Jurassic World Theme Birthday Party

So my son turned 8 this year and we let him see his first action adventure movie that was not made for kids.  I realize that I am not the norm when it comes to restricting what I allow my kids to watch.  But honestly, I don't care if I am a "mean mom".  Kids only get one chance at being little once. I want to keep that fairy dust sprinkled as long as I can before my kids merge into half breed teenagers that backtalk and don't bathe.  Pedestal off, my hubs took him to see Jurassic World after we watched the Jurassic Park series at home to make sure it didn't scare him.  What I failed to recall is how cheesy the graphics are in older movies.  My son thought the entire Jurassic series was a comedy that had cool dinosaur fight scenes in....

Off my two men went on their man date to watch Jurassic World why us girls went to swim at Mamoo's pool.  When they came home from the movie my son was adamant that he had to have a Jurassic World party because the move was AMAZING!  

Thankfully there was party supplies around to buy and the colors were pretty fantastic too.  Since we were having a pool party (yes again, summer birthdays in Central California leaves you no choice) I thought it would be cool to do a card with the water on it.  The movie has that crazy water dinosaur in it so I figured we could play off that.  Then I used a halloween font to make it look spooky.  

We bought the decorations at The Dollar Store and Walmart.  Our shirts are from Target and Walmart.  A friend and I cut up the girls and mine since they were men/boys to make them a little cuter and fitted.  

For food we did hot dogs, chips and dips, a green salad and watermelon.  Brody decided being 8 meant no super themed food.  BUT I couldn't resist getting a little bonkers on the desserts especially since he didn't want me to make him cupcakes, my specialty.  

I made rice krispy treats and cut out with a cookie cutter into egg shapes.  Below are chocolate peanut butter oatmeal drops with peanut M&M's in the middle so that they looked like dinosaur egg nests.

Every year this cake is requested by my son.  It is from Costco, and in my area it has become season...no joke I wanted to cry when the bakery manager told me that.  I am ashamed to admit that I will eat this cake for breakfast, lunch and dinner and have on numerous occasions.  If you love chocolate, it is the cake for you.  Now I want a piece and this post is over a month old in the making so there is no cake in the kitchen for me to grab....

All of the cake toppers that I could find were for Jurassic Park...not the correct theme for the party.  I tried to convince myself it would be fine to just put a dinosaur on top with a volcano but it just looked like a little boy party.  So that is what I came up with.  I took flexible straws and wrapped them in tinfoil.  Then I hot glued them together in that shape to resemble the sign from the actual movie.  On the top of the straws we added two candles to look like the torches.  Behind the sign is the Indominus Rex Lego Dinosaur and the Velociraptors attacking him.  My son was nice enough to let me borrow them from the Lego set we gave him for his birthday.  I actually taped them onto pieces of cardboard so no chocolate got inside the feet.

I ordered off Amazon a pack of blow up dinosaurs that were 2 to 3 feet in size.  These were awesome to have floating around the pool.  Kids of all ages played with them...even my brother...he's 26. Since these kids were older I decided it would be fun to have a little game.  The hubs found a few packages of Jurassic World plastic dinosaurs on clearance at Walmart.  Seriously it was 15 dinosaurs for 2.47.  I didn't want to just toss them in a goody bag, boring.  Instead I ransacked my Easter Decorating bins and found all the large eggs I had.  Then I put a dinosaur in each of them.  When the kids got out to eat lunch my brother and I filled up about half of them with water to sink to the bottom and let the other half float.  This way kids of all swimming levels would be able to find an egg.  After they ate I had them line up along the edge of the pool and go in the pool in groups of 3 to find an egg.  Then they got to keep their own dinosaur egg!  Below was the only picture I got of the actual eggs.  I'm sorry, it gets a little frantic during the party sometimes and I don't capture it all.

As the kids left the party they got grab a dinosaur hat that I purchased at the Dollar Store (I love that place) and a bag that had a jurassic park plane, candy and Jurassic park hot wheel car inside.  

I made these cards for Brody to hand out as thanks.  He was able to write on the back a quick note and then done.  Easy, peasy!  

Paw Patrol Birthday Party

I don't know how it is for you when it comes time to plan a kid birthday party, but for me things don't ever seem to go my way.  First my kid will pick a theme that either doesn't exist in easy to buy premade supplies or it is a theme that is not easily made into a gender obvious party.  Case in point Paw Patrol.  It's a cute show about dogs that help solve problems on Nick Jr.  Check out info on paw patrol here.  Problem is that my daughter wanted the party and everything in the stores she thought looked like it was for a boy.  Where is Skye?  Where is Everest?  Not on the party supplies or any of the goodies that's for sure.  So off I went to Etsy and Pinterest in hopes of finding ideas and supplies.  Much to my dismay my daughter hated everything she saw.  (Side note here, they have tons of adorable stuff on both sites.  My kid was just being picky....shocker)  Only solution was to make something and let her pick the items used to create it. 


