Build-a-Bat

Meet BatBoomer!

This project all came about on Saturday when I was out running errands and I stopped by the fabric store to pick up some supplies to help with Natalie's girl scout badges. Zander asked me "how come you do more creative crafts with Natalie?" A very valid question. So I asked what he would like to make and I came up with a fun idea that seemed to pique his interest. We were going to create a creature out of felt. When we got home I Googled ugly plushies and he was very inspired and quickly drew a creature of his own. This afternoon, I turned his drawing into a little plushy and he couldn't have been happier. I was just beaming on the inside because it has been a while since we have been able to connect like that. Dan is spending lots of quality time with him at Cub Scouts, but I haven't really felt like I have contributed much to his little world lately.

We worked together, cutting the shapes out and he was very good about speaking up if I cut something out that didn't match his vision. When everything was all cut out it was time to sew it all together. Zander said he liked it so far and hoped the sewing made it look good. He stood by me as I stitched it up on the sewing machine. (thankfully, it wasn't giving me fits like it normally does.) He got nervous when I turned everything right side out and there was a hole at the bottom for stuffing it. He thought I had decided to make it into a puppet, but was glad when I explained why it was open at the bottom. At any rate here is his bat! He loves it and has thanked me numerous times. "I've never made my own toy before...Well, you actually made it, but it looks just like my picture!"

Wall•E Birthday Invitation

Wow, it has really been a whirlwind of a week. Last weekend I was up to my eyeballs in fairy dust and butterfly wings and now I am switching gears and getting ready for my son's Wall•E party. Sunday night I was up late working on these invitations:

My son Zander really loves Wall•E so I wanted to come up with an invitation with a robot flavor. Many different ideas came to mind. I even thought of making the card out of sheets of tin, but then realized it would cost more to mail. I settled on this cool glittery black card stock from Doodlebug because it reminded me of outer space and all the sparkly stars in the sky. The Wall•E stickers are by Jolee's and the screw shaped brads were the store brand from Michaels. The information section was done on my computer using InDesign. It was fun to incorporate Zander's name in the style of Wall•E's logo.

Memory book pages for Zander's preschool

Once again I signed myself up as the coordinator for the memory book...and once again, I procrastinated until the last second. Here's how my pages turned out. I had to reproduce these 18 times!!!

I made the "Teacher and me" page with Stampin up paper punches. (The pot are Sizzix die cuts). For the center of the flowers I used those little jewels you can get to add bling to your cell phone.

This is the cover for the albums. I cut out the owl and the tree free hand and then added googly eyes. The list has all the names from his class.

Zander's Birthday Roundup

I recently added a birthday party idea link on the right margin, so now I just need to post all the ideas from all the past birthdays. This was Zander's cowboy party last year. Hope you enjoy!

Party Decorations

What cowboy party would be complete without a wanted poster? I found this at my scrapbook store. After the party, I used it in his birthday scrapbook.

Here is the saloon entrance.

Woody and Bullseye are the center of attention around here, so the centerpiece for this table was easy.

The Dining room was transformed into a cowboy room complete with blue tin plates, lanterns, and burlap sack chair covers. I draped a faux barbed wire around the light fixture for another rustic touch. The kiddos all got cowboy boot cups to drink out of and later they would be washed out and taken home as a favor.

Cowboy Grub

Lunch is served. I like to use containers that fit the theme, like putting my "happy trail" mix inside a cowboy hat with a bandanna to protect the hat. I also used various pails and old tin camping dishes for serving containers. Zander wanted "pupcakes" so I found this cupcake stand that worked perfectly. I baked the cupcakes in those new star shaped muffin tins by Reynolds Wrap. Each of the cupcakes was topped with a small plastic horse. Some of the other snacks included chocolate candy that look just like rocks, peanuts, homemade cowboy crackers and rattlesnake eggs (spotted jelly beans).

When I was looking for food for the party, I came across these. I called them Wagon wheels for the party, but I don't have any idea what they are really called. I think they are a Hispanic food. They were in the bulk food section at WINCO near the pasta and rice and they were orange in color and about 1/4 this size. I fried them in oil for about a minute and then drained them and coated with a sugar/cinnamon mix. They were tasty whatever they are.

