Charm & Whimsy

Easter Egg Basket Lunch for The Boy

Hi y'all. Been a long time! There's been a lot going on at our house since I last posted including giving birth to a shiny new baby girl in January! Needless to say I've been occupied with other things. However I've still found time to be crafty just no time to post. I'll try to catch up.

Here is the Easter egg basket lunch I made for the boy and his best buddy. It was a hit! Inspiration from Pinterest of course.

Menu:

PB&J squares
PB&J rolled sandwiches (flatten the bread with a rolling pin then roll sandwich up, below)
Grapes
Baby Goldfish "carrots"
Bunny marshmallows
Fruit snacks
Bunny cookies
Cadbury chocolate eggs
Peep
Japanese chocolate biscuit mushrooms

It was funny watching the boys eat their lunch. One opened all of the eggs to see what was inside and then ate everything. The other opened one egg, ate the contents and then opened the next egg, ate the contents, etc.

Fun times! Hope you try it too.

The Boy’s Robot Birthday Party.

The Boy turned 3 this week and it was time for a party. A Robot Party!

Ever since seeing the movie Wall-E, the Boy has really been into robots. He spontaneously speaks robot and walks like a robot; the last few months have been pretty hilarious. All said, it was easy to settle on a theme for his party. At first I collected Wall-E ideas onto my Pinterest board but then decided to go with a general robot theme instead of a specific character.

The adorable printables from Tracy Ann were the cornerstone of the robot theme. She was such a pleasure to work with and her turnaround was very fast. She has tons of other cute designs – go check her out on Etsy.

The Boy and his best buddy Brady who lives across the street.

I bought the printable party pack and customized invitation and then printed them out at Kinko’s . I printed the 5x7 invitations on card stock and just mailed them as postcards (there’s one hiding back there behind the hats). Easy peasy.I used metallic elastic from the beading section at Michael’s for the hat string and metallic pom poms from my crafty stash.

I had a lot of fun setting up the party – I have to admit I love this stuff – I totally get it from my Mom (aka Womsy). I wish I had a picture from one of my birthday parties as a kid and you would see where I get it from. The forks and napkins scream Womsy.

I struggled for a bit how to stand up the signs. Glue the printable cards to a card stock table tent? Hmmm… as I contemplated my options munching on Halloween candy – I came up with the toothpick-in-a-rolo idea. Voila! They worked perfect and were tasty during cleanup.

Juice boxes. Would have been cute to have the straw sticking out but those things are filled so full there would have been apple juice squirting everywhere when they were picked up. The striped paper was part of the printable party pack.

The baby robots are just mini sugar cookies with cheerios, frosting glue, rainbow sour ribbon mouths and mini M&M ears/antennas.

The centerpiece – a Watermelon Robot! In the next picture you can see how I had to prop up the head in the back with some skewers and a watermelon wedge.

 

I heart egg salad. These make an appearance at nearly all of my parties.

These were the party favors. Guests got to take home a little robot and a favor bag (robot sugar cookie, bottle of bubbles, couple sheets of stickers, couple of glow sticks and a crazy straw).

I’m new to this kiddie party thing and one thing I missed during my research were tips on timing and pace so here are a few that I found helpful:

- I read somewhere a good rule of thumb is to invite as many kids as the age of the birthday boy/girl. We invited a couple extra but three would have been good too.

- We started the party at 11am and it was over by just before 1pm. Good timing for five 3 year olds – that way they could still go home for an afternoon nap.

- We ate when the kids arrived, then played for awhile with all the balloons in the toy room.

- Then we made robot circuit boards. I had prepped square, silver paper plates with a loop of yarn at the top to hang around the neck. The kids glued a bunch of misc. stuff to them. Everyone put on their circuit board and then moved around the room like robots. We had a mini robot dance party but they lost interest quickly!

- Then we blew out a candle and ate cupcakes.

- A bit more balloon kicking and running around and then the breakdowns began – time to wrap up the party!

- We opened presents after everyone left. At this age I think that opening the presents all together would have caused more problems than anything. Fighting over unwrapping, the toys, etc. It was a wise decision.

Here’s some other neat stuff from the Boy’s birthday celebration:

The morning of his birthday, the Boy woke up to a ton of balloons in the family room. He loved it, rolled around in them, kicked them all over the place. It was great to see the joy on his face!

