Showing posts with label party planning. Show all posts
Showing posts with label party planning. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 29, 2012

More farm birthday fun

Here are a few more fun details from Little Miss' "Down on the Farm" birthday party!

For an activity, the kids planted their very own heirloom variety vegetables.  I had ordered seeds from the Seed Savers Exchange, and the little party animals (see what I did there?!) planted their choice of Paris Market Carrot, King of the North Pepper, Blondkopfchen Tomato and De Cicco Broccoli.  Fun!


Even with our ridiculously mild winter, it was still too cold in February to make the kids go outside to handle the dirt. Instead, we did this activity inside.  I put on my brave face, covered the kitchen table with a plastic tablecloth, and set out the potting soil, plastic cups and measuring cups.  And hoped for the best.


And I shouldn't have worried. Aside from a few small spills, the kids did a fine job of filling their cups and planting the seeds.  It helped that all the adults were willing to assist the little ones, and a few adults even planted their own vegetables.  The mess was rolled up into the tablecloth and taken away so that folks could eat there when dinner was ready. 


A big trend with parties (see anything featured on Amy Atlas) are individual labels naming each drink, appetizer, dessert, etc. I like the look but I simply don't have the kind of time or patience necessary to pull it off.  Instead, I made general menus for the appetizers, meal and desserts using clip art I found on Microsoft Publisher.  I printed the menus on white card stock and displayed them in clear acrylic photo frames. Easy!




I didn't take any pictures of the main courses--at that point, the kitchen was too active and getting photos of the food would have been impossible--but here is what I served:


Tomorrow, I'll share the dessert table with you. Y'all come back, hear? 

LOL. I just love imaginary farm-speak.

Friday, February 17, 2012

Crafty invitations

Little Miss' birthday is rapidly approaching.  Our theme is "Down on the Farm," and I wanted the invitations to let folks know what they were in for with our parties. 

 
The inside contains the important party information about when and what time folks need to wander on down to the TMI homestead for some farm-fresh fun. The red doors are textured scrapbook paper that I found on clearance, and the white trim (and the inside) is basic card stock.  I printed the inside text two to a page, trimmed them, glued on the barn doors, and then adding the white trim accents. 


These invitations were cheap to make, but took a lot of time.  Thank goodness the Big Guy helped!  I firmly believe that my time is worth some serious cash (there's so little of it--it must be a hot commodity!) so if I had to do it again I would just purchase these printable invitations from Wants and Wishes.  Live and learn, right?!


Overall, I am really happy with how these turned out and I've gotten several compliments on them. And bonus:  making these invitations fulfilled my New Year's Resolutions to be more frugal and to craft more.  Hopefully the parties will turn out just as good as the invitations did!

Wednesday, February 15, 2012

Party on Pinterest

I'm having a party on Pinterest! At least, that's where I'm planning Little Miss's second birthday party.  We're having a "Down on the Farm" themed party, and it's going to be awesome! 


Take a look at the board, and let me know what you think!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Spoon microphone

Sunday's Super Souper Bowl was a blast, and I tried to get some interviews with some of the contestants. I had been drinking a bit by the time these interviews started, and it shows: I accidentally stumble over my words and call my blog the Marsha Initiative. 

Which is weird, because I don't even know a Marsha.

But using a ladle as a microphone?  That just makes sense.

The background is kind of loud (there were eight kids, six of whom are under the age of 5) and I hadn't warned anyone about doing the on-camera interviews, but I think that only improves the content. Enjoy!

Monday, February 6, 2012

Manda Monday--The 2nd Annual Super Souper Bowl

The 2nd Annual Super Souper Bowl was a huge success and a ton of fun!  We had five entries and everyone had a great time.  Three of the entries were from new competitors...if this keeps up, I might have to get a bigger kitchen island in a few years!


Entries included a traditional chili, a pork chili with ditalini, jambalaya and bacon-infused potato soup.  All were delicious, but this was the winner:


We provided appetizers, drinks and desserts for our guests.  Here's the dessert table:


I made dipped pretzels, cupcakes, cookies and a pretzel-jello dessert not shown because it was in the fridge. And I have to admit, the eclairs are store-bought.  It happens sometimes.

