the party prep. Let me tell you this....hear me loud and clear....There is NO WAY I could've pulled that party off without the help of my cousins!!! They were amazing! Thanks Alli and Caroline! I was pretty busy at the party and didn't get a lot of pics, so I'll have to post more when I get them from my folks (hint, hint DAD!) But here is what I do have.

Along with the cake we made three different kinds of cupcakes...oreo, coconut, and orange


We did some mocktails that were a hit.... one third mango margarita mix / two thirds seven up / and a splash of raspberry syrup. We sugared the rim of the glass and added an ice cube that had a lime or lemon wedge frozen inside. They were yummy.

I also did some water bottle and candy wraps. We had the water bottles sitting out on the beverage table and the candies sitting around the house in candy dishes. They had a pic of my mom as a toddler on them...it matched the e-vite that I created and sent out to everybody.

Did I mention that while I was prepping for the party my realtor called to see if she could show the house the next day....I said NO! It would have to wait until Monday. =)
It was a fun party and my house was filled with about 45 people!! It was great to see the family and as soon as they left I missed them!

The party was over and everyone was cleared out by about 10 pm. Then on Sunday it was off to church in the morning and then in the evening we went to my hubby's folks to have Thanksgiving dinner with his family. (I could officially see about 2 days worth of food in my belly at this point) At the end of the evening I shoved one last cupcake down my throat and then it was off to bed. Ooops, don't forget about the showing! By 4:45 on Monday afternoon my house was completely restored and show ready! Oh my goodness it makes me tired again just thinking about it all!

Hope your thanksgiving weekend was fun! Now you know why I haven't posted in awhile!

Bowling and Cupcakes

Well, I spent all day yesterday making nearly 70 cupcakes and 3 dozen cookies. I'm tired! But it was totally worth it! I made the cupcakes for Luke's birthday party. They had the party at this amazing bowling alley that we have in town, so the theme was ...BOWLING!

So what to do with cupcakes for a bowling theme? Head to the local flooring store of course! No, I'm serious. I went to the local flooring store, told them what I was doing and they gave me a pergo floor sample. Why? Because I needed a "bowling alley" to stage my cupcakes on. Next it was a phone call to my brother and sister in law with the sign company for a little help with sprucing up and personalizing the "bowling alley" I combined a few different pieces of clipart to create a personalized bowling graphic for Luke, they printed it up for me, and we adhered it to the "bowling alley".....I'll show you the results in just a minute!

So getting back to the actual cupcakes. I tried making "finger holes" but it looked really stupid. So I moved onto sugar cookie cutouts. But I didn't have a cookie cutter for that so I had to create one. Here is how I did it. First I found a clipart of a bowling pin. I sized it, printed it out, cut it out and traced it onto a plastic lid from a cottage cheese container. (any plastic lid will do). Then I cut the shape out of the lid and used it as a template for my cookies. ( I got the lid template idea from martha stewart living magazine)


It's a bit more time consuming than a cookie cutter, but you've got to work with what you've got sometimes. It worked pretty well actually. So I baked, and I frosted and then baked and frosted some more. And here is the final result.....

And the personalized "bowling alley" I mentioned earlier....


It was a fun time and it looked like Luke really enjoyed it!

Thanks again to all of you who have been praying for Luke. Please continue to pray. He will be returning to Doernbecher on Thursday for his next round of Chemo.

Sports theme Birthday

I'm currently working on a project to help my friend Vikki with her son Luke's bowling theme birthday party. So come back in a couple days to see my bowling themed cupcakes.

For now I thought I'd show you a few pics from my son's sports themed birthday that we did when he was 2 years old.

For the invites I designed them and then printed them out on simple white cardstock. To create his name in that "baseball jersey" style I downloaded a free font from dafont.com The font name is marcelle

Then I used this really cool paper that I got at my local scrapbooking store. The paper is textured just like a basketball. I cut the paper so that it folded into a 6x6 square and then I drew the black lines (like on a real basketball) I adhered the printed invite to the inside.



For the cake I tried to incorporate a couple different sports...basketball and football
I made the top of the cake look like a basketball. I even used the textured paper to add texture to the top of the cake. I waited until the frosting had set a bit in the fridge and then put the paper on top and lightly pressed down. I added pre-made footballs to the side and added a grass border to the bottom.


I used the design that I did for the invite and printed it out on an iron-on tranfer and made my son a t-shirt to match to wear at the party


For the food we totally played up the sports theme and went with traditional ball park foods. We did hot dogs, hamburgers, and nachos. It was a fun casual party and we did it in our own backyard.

Another look into my birthday archives

Creatively speaking I've been a little boring lately. Well, I've been doing the blog designs, but other than that, I haven't been up to much. So since my present is boring I thought I'd look to my past for some creative inspiration for ya'll.

This was my son's 1st Birthday. It was an airplane theme.
I designed the invitations to look like airline tickets. I personalized each ticket with the "passengers" names, City, and even estimated how long it would take them to drive to our house for the departure and arrival time.


Since I had designed sort of a logo for his birthday for the airline ticket, I stuck with that for the rest of the party. I altered a jay jay jet plane pinata


I decorated the cake to match


I used iron on transfers and a t-shirt to make a bib to match


I found an airplane clipart that I liked and drew and painted that to make the birthday banner. For the lettering on the banner I printed out the letter in large size on paper and then cut them out and glued them down (voila...perfect lettering)


I continued with the airplane on the favor bags by just printing up stickers and adhering them to simple brown paper bags


I had a condiment container from a quizno's restaurant that I altered to match with vinyl lettering with the help of my sister-in-law (who owns a sign company)


It was a fun theme to work with. My daughter even dressed up like a flight attendant with a navy blue skirt, white blouse and a scarf around her neck. It was cute, and you can sort of see it here.


The best part of the party was when my son LITERALLY took his VERY FIRST STEPS on his own right in the middle of the party as we were opening gifts. So we have pics and video of it!

How precious is that?!