I gave her limits on colors because I am always concerned about budget and wanted to reuse some party supplies I already had in primary colors.  Lucky for me the show is in primary colors so she agreed.  First up was the invitation. 

                                           

We had to go with primary colors because what party stuff we could find was in those. It turned out cute!  Best part was my daughter loved it. 

Next up, food. We decided on pizza, fruit, salad, and a few other fun foods. Then I made up a cute little "menu" and framed it. To decorate the food table I used store bought table cloths and a fabric banner that I had from previous parties. I bought dog food bowls from the dollar store to put my daughters favorite cookie dough dip in and used scooby graham cracker snacks as the cookies because I couldn't resist how authentic they looked to a milk bone dog treat.  Another way to maintain the theme of the party was cutting watermelon into the shape of dog bones. They looked cute and it was super easy with a cookie cutter. 

                                           

    

 Since it was a pool party I put out water balls in a bucket to "play fetch" with. We decided for a 5 year old party the pool was enough and didn't do any additional games. 

I made chocolate cupcakes and added Reese's puff cereal as the topper to look like a pile of dog food for her cake. Side note, DO NOT PUT CEREAL ON UNTIL RIGHT BEFORE YOU ARE GOING TO SERVE. If you put on earlier the cereal will absorbs the moisture from the frosting and get soft. No one likes mushy cereal for breakfast soon one will want to eat that on a cupcake. 

Last thing I needed to figure out was a the take home goodie bag. I had seen on Pinterest all these adopt-a-pup favors. Super adorable!  So I ordered the pups from Oriental Trading suggested. In theory kids were just going to take a pup and some candy home. But reality set in pretty quick after the pups arrived and were smaller than a happy meal toy. In order to salvage the poor pups my mom and I used scraps of leftover tulle I had from previous tutu making sessions to make the little dogs tutus. We used elastic hair bands and did slip knots all the way around. They were displayed around a paper towel holder.The kids were also able to make a collar for their pup. I raided my craft closet and found elastic and beads from necklace making my kids had done. We used these to let the kids spell out their pups name or just bling them out a little. 

What new pup doesn't want a dog bed of their own? I realize as I wrote this I sound like a hoarder...however I had tons of small boxes in my gift wrap box that I had purchased from pick your plum. Using leftover fabric from a baby blanket I had made a friend I whipped up a bunch of those. To create I just cut a square larger than the box then added bunting and hot glued it to the inside of the box they were not uniform by any means. But God bless kids they don't notice the small details and loved that their dog got it's very own bed.   What started as the cheapest looking party favor ever ended up being one of the most adorable take home gifts I have ever done. 

When we were at The Dollar Store grabbing dog bowls there were dog treat containers next to them. I wasn't sure what I could use them for but they were too cute to pass up. So a candy bar was created with primary color candies!  We got gumballs from Party City, skittles from Target (they were on cartwheel), suckers from Oriental Trading, and little doggy bag paw patrol containers from the dollar spot at Target. 

Overall the party was a success. Kids had fun and no one noticed that I had to make a lot of the stuff to pull off the paw patrol theme which is always a good thing in my book!  

 We got this shirt for her thank you card picture.  My kids are all tall like their daddy so no 5T sizes work anymore which sucks because if you want a character tshirt they are hard to come by.  Zulily just happened to have as one of their daily deals Paw Patrol shirts in sizes 6 - 10 and they were personalized!

If you are planning a party I highly recommend checking out Pick Your Plum and Zulily daily for months prior to your party.  You can find some seriously adorable stuff at crazy reasonable prices.  

St. Patrick's Day Cupcake

After seeing how cute the St. Patrick Day cookies turned out I thought I would take a spin at turning them into a cupcake.  For full details on how to make the cookies refer to the shamrock cookie recipe.  However I did add a few pictures of the chocolate shamrock.  This time I made the three dots but then I added another dot in the middle and used my lollipop stick to pull the dots together and then dragged the remaining chocolate down to make a stem.  

Then I made chocolate cupcakes.  I didn't have time to make them from scratch so I did a semi-homemade version....recipe below

1 box of dark chocolate cake

1 stick of melted butter (1/2 cup)

1 cup sour cream

1/2 cup water

3 eggs

1 cup of chopped chocolate chips

Pre-Heat oven to 350 and cook for 22 minutes

I made a chocolate frosting to go on top....seriously the best chocolate frosting.  I save the leftovers and put it on graham crackers when I am desperate for a chocolate fix...

