Catching Up: Valentines

We made the cutest Valentines for Brady to take to school this year!  I saw this last year when some other mamas did it, and it is so easy!

Here is the front of the card:

Here is the back of the card:

And here is what it looks like when you print it out, cut some slits in the card, and stick a lollipop through it!  Total cuteness!

I also wanted to do a Valentine to send to the Grandparents and Aunts and Uncles.  How do I get a good photo of BOTH kids, though?  I decided to cheat!  So, we had a little photo shoot with Abigail first - my sweet little princess!!

Then we put her photo together with Brady's photo and made this!

I thought it turned out really cute!  Happy Valentine's Day!!

Brady's 2nd Birthday Party!

My son turned 2 on July 2 and we had an amazing day celebrating with him!  This year we had his party at a local park that has a sprayground.  He loves water, so we knew this would be a hit!  He also loves cars and trucks so we went with a Firetruck theme this year.  You can see the invitations in this post.  I was very happy with how everything turned out, so I thought I'd share some details here:

Most of the decorations were around the cake table, so we'll start there:

I actually bought the lanterns for his party last year and the colors worked again so I used them as a backdrop for the cake table.  I got the idea from this photo I found on another blog.

I got the pieces for the banner on Etsy and assembled it myself and added a few additional touches.  It worked perfectly with our theme!

We had a bunch of kids at the party so I got them all firetruck hats and fire hydrant cups as favors.  I bought the hats and cups from Celebrate Express online.

Also in the photo above you can see Brady's cake and the cupcakes.  We just did a simple cake for him so that he could blow out the candles.  I bought this Fireman Mickey cake topper from Amazon.  It had the number 1 on the fire hat, but DH scraped that off and painted on a 2.

Here's another look at the cupcakes.  The cake and cupcakes were created by Eileen Carter (aka "The Cake Lady") and they were delicious and adorable as usual!  I got the idea for the little firetrucks on top from this blog and Eileen was happy to create them.  I think they are adorable!

On the right side of the cake table were the firetruck sugar cookie pops and water bottles with custom labels that I made (ignore my husband's sunglasses in the pic :):

For the water bottles I bought weatherproof labels from Online Labels and printed them on my inkjet printer.  The fire truck sugar cookie pops were one of my favorite things from the party!  When I made heart shaped cookie pops for Valentine's Day I knew I had to make them again for a party!  I ordered the fire truck cookie cutter from ebay and used the same recipes that I used for the heart shaped cookies.  They really are pretty simple to make and the hardest part is decorating... but if you don't try to be perfect that's easy, too!  Here are a few photos from the making of the cookies:

This shows some cookies in the various stages of icing (the ones without sticks were my "test" cookies):

MrKLB helped me with some of the decorating... he drew on the ladders and number 2 for all of them because I was tired of leaning over the countertop to do it!

Here they are all packaged up at the party.  I also made labels that went on the back that said "Thank you for coming to my party".  This picture doesn't really do them justice...

Let's see... what else?  Oh, MrKLB also made these cool firetruck centerpieces out of diaper boxes:

They were a last minute addition to the decorations and I think they turned out great!  He is so creative!  Now Brady has one of these in his room and likes to sit in it and have us push him around!

The centerpieces leads me to another star of the show... the GIANT balloons!

I got the idea that I wanted to do giant balloons and thought that when I asked MrKLB about it he would say they weren't worth it.  Well, I asked him and his response was "I love giant balloons!"  So, we had to do it!  Let me just say, these are so cool but such a pain in the butt!  I bought the balloons in a package at Party City and had them inflate them.  Well, they are 36" each, so I could only fit 4 into my SUV with the seats folded down!  So, I had to make 2 trips to Party City to get all of them.  Then, this is how we transported them to the party:

Here's a picture of Brady holding some of the balloons after the party.  I love it!

I think that really covers the highlights of the party.  It was a lot of fun and I think everyone had a good time!  Here's a picture of the 3 (well, almost 4!) of us before the party:

My sweet little man enjoying the water:

Brady in his fireman's hat enjoying some food:

Big boy blowing out the candles.  I love how it looks like Mickey is ready to put out the fire with his fire hose!

Oh, and I almost forgot about his shirt!  I got the shirt from Etsy seller smittenandcompany.  Here are a couple of pictures of it:

Well, there you go!  Another fun, successful birthday party!  Next year I'll also have to come up with ideas for a little girl's birthday... how fun!

My Diaper Cake Experience...

I went to a friend's baby shower on Saturday.  I've been sick (sinus infection - yuck!) for about a week and a half so MrKLB and I stopped by Buy Buy Baby to get a gift earlier in the week on the one day I actually left the house.  I wasn't feeling creative so I got some useful items on the registry - Pampers Swaddlers, Diaper Pail Refill and then, at the suggestion of MrKLB, a Sophie teether.  "Everyone needs one of those," he said.  And he's right!