For lunch we had beans and "little doggies," cowboy crackers, wagon wheels, snacks and chocolate milk served in cowboy boot cups.

It took a few tries, but Zander finally got all 4 candles blown out.

Activities

When guests first arrived we gave them a cowboy hat and made sure to get a photo of each of them sitting with Zander.

Then we mosied on into the kitchen for a cowboy craft. Even cowboys can be crafty ya know! These cowboys made picture frames to put the photo in that was taken earlier.

Zander received so many nice gifts. Here he is unwrapping his Woody doll.



Games
The guests had to "rope" a horse in this game. I wrapped a hula-hoop with rope to make this lasso.

The inspiration for this game came from Toy Story: "There's a snake in my boot." Just like the game I used to play at birthday parties where you drop clothespins into a jar...only this time we dropped snakes into a boot!

This was fun for the kids and entertaining for the adults. We tied powdered doughnuts to a dowel (or broom handle) and told the kids they could get the doughnut, but they couldn't use their hands! It was a tad messy with all the powdered sugar, but what's a good party without a little messy fun?

Zander's Penguin Party

Sunday was the big day for Zander's 5th birthday party...a penguin party! This one was so much fun to plan.

The Cake

For the big cake on top I used a half round dome shape cake pan to make an igloo shaped cake. The little door was made from a cupcake cut to resemble the entrance. I frosted it with a quick frosting (similar to 7-minute frosting). The next tier was easy...donut holes (snowballs), and the bottom tier had little cupcake mounds that were frosted to look like snow mounds or large snowballs.


The penguins are made out of olives, cream cheese and carrots. I will be posting a tutorial on how to make them sometime this week.

Here is a close up of the igloo cake. In the middle of the cake there was an ice cream center...which made choosing a frosting a little tricky. Normally I make a really yummy butter cream frosting, but since it had to live in the freezer due to the ice cream center, I didn't think the butter cream would hold up very well.

Here's Zander blowing out his candles...they were trick candles!

Igloo Cheese Ball

The other igloo I made was a cheese dip made from cream cheese, feta and pesto.

Cheesy Pesto Spread

Ingredients:

7 packages (8 oz. ea.) cream cheese, softened
13 oz. goat or feta cheese, at room temperature
2 small tubs prepared pesto sauce
Spray Soccer Ball Pan and 1 jumbo muffin cavity with vegetable pan spray; line with plastic wrap. In large bowl, beat cream cheese with electric mixer until creamy. Add goat cheese; continue beating until smooth.
Press about 3/4 cup cheese mixture into prepared muffin cup. Press 1 cup cheese mixture onto bottom of soccer ball pan; spread cheese mixture around pan edges to 1 1/2 in. thickness. Spoon pesto sauce from one container into pan. Add second container of pesto to remaining cheese mixture. Scoop pesto cheese on top of pesto layer. Cover with plastic wrap; refrigerate at least 8 hours or overnight. Unmold onto serving plate. Serve with crackers

Zander wanted to make sure we had fish crackers too...because "penguins eat fish."

Ice Cream Snow Balls

The Happy Feet Penguin pinata is guarding the ice cream snowballs. I just pre-scooped all the vanilla ice cream and rolled them into balls, then in coconut. Brrrr. It makes my hands cold just thinking about it, but boy were they good!

One happy/messy birthday boy!
10 happy party goers (not all pictured)

Decorations

I set up the dining room to look like a cold winter wonderland, just the kind of place where a penguin would want to hang out! I hung small snowflakes from the dining room light...and large snowflakes from the ceiling. Then I used an icicle border along the chair rail. The centerpiece was a baby penguin stuffed animal with some fake snow, fake snowballs and fake ice.

Now that the party is over I'm going to leave up the decorations for a while. These snowflakes were purchased at the Dollar store and are huge. I think I will use them as chargers/place mats under our Christmas plates after I take them down.

Activities and Games

For a craft project I found these snow globe sticker scenes at Oriental Trading and they turned out so cute.