2 sticks soft butter (1 cup)

2 cups powdered sugar

2 cups melted chocolate chips

mix on medium speed

 Add on some green sprinkles, the shamrock or the shamrock cookie and you have a fabulous St. Patrick Day treat.  Enjoy!

shamrock cookie

I saw these on pinterest Tuesday and decided that they needed to be made.  A girlfriend of mine was coming over with four kids to have a play date with my three kids.  We got out all the needed ingredients and let the kids do everything but melt the chocolate and make the shamrocks. The outcome was pretty miraculous when the 7 kids range in age from 6 to 20 months.  I am sure that yours will turn out much better than our kids did...here is the link for the shamrock recipe from hostess with the mostess....enjoy!

dollar store flower petal skirt

I made this dress almost a year ago but every time my daughter wears this dress people ask where I got it.  I thought that I would put the information up here for where I found the instructions on what to do,  dollar store petal skirt.  Since the instructions are for an adult skirt I modified it.  Also, I apologize in advance.  I didn't take pictures of this dress as I was making it.  In my mind I thought it would be a disaster and end up as a Halloween costume or play dress.  

I used my older sons old white t-shirt as the base which worked great.  Then I bought a scrap piece of fabric from the remnants at JoAnn's for the strapless part.  In the back I did a tear drop so there is one button on the top of the dress.  The straps are 1 inch hot pink ribbon that I straight stitched onto the bodice of the dress.  Then i straight stitched the same ribbon between the two pieces of fabric, strapless polka-dot to the flower petal skirt to add length and more color....not bad for my first dress and only $3 for everything I needed. 

 It was freezing when I took this picture, hence the shirt underneath.  But looks super cute with a bolero cardigan...my daughter won't keep a jacket on though....

tooth fairy pillow

I won't lie, I figured I had another year or two before I was going to have to start worrying about teeth falling out.  My son is only 4!  But nature decides when the time is right, and for him, the time is right now.  Just this afternoon another tooth fell out.  The first tooth my mother was kind enough to let us borrow our tooth fairy pillow from my childhood, but now, game face is on.  So this last week our household has been obsessed with teeth!  I found a pillow I loved on mmmcrafts blog.  It was too cute.  But for my kids they would pull the adorable wings off and the little crown  So I decided to take that pillow and merge it with my pillow from my childhood...oh and I put a handle on it, then when it isn't in use it can hang on the side of the bed waiting patiently for the next chomper to fall out.  

Here is what you need to get started.....

2 - 7" x 7" square pieces of fabric

1 - 5" x 5" piece of felt to use as a pocket

1 - small piece of white felt to use for tooth

scraps of other color felt to use for accessorizing tooth 

Scissors

Pinking shears if you want to do a zigzag edge

Sewing machine

Buttons for eyes

Fabric glue

Ribbon if you want to do a handle

Batting

Step 1 - Cut out your fabric into two squares

Step 2 - cut out your felt square, see my trusty old school ruler!  Just make sure you use a light pencil to mark on the felt since it can show through. Also, if you want to cut with pinking shears do so here.

Step 3 - cut out your tooth.  I used the image from the tooth fairy letter.  It can be found here tooth fairy note.  Pin it onto the felt and cut out.

For my son's pillow I used this cool monster fabric so I made him a one eye monster.  I had some left over felt in lime green so I cut out a little circle to put under the button...

Step 4 - fold the tooth in half so that the roots are against each other, long ways and cut out a smile/mouth in a half moon shape.  Then using the fabric glue glue on inside of mouth.  Using scraps leftover from cutting out the tooth I glued on some fangs too.

Step 5 - Glue the tooth monster onto the felt square.  I used a little bit of glue to place the tooth onto the felt.  Then I straight stitched the tooth onto the fabric with the sewing machine.

Step 6 - (this is the one I made for my daughter) Next stitch the felt onto the fabric.  For my son's I used a straight stitch, for my daughter's I used a decorative stitch.

Step 7 - If you want a handle pin your straps onto the right side of fabric then place the other right side of fabric on top of it, my mom always says sandwhich them.  Then sew three sides together.

Step 8 - Fill with batting and then fold the pieces of fabric into each other and stitch that bad boy together!  BAM done!

tooth fairy notes

I looked all over for a cute letter to the tooth fairy.  Two that I found online downloaded a virus onto my computer.  After that I made my own.  First I googled images of the tooth fairy.  I didn't want to have to make my own tooth fairy.  Thankfully I found this adorable tooth fairy.

Then I searched for a tooth.  This one I liked the best for two reasons.  First it had two outlines of a tooth.  In my mind I wanted the tooth to be two tone.  So this would allow me to cut two pieces of paper in different sizes.

For things like this my favorite program to use is Publisher.  It is really easy to use but even better to manipulate images in.  I inserted the tooth and increased it to the size that I wanted.  Then I added the tooth fairy into the tooth and resized that image.  Also, you need to reformat the picture so that you still have the outline.  Then, the hardest part, write the letter.  I wanted it to be cute and fun since my son swallowed his first tooth :(

This was the final product.  I just used a glue stick to attach the two.  I also sprinkled some mac (makeup) pigment that I had in iridescent glitter all over the tooth.  The glitter looks sort of wacky in the picture but on the actual letter it looks fine. 

Where do you stick the money?  Should have thought that through a little bit better....I came up with folding the money into a little bow and then tying a ribbon around it.  I then stapled the ribbon onto the top of the tooth so that it sort of looks like it is on a spring.  Hopefully my son is excited in the morning....