These cookies, however, were not:


Decorated sugar cookies are always a hit, and these are quickly becoming a family project.  The kids and I make the dough, the Big Guy rolls it out, the kids do (most of) the cutting, I bake everything, and then the Big Guy and I decorate the cookies.  My plan is to withdraw bit by bit from this process over the next few years, so eventually I'll be able to supervise from the couch while eating bon-bons and reading magazines.  And maybe napping.  Good times!

I hope everyone had a great Sunday afternoon/evening, whether it involved watching TV or not.

Friday, February 3, 2012

A trophy for the Titan of the Tureen

Our Second Annual Super Souper Bowl Party is right around the corner.  There's still a lot to be done (clean the house, rearrange furniture, make all the appetizers, bake desserts, stop the kids from destroying the house that I will have just finished cleaning, etc.) but I am totally ready with the trophy.

For those new to the blog, our Super Souper Bowl party is a contest: guests bring their prized chili, soup, or stew, everyone samples the fare, and we vote on our favorite.  The winner takes home a totally awesome trophy and bragging rights for the year. Last year's winner Michelle won with her version of Paula Deen's taco soup:


Just like last year, this year's trophy is hand-made from bits and pieces I found at a local resale shop.  The candlestick was $1.50 and the bowl was $0.90. Unbeknownst to me, both were half-off, so the cost for the materials was only $1.10. Score!


After cleaning both pieces, I used a hot glue gun to adhere the bowl to the candlestick.  Easy!  Side note: I love my glue gun but rarely use it. I need to find more opportunities to glue stuff together.


Once the glue was dry, I spray painted the whole thing gold.  It's gorgeous! Truly, this is a chalice worthy of a Queen of the Crockpot.  Or Titan of the Tureen.  Or King of the Cook-Off. 


Whatever we call the champ, and whoever that person may be, I think we all know who the real winner is:  ME.  Because people are bringing food to my house.  So that I can eat it. And award this awesome trophy. Score!

Tuesday, January 31, 2012

Free football party printable round-up

Whew! What a mouthful! But that's exactly what I have today.  The Big Guy and I are hosting our Second Annual Super Souper Bowl, and I've been perusing my favorite party sites for free printables.  I'm finding some great stuff, and I want to share it with you!

The Big Game Bash collection from Hostess With The Mostess is awesome!  I really like the football player silhouettes and the buffet labels. 


Kim from the Celebration Shoppe has designed a great collection specifically for the Giants-Patriots Super Bowl game.  In addition to the team specific colors, she includes a football field mat and chevron grass mat for fun displays.


Catch My Party is showcasing another great collection of personalized printables from 9 to 5 Mom that is also team-specific.  The cupcake toppers and Touchdown banner are awesome!


I can't believe our Super Souper Bowl party is less than a week away! I need to get printing, pronto. 

Small confession: I don't even care about football. I'm just in this for the food and the commercials.

Happy printing! And thanks to all the bloggers and designers who create and provide free printables for party animals like me--your work is amazing!

Thursday, November 10, 2011

Desserts for dinosaurs

So I'm still working on the whole fancy-pants dessert table concept (see anything featured by Amy Atlas) so there's no cutesy backdrop for my sweets. 


The cake and cookies more than make up for the lack of backdrop, however:


The cake is chocolate with buttercream frosting and features a volcano.  A cookie Tyrannosaurus Rex, Stegosaurus, Brachiosaurus and Triceratops standing around the "4" candle complete the scene. 


To go along with the cake, I made chocolate-frosted pretzels covered with Dino sprinkles from Karen's Cookies Shop.


I put out a dish of M&M's flanked by dinosaurs.  I tried to use the Little Guy's dinosaurs throughout the house for decorations. 


This Spinosaurus is either really scary as he guards the cookies...or really happy to be so close to the cookies.  I'm not sure which!


Take a look at the cookies, and you can be the judge of his demeanor.


All of the dinosaur cookies were made with cutters from Karen's Cookies.  For anyone looking for specialty cutters that you just can't find in a store, I highly recommend them!  I baked all the cookies (with help from my family, of course!) and the Big Guy and Handy Freddy helped flood the cookies after I outlined them.  The frosting is Karen's meringue powder buttercream recipe, and I've been using it for years. 