My son came up with the games for the party. In the picture they are having a relay race with "eggs" (balloons) between their legs as they waddle to one end of the room and then back. The next game involved dancing like Mumble from Happy Feet. I borrowed the Happy Feet soundtrack from the library and we played a fun up beat song...when the music stopped all the kids had to freeze. This was the most fun and some of the kids had some pretty great moves...very entertaining!

Party Favors

For party favors we passed out penguin snow globes. The penguin drawstring bags were used to put the candy in from the pinata.

Penguin Invitations

This year, thanks to all the animated penguin movies, my son wanted to have a penguin themed birthday party. I just created these and mailed them out this morning...

Now I can continue getting ready for my daughter's Candy Shoppe party this weekend!

Courageous Cub Keeper

At my daughter's elementary school, if you are given a "courageous cub" it means that you have been caught doing something good. It's their positive reinforcement system. They bring their courageous cub in to the office to show the principal and they get to pick out a special pencil. So far this year, Natalie has brought home 3 of them...and well you know I just can't throw them away!!! That would just be wrong. So I decided to create a little book for her to paste them into. Since the school mascot is a tiger cub, I designed the cover to look like a tiger.


The inside is made up of blank pages so she can add her courageous cubs as needed. As I was cutting and pasting the cover, my 4 year old Zander, was watching and asking me all about it. "Will you make one for me too?" he kept asking. I told him this was a special book for his sister, but when is old enough to go to 1st grade, I would make him one too. He really, really wanted to make one, but I didn't have time to sit down with him, so I just cut out an orange head shape and told him he could just draw the rest with his crayons.

With that I went outside to get some yard work done and after a while, Zander came out and showed me this:
It was the cutest thing I'd ever seen (you know the kind of cute only a mom can see!) It took my breath away because all this time I was out in the yard, he was in the house just working away on his tiger, using the left over scraps from my project. I could have cried!!!... I was so proud of him.

Favorite photos from our camping trip

We went to the coast this past weekend and all the cousins had so much fun playing together on the beach. I'm so glad they are all close in age...all within a year of eachother.

Here is my little Hayden. He will be 2 next month and boy does he love trucks!

Last Day of Preschool

I found this idea from 2 peas several years ago and have been waiting to use it ever since. For some reason I didn't feel compelled to put this all together for Natalie's preschool teachers (although we did give them something else). I just loved Zander's teachers so much this year and knew exactly what I wanted to give them on the last day of school. Here is what the tag says:

You helped me grow from September to June
Our summer begins this afternoon,
When you see your flowers in this little pot,
Think of me and Forget-me-Not.

Although now that I read this again, I am feeling like a dork, cause it's still May, not June...oh, well. It's a cute sentiment anyway!

His teachers both like their gifts.

Here he is receiving his memory book (what a relief to have that completed!) I ended up making the covers too. I'm kind of a control freak sometimes and want to do things myself, but it turned out great. Each mom was responsible for completing 2 pages (for every kid in the class, plus the 2 teachers)...I did 4 pages (three plus the cover...times 12) It was a lot of work, but so worth it.

I'm finally done!!!

Last Friday I ended my scrapbooking marathon and turned in all my pages. Boy was that a huge weight off my shoulders! I am such a last minute person. I could have started months ago, but did I? No, I waited until the week before they were due and spent every waking minute cutting and gluing paper and pictures for my son's preschool memory book. I used up 4 glue sticks in the process. I normally don't use glue sticks for scrapbooking, but my dotto tape refills are about $5 a piece, compared to .88 per glue stick. Anyway, I will be putting the books together on Tuesday. I can't wait to see what all the other moms came up with for their pages. Wish me luck!

On the farm

Tonight I spent a few hours at a scrapbooking work party for my son's preschool class. Each year they put together a scrapbook of all the fun activities they've done. Each mom is responsible for making pages for at least 2 events. I chose the Christmas party and the farm field trip. Now I have to duplicate my pages 11 times for a total of 22 pages...well actually I am doing the library trip as well so I guess that makes 33 pages. I better get busy. These cute farm animals were cut out with a Sizzix die cutter. Zander's teacher has one we can use, but instead, I borrow her dies and cut mine at home on my BigKick.