Charm & Whimsy

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.

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!!

DIY Picture Valentines with Hershey Kisses

I realize I’m posting this the evening of Valentine’s Day and it would have been more helpful last week; however this is something you could probably whip up anytime no matter the occasion or use it for next year’s valentines. Sorry for the untimely post!

All in these valentine’s cost about $2 for 20 prints at Costco and then another $3 for the Hershey Kisses – with plenty left to keep mommy happy while making them. I didn’t price regular store bought valentines but I’m guessing this is pretty comparable and cute to boot.

Isn’t he adorable?! I just want to nibble on this kid every day!

 

How To:

Start with a cute, close up picture. I tried to get a picture of The Boy giving a smoochie however they didn’t come out as cute as this one of him trying to grab the camera from me so I went with this one. Unfortunately I didn’t save a copy of it without the editing so imagine it’s a clean slate please.

Open up your photo editing software, I used MS Paint which I believe comes standard on most PCs. You can find it under Start Programs (bottom left button on your screen), All Programs, Accessories folder, Paint. Most photo software programs have some sort of editing feature so play around with what you’ve got. We’re just adding writing with brush strokes or you can also use text boxes.

I’ve selected “brushes” and chose the top right option which is called airbrush because I liked how it looked like a crayon (below). Then select the color of the brush stroke or letters. If you choose the brush stroke feature you’re going to be using the mouse to write the letters. It’s harder than it looks! The shaky letters below were not due to me trying to write like a child – it was really that hard. I did it a million times to get to what you see. Next time I’ll probably just add a text box although this still turned out nicely.

So once you’re happy with whatever edits you make, save the file and either order prints online or go somewhere to get them printed. I went to Costco and ordered 3” x 5” prints with a white border. I didn’t see the options online but I knew if I went in they could do modify the size and border. I think black borders are options too.

Once I got the prints home, I got a glue stick and a big bowl of Hershey Kisses. One for the card, one for me. One for the card, one for me. You get the idea

Add a touch of glue to the bottom of the kiss, then press on the photo.

Let dry thoroughly before piling on top of one another for transport – you don’t want the kisses to pop off.

Voila!! A Kissy For You Valentines. Mwaahhhh!

In hindsight this would have been fun to do with The Boy – he could have put the glue on the kisses. Next time.

Have a great day!

Susie

Marshmallow snowman ready for duty in your next hot chocolate.

I drew these marshmallow snowmen with food coloring pens while watching a movie earlier this month. Before I knew it I had gone through the whole bag. Cute, no?

They were part of holiday gift bags for friends and neighbors that included Truffle Hot Chocolate Bombs. Will need to post about those another time. I first saw the chocolate bomb idea here via Pinterest, although I ended up modifying the recipe after several trial runs (hmmm, delicious experimentation).

Just because the holidays are over doesn’t mean you can’t enjoy a tasty hot chocolate with a cute snowman friend. Hope you try it!

Hold still. Hoooold stillllll…

And we’re spent!

Here they are, ready for service in a ziploc bag so they don’t dry out.

This was my first foray into food coloring pens (I used the Americolor Food Coloring Pens) and I must say they are pretty freakin’ awesome. All of the colors were rich and drew on the marshmallows nice and smooth.

Must find more things to color on and then eat. Any ideas besides cake pops?