The Dino footprint cookie was Handy Freddy's idea.  I had an egg cookie cutter, and I had planned to do speckled dinosaur egg cookies.  Freddy suggested cutting a "M" shape into the wide part of the egg to turn it into a footprint to match the chalk footprints outside the houseIsn't that brilliant?


For a dramatic presentation of the cake, I put 6 trick sparkler candles into the volcano part of the cake.  Grouping them so close together gave me a huge flame rather than sparks, but since no one was burned and the house didn't catch on fire, I'm declaring it a success.



And that's how we do things for a Dino-riffic 4th birthday party!

Have a great weekend, everyone! And Happy Veterans Day!

Wednesday, November 9, 2011

Dinosaurs do things!

I like having specific activities for kids to do at birthday parties. Sure, they can hang out and play with toys, but that's really something they could do any old day. I firmly believe birthday parties should be fun and special, not just for the birthday boy or girl but for all the kids who attend. With that in mind, we had some super-fun activities for the kids at the Little Guy's 4th birthday party.


We were fortunate to have amazing weather for the Little Guy's birthday weekend--we were wearing shorts in October!--so it was a no-brainer to use the bouncy house. A bouncy house is always a hit with kids.


I found plastic dinosaur skeletons at Dollar Tree and buried them in the sandbox--instant Dinosaur Dig!


I really lucked out with the good weather for this activity.  A Dino dig is not something I could have replicated inside the house.  All the kids really enjoyed digging for dinosaur skeletons.


The third activity required quite a bit of research on my part, but it was worth it: I made a Dinosaur Growth Chart!  I put it in the foyer along with the favor bags and dinosaur hats so people could check their height right as they came in.


The Dinosaur Growth Chart reached 17 feet (almost to the ceiling) and on it I had written the name and height of nearly 20 dinosaurs.  Did you know that a Stegosaurus was 10 feet tall, and that a Tyrannosaurus Rex was 16 feet tall?  And, unlike in the movie Jurassic Park, Velociraptors were only 4 feet tall.  It's true! 


Kids and adults stood next to the chart to see how they measured up.  And after the party was really rolling, kids were standing ON adults to recreate some of the larger dinosaur heights. Below, Little Guy stands on top of the Big Guy, and yet they still aren't quite as tall as a Triceratops (10 feet).  Little Miss is about the size of an Oviraptor.  I am really proud of this activity--while I get a lot of inspiration from party blogs, books and magazines, this was an original idea that was both fun and educational.  Woohoo!


Tomorrow, I'll show you the amazing cake and cookies.  They turned out great, if I do say so myself.

Tuesday, November 8, 2011

A dino-riffic birthday

Last month, my Little Guy turned four.  FOUR?!?! Can you believe it? Where does the time go?

Anyways, he's been into dinosaurs for months (years?) and it seemed like the perfect theme for his birthday party.  I used Pinterest to create an inspiration board for the party, and it quickly became the blueprint for the actual party.

Invitations and thank you notes came from Vistaprint. I've used them before for business cards and address labels, and for the price, I was happy with how they turned out (the picture below is from their sample).


The invitations let guests know what to expect (a birthday boy who is totally into dinosaurs) but the decorations set the tone for the party.  Outside, the Big Guy used sidewalk chalk to make Dino footprints leading up the driveway and sidewalk to the front door.


And here's Little Guy following the footprints in his dinosaur costume (and yes, he wears that costume everywhere!):


Inside, I taped crepe paper to the ceiling to transform the hallway into a rain forest.  I used three shades of green, one yellow and one blue streamer that featured a dinosaur and "Happy birthday" on it.  I thought five rolls of crepe paper would be enough, but I could have used five more. Lesson learned: keep ten rolls of every color of crepe paper ever invented on hand at all times.


The dinosaur balloon idea came from Family Fun magazine. The faces were drawn with permanent marker on regular balloons. While the original idea involved helium balloons turned upside down, I just used air-filled balloons and let them hang from the ceiling with ribbon. These were extremely easy to do and very cost-effective.


Kids and adults had fun roaming in our 'rainforest.' The streamers and balloons were attached to the ceiling with painter's tape, so I had no worries about what would happen when it was time to take the decorations down. 


For additional decoration, we displayed Little Guy's toy dinosaurs all over the house.  Fun!  Tomorrow, I'll share all the Dino Do-ings that happened at our Dino Party. ROAR!!!