I made robot favors and cupcakes for his classmates at preschool/daycare. You’d think we just handed those kids a million bucks each – they were so happy! Ahh the simple joys of childhood…

 

Thanks to all the awesome people out there who share their parties and ideas on the web. Here is where I got some of my inspiration .

I discovered the printables at this party.

Robot cookie inspiration and “ball bearings” here.

Watermelon robot idea from this party.

“Nuts & Bolts” and “Computer Chips” from here.

Circuit board craft from this party.

Robot party favors for his party were based on these. As well as the balloon idea (or somewhere on Pinterest?).

Robot party favors for his daycare were based on these.

Non Candy Easter Basket Ideas for a Toddler.

This is really the first year I’ve put together something for The Boy from the Easter Bunny. He is only 2.5 years old after all. I think he will have fun looking for eggs in the yard and getting a treat basket so here goes.

I wanted to put something together for him that would have fun things besides candy. This is what I came up with. Everything came from Target and cost around $15 including the basket:

- A glittery, light-up pinwheel

- 2 books from the dollar bin

- 2 pairs of socks – SpongeBob (he doesn’t know who Spongebob is but they’re cute, they look like sneakers), and bunnies with sparkly noses from the dollar bin

- A sparkly, light-up egg wand thingie

- Miniature Bert & Ernie figurines

- Annie’s Organic fruit snack pouch

- Glow sticks/bracelets (I added these later)

- 4 chocolates (Lindt mini bunny, mini chick, carrot and ladybug). Yes ok this breaks my no candy rule however they’re small and this is a special occasion and they’re super cute

- Plastic eggs filled with the following:

- Fruit snacks

- Goldfish crackers

- Punch balloons – these are a favorite item in our house. You will regularly find 2-6 balloons blown up all over the place. They’re sold in the party section of Target and I think there are 6 giant balloons per $2 bag. Super! Cheap entertainment – gotta love it.

 

Here are some other ideas I threw around:

- Matchbox cars

- Boxes of raisins

- Bubbles

- Packet of seeds (an older kid might like this – not quite instant satisfaction enough for a 2 year old)

- A flashlight (The Boy is fascinated by flashlights)

- Plastic dinosaur

- Character toothbrush (Toy Story is a current favorite)

- a tangerine (except he doesn’t like those – but still a good idea)

Let’s hear some of your ideas – what is the Easter Bunny bringing for your little one?

I finally put privacy film on the sidelight windows of our front door.

Hooray for walking around in my underwear in the kitchen!!! TMI, I know - but come on – admit you do it too.

The sidelight windows of our front door look right into the kitchen and main hallway so I always felt a little weird that people could look in if they were at our front door.

That’s a rainbow maker at the top of the window there – it’s fantastic! It fills the foyer and stairwell with rainbows in the afternoon. The boy and I love it so I didn’t want to cover that pane with film because no direct light = no lovely rainbows.

I used this window cling film from the Improvements Catalog, specifically the linen print. It was really easy to use so we’re not going to go into much detail about that (cut to size, spray water on the inside of the window, remove backing, apply film and squeegee out the bubbles). What I am going to show you is the little message I added to the sidelight windows after I put up the film.

I had to move our alarm sticker to the other side of the front door before getting started because I needed the cutouts on the left side. If someone were to bend down and peek through my greeting – they would see the living room and foyer wall but not me in the kitchen which is what I wanted.

I opened a Word document, typed “hi”, changed the font and size until I liked it and then printed. Unfortunately, after I took it to the window it was not big enough so I used our printer’s copier function and enlarged it by 400% and then it was perfect!

I trimmed the excess paper and taped it to the outside of the window. My sweet boys were providing moral support - aren't they cute?

Next I took my handy dandy ceramic precision cutter and cut out the letters (I don’t know why it’s gotten bad reviews on Amazon – it worked great for this project and I’ve used it many times for paper).

Remove the cut outs, the paper from the outside and voila! Looks neat, huh?

Time to go upstairs - the master bedroom has a big window (knee level and up) facing the street on the way to the bathroom and another window in our bathroom in front of the toilet and shower – this has also been on my list since we moved in. With the shades/curtains always drawn it’s too dark but one needs privacy in the bathroom, no?

I only put it up on the bottom because I love seeing the trees outside, however that blocks the boy’s view so – hello cutter – time to make a peep hole! Win-win all the way around.

In the end, it was a fairly quick project (the two windows, four sidelights and “hi” cutout took less than an hour) and I’m lovin’ the freedom it affords. Hooray for that!!