Birthday Crowns

Little Miss W was in love with her crown! She is such a sweet little girl!

Like I said yesterday, I had been wanting to make fabric crowns for a while and Cream's birthday was the perfect excuse. I started looking around the internet and found some tutorials to base one off of.
These were some of my favorites that had the look I was going for:

How to Make a Superhero Headband from Curly Pops

Valentines Themed Princess Crown from Sweet Sapling

Fabric Crown from The Little Giggler

Here is the best shot I got of both girls with their crowns.

In the end, I pretty much used the tutorial from The Little Giggler. I did add some felt embellishments, just a pinked circle and a #1 and #2. I ended up using an elastic headband I had around for the elastic in the back. It worked out well since it was a little wider and had some non-stick stripes on the back.

We even had Cream where hers on her actual birthday when we went out with some friends for a birthday dinner.

An Orange and Pink Birthday

Cream's 2nd birthday party was a joint party with another little girl in our playgroup who was turning one. Her mother and I decided to do the party together since the girls' birthdays are less than a week apart and we would both be inviting our playgroup. This also allowed us to do the party at a local hotel with a great swimming area. We purchased the birthday party package which gave us a poolside room to use during the party, access to the pool for all of our guests, a party area, and pizza and pop. It really worked out well and everyone enjoyed playing in the pool.
We really didn't have a theme, but we used these invitations from Walgreens and went with the pink and orange theme from the invitations. One of our friends graciously took pictures of the girls for the invitation. They turned out really well, especially considering that we were working with a one year old and a two year old!

My fellow party mom also had this great banner printed at Walgreens! Who knew you could get so many great things there??!!

For favors we had the same friend who took the pictures make us some decorated cookies. (Got to love having talented friends who are willing to help!!) They turned out darling!

As for other decorations, we kept it pretty simple. I looked around the house and grabbed a pink and an orange sand bucket that we tucked the cookie favors into. I found some dollar spot wrapping paper that we used on the table. We also had a couple of pink and orange balloon bouquet that I added a decorated one and two to the base of.

I made cupcakes and decorated them with toppers.

We had looked at party hats at the store, but didn't find anything we liked. I had been thinking about making party hats for a while now and decided now was the time. I will post a tutorial tomorrow, but here is how the birthday girls looked in their hats.

We all had a great time celebrating two little girls!

Peachy's Arty Party

As soon as we were done with Peachy's Ice Cream Party last year, maybe even before that, I knew what her part theme would be for this year. (Obsessive much??) Peachy loves, loves, loves her art. She will sit with her art materials for hours at a time. I just knew she "needed" an art party.

And so I began scouring Pinterest and Google Images for art party ideas. There are plenty of great ideas out there. You can check out my Arty Party board on Pinterest for many of the ideas I found.

I started with the invitation. The inspiration for the invitation is from P is for Party and the party they featured from Magnolia Creative. I made mine using my Silhouette SD. (I have yet to blog about my new toy, but I love it and will share more at a later date.)

I also made this banner with my Silhouette. I used paper from Amy Locurto's PB Party line called Over the Rainbow.

I tried to use items I had around the house in decorating. The felt garland along with the small rainbow pennant garlands were made for my craft fair in February. I also use the rainbow IKEA TOLSBY frames in my craft booth.

The large picture frames I painted a while back and am intending to eventually use them as kids' art displays in our downstairs. I made the paper pinwheels using my Silhouette.

I had made the girls rainbow shirts for St. Patrick's day. I also had the rainbow crepe paper from a St. Patrick's Day project.

My friends all know my cake balls well. I use Bakerella's method with a crumbled sheet cake mixed in with a tub of frosting and dipped in almond bark. Then I sprinkled them with a rainbow of jimmys and colored sugar. I cut out a large palette shape to display them on, using my, you guessed it, Silhouette.

I had intended to have the art portion of the party in our backyard, but the weather was super windy and chilly, so Mr. Cherry and my dad cleaned out the garage for our art studio.

 I made a rainbow of playdough using a basic playdough recipe and adding in lots of food coloring. (My hands were a lovely explosion of colors for a few days.)

I also had purchased paint daubers from Michaels and used them with printed activity sheets. (Just do a search and you will find plenty.)

I had wanted to spray a huge sheet of fabric with colored water (water and food coloring in spray bottles) but once we made the decision to use the garage I cut individual sheets of muslin for the kids to use and spray their own.
My master plan was to use the painted fabric as a photo booth backdrop with some of the painted frames, but that just didn't happen. We may have to have a future playdate with that as an activity because I was really looking forward to it!

 Here are some of the artists at work in the studio.

 The great thing about the activities is that they were suitable for all of the ages we had at the party and they didn't require a lot of supervision or supplies.

The final activity was making a necklace using fruit loops and a ribbon. The necklaces and the treat were enjoyed by all.

For favor bags I used some muslin bags that I had purchased from this website and then had Peachy color pictures on them with fabric markers.

We made some homemade watercolor paints using this recipe  and placed in these cups from Amazon. (Don't mind the fact that they are actually intended for Jello shots!)

We also had aprons for all of the guests that I also ordered from Amazon. I made stickers using my Silhouette once again with each of the guests names on to place on the aprons. (Since I needed 13 aprons and they came by the dozen, I made a special one for the birthday girl. I found my rainbow fabric at Wal-Mart and used the leftover for decorating the tables.)

For the babies of the group, I made little stuffed sensory clouds with this as my inspiration.
Here is a simple crayon wreath that I hung on the door. I made a wreath form from some cardboard and hot glued the crayons to it. I added a painted 4 and one of the paper buntings. I loved how it all looked on our red front door!

 I kept the food pretty simple and just went with fruits and veggies. In order to fit it into the theme, I put them all in their own bowls and arranged them in rainbow order on the table. I also made little creative juice labels for the juice boxes.

***A big thank you to my friend Tina for taking all of the pictures at the party. It is wonderful to have good friends and it is even better to have good friends with good cameras!!***

12 Months with Our Cream

Yesterday my little girl went and turned one year old. I can't believe it. I really, really can't. But the pictures in this video prove that she has indeed been a huge part of our lives for the last 12 months. Love you, Cream!
**We also enjoyed looking back at Peachy's first year slide show. You can find it here.**