Anyway, fast forward to Friday night and I need to wrap these gifts.  I remembered someone on one of my Mommy message boards asking about diaper cakes recently, so I went back to look at that post and followed some links to directions on how to make one.  I found this site and decided I had everything I needed - well, mostly.  So, I started making the diaper cake on Friday night...

I rolled the diapers and wrapped each one in a rubber band.  Luckily our mail comes in a rubber band every day and we throw them in a drawer in our kitchen, so I had a ton of them lying around.  I used the box of diaper pail refills as the center instead of the baby powder like in the directions.  I did two tiers of diapers and used some pink scrapbook material that I had as decoration in between.  Then I put Sophie the Giraffe on top!

Then I needed ribbon... but I didn't have any wide ribbon in a color that would work so I decided to use ivory ribbon to wrap around and cover the rubber bands and used some pink yarn I had leftover from the Wall Letters project to do the rest.  I braided the yarn to do the top layer and bow and then just wrapped the yarn around the bottom layer.

Oh, and I wanted them to have the box that Sophie came in so I put that on the bottom and wrapped some more scrapbooking paper around it to make the base.  I stuck the card on top behind Sophie and Voila!  A diaper cake!

Valentine's Day Treats

I wanted to think of something fun to make for Brady to take to his friends and teachers at school for Valentines' Day and I came across the idea of sugar cookie pops.  Actually, I first got the idea because someone mentioned sending a cookie bouquet to their husband for Valentine's Day and when I went to the site and saw how much they were charging for these heart-shaped cookies on a stick I thought, I can do that!

Anyway, I got my recipe and inspiration from this blog from Our Best Bites.  I made the sugar cookies on Friday night and stored them in an airtight container in the refrigerator.  I then made the icing on Saturday morning and added the glaze layer and left them out to dry.  I added the piping layer during Brady's nap on Saturday afternoon and left them out to dry until Sunday, when I wrapped them up.  They turned out so cute and they were DELICIOUS!  Quite possibly the best sugar cookies I've ever had.  Definitely the best ones I've ever made.  So, here are a few photos of the steps along the way...

Friday Night:
I bought popsicle sticks at Party City and a heart-shaped cookie cutter at Michael's.  I made the sugar cookie dough, rolled it out to about 1/4" thickness and stuck it in the freezer for about 15 minutes.  I then cut out the large hearts and stuck the popsicle sticks into them so they went a little more than half way up the heart.  I baked the cookies for a little longer than I would normally because I wanted them to be stiff enough to stay on the sticks.  Here you can see a couple of them cooling on the rack:

After baking all of the cookies I put them in my cake carrier and left them in the refrigerator overnight.

Saturday morning:
On Saturday morning I made the icing and began adding the glaze to the cookies.  I did half of them with white glaze and half with pink.

I then left them out to dry for a couple of hours.

Saturday afternoon:
After the bottom layer was dry I added the piping.  I used white on the pink glaze and used red on the white glaze.

As you can see here, my white piping icing wasn't quite thick enough, so my "XO" ran together on the top left cookie.  So, I had to eat it myself!  :)

I then left the cookies out so that the icing could dry overnight.

Sunday:
On Sunday the icing was completely dry and hard enough that I could wrap them up.  I had some cellophane bags leftover from the Halloween treat bags I made and I bought some ribbon at Michael's.

Brady picked out Mickey Mouse Clubhouse Valentine's at Target and we attached them to the back of the cookie pops:

Here they are all wrapped up!

I stuck them in some blumeboxes that I had leftover from Brady's birthday party decorations and made my own cookie bouquets!

They were a huge hit and, as I said before, very tasty!  Brady agrees:

A homemade gift: Yarn Wrapped Letters

I was in need of a cute, inexpensive gift idea for Christmas presents for two of my nieces who are 5 and 9 when I came across this cute craft project for yarn wrapped letters.  My nieces love things for their rooms and I thought the idea of hanging their monograms on the wall in the form of these yarn wrapped letters would be a really neat idea.  So, a couple of weeks before Christmas I went to Michael's to get the letters and yarn, and I got started.

One girl's room is blue and pink and the other is pink and purple so I tried to match those themes.  I got white wooden letters in different sizes and yarn from Michael's.  I took some in-progress photos but I can't seem to find them anywhere so here is the finished version:

You can see that I wasn't perfect at geting al of the little corners covered but I still think they turned out pretty well...

I added strings so they could be hung and then hung them on a piece of cardboard so that I could box them up and wrap them for gifts.

The girls loved them and hopefully next time I go see them I can get a shot of the finished product in their rooms!