Have a Brave Birthday Party

While browsing the internet for castles made of cardboard, I stumbled across this fantastic "Brave" birthday party over at Sweeten Your Day Events. A birthday party theme that any boy or girl would absolutely love.

Upon arrival, children were led by wisps across the lawn into the castle entrance. Each kid received Tartans, those plaid sashes, of different patterns for representing their chosen family clan. They played Scottish themed games such as Caber Toss, archery, and even a bean bag toss made of nylon and rocks. Their craft was to make a bear claw necklace which doubles as an awesome party favor.

I love the arrow tails in the cupcakes. You could take this a step further by adding some red gel or sprinkles in the center of each cupcake to make it look like a target. The food display table looked amazing with the wood stumps and movie prop background. The bear claw cookies look so yummy and I love the bubbling cauldron idea to serve drinks from. She includes a full list and recipes at the bottom of the post with all the delicious food they made.

Thank you Sweeten your Day Events for all the great ideas and sharing them with us. Make sure and visit their website for more pictures to all the games, themes and food they prepared.

Comb Over Shower

 I just got back from the cutest Baby shower, totally Pinterest inspired. Each guest got to take home a mason jar with an etched mustache that was prefilled with our beverage. We were asked to decorate onesies. I've done this at another shower, but we used mainly fabric markers at that one. Here, we had some pre fab bits, gel paints, and fabric with double sided transfer sheets. Note for future onesie craft: prewash all your onesies and fat quarters. Iron them as well. Pre iron the fabric to the transfer sheets, then guests can just cut, peel and Iron. I did the hat one, do you like it?

We had phrases and mustaches to take pictures with all over the table and on our cupcakes. We were then given a website to mail our own pictures to so they will be in an easily shared location. Ours went to Flickr.

Another parting gift was some homemade chocolate staches to take home. Yummy!

I gave mine to my babysitter, thanks mom.

It was great, maybe it was so great cause I was out of the house with friends and not kids. Thanks for the grown up party. And I still got cupcakes!

Princess and Knights Birthday Party

For our daughters 3rd birthday party we decided to have a Princess and Knights party for about 20 kids. We rented out the gym of our church to keep the disaster away from our house. Plus, it gave the kids plenty of room to run around.

My sister in-law made the invitations, absolutely the best.
I made crowns from stiff felt (from the craft store: only one store of three had it), elastic, glitter, sequence and rick rack. I also made felt tunics with both our family crests on them.

My husband made shields  of corrugated cardboard. He used spray adhesive with paper images on top. The kids played with all the extra cardboard. I wanted a cardboard castle but we ran out of cardboard too close to the birthday party to buy more. The little kids had just as much fun.

For the craft, the kids made paper doll puppets. I printed them onto card stock and just cut them out. We used crayons, extra lace and fabric from prom/wedding dresses I had laying around. I prepped the knights with foil a head of time. For the girls I prepped the dolls with fabric skirts and sticks. In order to cut down on drying time for everything we got a huge bag of wooden chopsticks (for $2) at our Asian food store and I have been crafting with them. They were perfect for this craft. The kids are still playing with the puppets weeks later, I thought for sure they would be destroyed. I think the sticks help to keep the kids from bending the paper too much.

For the goody bags I made sugar cookies and punched them out in the shape of crowns Also, I included glow-in-the-dark lizards or bracelets along with a bottle of bubbles.

I got a decorative punch from the craft store and used it on everything I could to justify buying it. It got used on the cupcakes, crafts, and gift bags. I cheated with the cupcakes, I chose to spend time with family who were in town instead of making them from scratch. Plus, the grocery store had cupcakes on sale that week.
All the kids and parents had fun. Sadly, my husband was completely wiped out and begged never to do this again.