Thursday, May 31, 2012

Baby Shower Inspiration

As you may now know, I am throwing a baby shower for a close friend of mine. Here are some of the things I am using for my inspiration. Most, I have found on Pinterest if you don't know what it is, you better get on it. Pinterest is wonderfully addicting.


How cute is this cake from Rouvelee's Creations', I seriously need to take a cake decorating class A.S.A.P. 
Here is a cake that is much more manageable for me. So, cute. I think I might do a light green buttercream. Since I am doing green and white polka dots and blue and white stripes. This adorable polka dot cake is from Country Living.
I absolutely adore the paper straws and striped ribbon around mason jars for the drinks. I have already purchased some light blue striped straws from Sofies Big Day, they came in so fast and they are so cute. This inspiration comes from Hostess Blog, which was featured on Tip Junkie. 


Here is another shot of this wonderfully cute bow-tie party. While, I am not doing a bow tie theme; I do love the colors. 
I love these polka dot balloons. Which they have at Party City. I will obviously be getting them in the parties colors, blue and green. So cute. 


I absolutely love these cake pops, so precious. I am thinking of making some blue and green ones for the favors for guests. These adorable cake pops come from The Peas Are Hollow.

Lime Sherbet Punch for the beautiful mason jars. Will also be having lemonade as an option. Now only if they made blue lemonade, it would be right on track with my theme. The recipe for this refreshing drink comes from Paula Deen


I think this next ideas is so cute for a guest book. Have guests sign and write a little something for the baby in a children's book. Every time the child picks up the book to be read to, he or she will see all the comments guests wrote. I am sure the inquisitive child to be will be asking all about them. This idea comes from Oh Baby! Shower Decor






I love this polka-dot back drop from Celebrations at Home, so adorable and easy to do. I found the directions on making a polka-dot Modern Day Moms. There is also a tutorial where you sew the polka dots, which gives more of the illusional look like above; Gabriel's Good Tidings.

Hopefully, you can kind of see the direction the baby shower is going in. I can't wait for the party and to post all of the pictures from it. 









Wednesday, May 30, 2012

Baby Shower Invitation Directions

Directions on Baby Invites




I promised I would show the directions to the baby shower invites I posted last week. Here they are. Because I had to make so many invitations, I ran out of the blue paper shown above. So I ended up doing half like the above and half green stripes with blue overlay. Which doesn't bother me, saves me a trip to the store and no one is one the wiser.




I love using these little shapes, I am not sure what you would call them. They come from the Create-a-Critter cartridge for the Cricut. I cut these out at 3.5 inches. 


I cut out the bottom layer at 4.5 by 5.5


Using the above stamps I then proceeded to emboss the invitiations. The She's Expecting stamp came from the dollar bin stamps at Michaels. (Gosh I love those stamps) The Your'e invited stamp came from Hobby Lobby for 7.99 and I used a 40% off coupon of course.
Using the silver embossing powder from Michaels and the Martha Stewart embossing pad. I embossed the invitations. I didn't take a picture of the process but here is the tool I used. You simply take the desired stamp, stamp it on the embossing pad, just like you would a regular stamp pad. You then stamp down on the paper. Then taking your powder you sprinkle over the area you stamped. I always do this on sheet of paper as seen above. That way I can funnel the left overs back in to the container. Once you remove the excess powder you turn on the embossing tool and dry the area just like a blow dryer, which I hear could also work. 

Here is what you come up with. I love the silver and how it turns out, so pretty!

Next I took some polka dot ribbon, found at Joann's. 



Whole punched the bottom layer, inserted the ribbon and tied a bow.

 Using an adhesive runner, which I believe holds the best (especially if you are mailing them), I glued the layers together. This adhesive runner is from Michaels. All that is left is to fill in the required information and ship those bad boys out and you are done.



Baby shower banner

Baby Shower Banner



Here are some directions to a baby shower banner I recently made. It is a polka-dot and stripe theme, blue and green baby shower. Please excuse the horrible pictures and that random hair, eww. Should probably look at pictures, to make sure I don't need to re take them.

First step was to cut out the squares. The green polka dot squares are going to be on top so they needed to be about an inch smaller. I cut 7 squares at 4 inches.
Since the stripes are going to be underneath they needed to be bigger. I cut these squares at 5 inches.



Using my Cricut, I cut out the letters to spell It's A Boy!! I used the Simply Sweet alphabet cartridge. Cutting out my letters at 3.5 inches. 
Next I wanted to add a little something to put between the words for some definition and also to add a little something. I cut out these onesies using my Cricut and the Life's a Party cartridge. I cut them out at 5 inches. To match up with the squares. I then glued the squares together and added the letters. Using curling ribbon I whole punched everything and strung it all together and wah lah!!


Thursday, May 24, 2012

Letters for a nursery


I made these very simple letters for a friend of mine for her baby shower.

1. Using letters I bought from Michaels. I bought black wood ones for 2.99 a piece and used a 20% off my entire purchase coupon. 
2. I then picked out the scrapbook paper I wanted to use. My friend and her husband decided on a forest animal theme for their son Jackson's room. I found a great green paper with little evergreen trees and a brown plaid. 
3.Using an exacto knife, I traced the letters on the paper, and cut it out. 
4.Then added one coat of mod podge, stuck the paper on and waited 2 hours. After 2 hours you go back and add 3 coats on top every 15 minutes. 
5. I used my cricut and create-a-critter to make a deer, a fox, a raccoon and a hedgehog. I then followed the same steps to mod podge those on to the letters.


6. I hot glued ribbon to the back of the letters for easy hanging. 

Baby Shower Invitations

I am hosting a baby shower for a dear friend of mine in July. I have finished the invites.


I really liked how the tie ribbon came out but it would be too hard to read the writing. I will post directions on making the invites in another post. The baby shower theme is blue and green, polka-dots and stripes. 


Thursday, May 3, 2012

Simple Mother's Day Cards

Here 2 simple Mother's Day cards I made recently for my mom and sister.

Tuesday, May 1, 2012

Valentine's Day Tea Party

I know, I know Valentine's Day was over 2 months ago. I am not very good at updating, I will try to progressively get better at this.

I hosted a tea party for a few of my girlfriends and they were able to make their loved ones cards as well. Here is the result.





Here are a few of  the recipes i used. The  first one is for the herbed cream cheese cucumbers, shown on the top the tier. The second one is for cucumber sandwiches. The Baked Spinach Dip Mini Bread Bowls were a hit and everyone raved about them and asked for the recipe. Lemon cookies are one of my specialties and came from the old fashion cookbook. The cookbook I used was Cooking Light. Scone recipe came from Food Networks' Alton Brown

Set up of the card craft area.

The girl's finished products.