Ninja Birthday Party

I must be in the mood to blog...it's been a long time. I was going through pictures and realized that I had never blogged about my son's ninja birthday party.

First, I must say that I was not planning on doing a friend birthday party for him. We were going to Las Vegas to take my nephew to the airport so we were just going to go to Circus Circus for his birthday. But then the mommy guilt started... he already has his birthday so close to Christmas (Jan. 3)... he'd be the only kid that didn't get a birthday party... so, I threw one together at the last minute.

First, I don't like to buy anything. I try to make everything with stuff I have on hand. I found an idea for an invitation here and created my own using free clipart I found online.

I wrapped all of his presents in red wrapping paper with black ribbon. I printed tags to match.
I found a simple clipart for a chinese star and traced that to make his banner. I found a chinese looking font and made red circles for the center.
I really wanted to have his treat bags be chinese take out boxes, but they were just too expensive. Instead, I just bought black paper sacks and stapled a circle with a ninja in the middle as a cute tag. I put fortune cookies, little plastic ninjas and little plastic ninja swords inside the treat bags. I never buy the expensive party plates... I just buy dishes from the dollar store in the color scheme I'm using.
I went a little more simple on his cake. I just made a round cake and covered it with white fondant. I made a karate belt out of black fondant and tied that around the cake. Then, I just went through Joren's toys and found a plastic ninja knife and star and stuck those in the cake... pretty easy.
I had all the kids dress in all black for the party. I made a head band for each kid out of black felt I had laying around. I printed a ninja star in the middle of a red circle on iron on stuff and ironed that on white felt. I cut out the circle and glued that on the black felt headbands.

For the games we threw ninja stars... I cut ninja stars out of chipboard and spray painted them silver. They had to throw the ninja stars in bowls and got points for how many they got in.
We had a marshmallow relay with chopsticks. They had to pick up the marshmallows with the chopsticks and carry them to another bowl... It was kind of hard... I should have used bigger marshmallows.
If you're planning a party at the last minute, a pinata isn't a super good idea. You need several days to let the pinata dry between layers. Our pinata only ended up with one thin layer... so instead of letting them use a bat, we made them use a ninja sword... that way it wouldn't break as easily.

It actually turned out pretty fun that way.

I'd say for a spur of the moment ninja party, we ended up having a lot of fun!!!

Girls Camp Flag

I have been so unbelievably busy lately it's not even funny... Although I don't have time to blog, I have been busy crafting... I thought I would do a quick post of the flag I made for girls' camp. The young women theme for the year is "Arise and Shine Forth that thy Light may be a Standard to the Nations" so for camp our stake is having each ward be a country. Our country is Finland and I was volunteered to make the flag. I did a lot of research on Finland and so this is what I came up with.

I used the basic shape of the Finland flag which is a white background with a blue cross going through it.
I made the blue cross out of water fabric because Finland has almost 200,000 lakes. I did a sun and moon because Finland is light all day in the summer and dark all day in the winter. I put an angry bird on the flag because the company, Rovio, that developed Angry Birds is from Finland. I put a reindeer because Father Christmas is thought to live in Lapland Finland... And because they eat reindeer there. I used the word Sisu because it is a word that is used to describe the Finnish people... It means that they are committed to what they do. And lastly, I made the flag out if a towel because going to a sauna is a big pass time in Finland. I thought it would be more fun to hang it as a bunting instead of from a pole!

This was a fun project with a LOT of appliqué. It was VERY time consuming, but I really enjoyed doing it!

Now that's a wrap... my first doily project:)

I have a lot of home decorating ideas involving my doilies... that I've pinned. But I thought I'd start with something simple. My little boy's kindergarten teacher is out for 2 weeks because of a bad knee. So, we thought we'd get her a get well gift. I picked up some tulips at Lowe's. I didn't want to spend the extra money to buy a really nice pot... plus they are meant to be planted outside, so I thought I'd wrap the pot with one of my new doilies.

I had the boys help hold the doily up around the pot while I tied the ribbon on. Then I secured the ribbon to the pot with some glue dots. I tied a few extra ribbons to the front and made a cute little flag to go in the pot.
I think it turned out really cute. Now, if I could just get it to her before the flowers dry up and lose their petals;)

Doilies

I bought a stack of doilies at a yard sale yesterday... So excited for some fun doily projects!

Pinned it and Made it!

Oh blessed....
... do you ever find yourself pinning idea after idea after idea and never doing anything with them? I often find myself doing that, but every once in awhile I really get some great ideas that I do use. I LOVED this idea from The Anderson Crew. I love the idea of being able to write "love" notes to each other. So, I dug into my mom's box of random brass candle sticks. I spray painted them with primer then with black spray paint. Then I glued my cute dollar store mail boxes on the candle sticks. I made our monograms on my Cricut with my mini monograms cartridge. To tell you the truth, I think mine are a little cuter:)
The thing that I do pin the most and actually make the most are recipes. Just thought I'd post a few that I made recently. These Rolo Cake Mix Bars from Cookies and Cups are heavenly. They really are easy except for unwrapping 40 rolos. The idea behind this brings endless possibilities. I was thinking of trying chocolate cake with Reeses Pieces or maybe chopped cashews with a Scores bar... I don't know... endless possibilities.
This Easy Cashew Chicken from Eclectic Recipes really was EASY. I thought it was good, but anything with cashews is good to me. My mom said it was nothing special... maybe that's the way to describe it... good, but nothing special.
I hope you are enjoying Pinterest as much as I am!!!

I've been scrapbooking!!!

I had about a million projects going on a Christmas and just not time to blog. Once Christmas was over, I really wanted to spend some time scrapbooking. I'm trying to get caught up on last year... good luck to me.

Here are a few 12x12 2 page spreads that I've been working on.

Happy 2012

Silver and Gold... silver and gold... glitz and glamor. I had so much fun spray painting things silver and gold. I have seen a lot of spray painted Mason jars on blogs and Pinterest... so I thought I'd give it a try. I was inspired by this gold mason jar. I loved the idea of having mason jars to drink out of... but we were having a family party with way too many people to spray paint that many jars. So, I decided to just paint a few for centerpieces.
This is my main set up. I painted the jars in varying sizes and then I painted some dead sticks as well. I thought I'd add the clocks for the whole... midnight theme.
I love these little birds I found on clearance at Michael's.
I close-up of the large jar.
No party is complete without a banner. I cut circles in varying sizes. I didn't have a lot of silver and gold paper, so I spray painted chipboard for most of the clocks. It was fun just to have a few things to help make our family party super fun!!!