Ideas for the 4th

Looking through many of our favorite blogs, I've found some great ideas for the 4th of July.

We always have a big get together with lots of neighbors, friends and family on the 4th for some hot dogs and fireworks. Take a look at these great ideas I've found that I plan on trying to use this year:

First off, a vintage decorated table. I love anything vintage, so the theme and colors of this are right up my alley. Love, love what they did here. 

source: pizzazzerie

Also, from the same great site I found some FREE awesome printables. Not only do I love this poster of Uncle Sam, but the colors are my fav. And they all match with the table setup.

source: pizzazzerie printables

And how cute are these little flags!

{And they give a great little tutorial on how to make them.}

source: saltwater-kids

Of course we need some tye-dyed cupcakes.

{I have made some similar to these when I did camo cupcakes for my sons Army Party. They really were easy and fun.}

source: caffeinatedglobe

These brownie kabobs look awesome and easy.

My husbands favorite, chocolate and strawberries.

source: craftyconfessions

And one more thing for the kiddos. What a great idea!

source: cometogetherkids

Have a fun and safe 4th!

A&J



Halloween bottle labels

By popular demand, we are reposting this post.  Please post your creations so we can see too.  Happy Halloween all!!

It's officially the beginning of Fall today and that means that Halloween is just around the corner. Found these awesome bottle labels at Love Manor's flicker site. Wow, all the possibilities with these for a Halloween party!

Simply visit the flicker site to download the labels and print them out to make your table spread a little more spooky and interesting.

I'm envisioning the "Poison" on a bottle of green soda, the "Vampire Blood" on a bottle of red soda or juice, and lots of small glass jars with candy labeled with the

"deathly morsels" and "rotten sweets" etc.......

Don't you just love these?

A&J

Twilight: Eclipse Party Ideas

First off, for those of you non-Twilighters, just look away....

For those avid Twilight fans, we just wanted to share a few ideas for the upcoming release of the new movie in the saga, Eclipse.

Last year several of us girls got together for a fun night out to watch New Moon. Yes there were many teens there, but we weren't the oldest in line by FAR. We all had so much fun, we vowed to do it again for the next one.

For the New Moon release we had found Sweethearts with Team Jacob and Team Edward on them. We all picked sides and it was just fun! So for this movie release I struggled to find little party favors out on the market that were "Eclipse" related. Couldn't find anything I liked in my area, so I had to get creative.

Anyway, enough of my rambling....

Below are a few little treats I put together for our group of gals.

Eclipse gum: "Fire and Ice" 

Pick your team... :) 

 And little treat bags stuffed with twizzlers

and theme-labeled.

The awesome labels are actually drink labels I downloaded from here.

(note: I cut the twizzlers in half for these bags)

Don't forget that Burger King has also teamed up with Summit

and has all sorts of Eclipse merchandise.

We will be joining in on the Movie fun on release day,

stopping in at BK for eats before the movie,

and rooting for Team Jacob!!!

A&J

Army Birthday Party

I LOVED this party!

We had an Army party for my son's 5th birthday this weekend.

It turned out great and all the kiddos had a blast (even the girls)!

First off, I made this 5x7 invite in Photoshop with a mini digital scrapbooking kit I found online here.

A shot of the basic training course.

We built a wall out of two sheets of plywood and some 2x4's (I got rid of some old paint from the garage by painting the wall camo). The balances beams were just 4x4's on a few 2x4's on each end. The tires we borrowed from a local tire store. They let us use some old tires and we just took them back the next day. For the ropes, we got a pack of these wooden stakes. My husband drilled a hole in each one and we strung some rope through all of them.

Everyone got personalized (with a sharpe) dog tags to wear and some black face paint when they arrived.

I ordered the dog tags, plastic camo hats and the camo party favors from Oriental Trading.

Prize box....

Birthday rations included: Camo cupcakes, beef sticks, whoppers, and homemade survival mix (chex, marshmallows, pretzels, peanuts, and black & green m&m's)

Used an old washtub for drinks...

These 7x10 drawstring bags were perfect for party favors! I order them from Oriental Trading as well and stuck a water gun and some other goodies in there.

The cupcakes were camo colored.

I used chocolate and yellow cake mix. Mixed per directions, and in half of the yellow mix I added green and black food coloring to make the army green color. I added spoonfulls of each color into camo cupcake liners. Simple and cheap!

First activity was a "Search and Rescue Mission"

The kids had to find a few hundred of the little plastic army men I had hid before the party.

They were all so great at rescuing their men they received a little fun pack of Lifesavers candy!

Next up, basic training course....

Then they all launched their Parachute men...

Built little wooden airplanes to fly...

And everyone got to shoot the paintball gun at the target.

Look at these cool paintballs my husband found for them to use!

We even had some creative gift wrapping....

And just after the party, these planes flew over...

Coincidental, of course but totally cool!!

Add 2 more = 5!

This was such a fun party to put together. My husband enjoys building little projects, so this was perfect for him to jump in and help. All in all it wasn't that expensive as we had lots of the scrap wood and items already. And camo is easy to find anywhere!

We'd love to hear about your birthday party ideas!

A&J

Spooky Spider Treats

Just in time for Halloween...

I found this super cute idea from here.

These little spider pops are great for small inexpensive

party favors for your little one's Halloween party!

I simply grabbed some black pipe cleaners (cut in half),
and wrapped around the stem of a tootsie pop and
formed spider legs..
{I skipped on adding little googly eyes to each
spider, but if you have the time go ahead
and glue some on!}

A&J

Halloween Candy Necklace

Here is a different take on candy necklace. I made this for my son's preschool class for little party favors for their Halloween Party. They turned out so cute and very easy to do!

I grabbed a roll of clear cellophane from the craft store and cut about 6 inch wide strips. Place you choice of candy, treats or other goodies in the cellophane. Then just wrap it up and tie each section off with some ribbon.

I used:

little bags of pretzels

nerds

fruit snacks

a Halloween stamp ($1 spot at Target)

eyeball gumballs

& of course some candy corn packets.

You can use anything!

(Note: you may need to use two strips of cellophane for each necklace to make it long enough. Just overlap them in between one of the sections)

A&J

Ice Skating Party

The Perfect Ice Skating Party any kid would love.

First the perfect invite. I found this cute little gem at Traylorpapers.com.

Next, design the perfect cake. I always have to do two tiers because it's just that much more fabulous. I found the little ice skating bear online and it's actually a Christmas ornament. Then I had the baker place it to where it looked like she was ice skating the words right on the ice. Ignore the fact that the bear actually had to skate backwards to write this, but hey, it's very talented bear. Details. No one but me even noticed.
The perfect outfit. She did have on a crown, but that quickly fell off due to her fast agile skating abilities. Ok ok, it actually fell off due to a near fatal crash, but hey I have the power to edit here.
Next, the perfect party favor. I like finding unique things that parents don't actually toss in the trash as soon as their little ones fall asleep on the way home or just aren't looking. Or quickly eat all candy that's left while their innocent one sleeps. All the while fibbing a little to them when they awake saying you must have eaten it all before you fell asleep, you just don't remember.
So I found these cute books on sale at Barnes and Noble. For about $4.00 each. They came with the little ice skate necklace that I still see her friends wearing. I simply added a tulle bow and tied a sucker and ribbon to make them pretty and voila. A very simple party favor that they are sure to enjoy for awhile.
We did have a few boys at the party so I found these cute books for them. I did the same thing by adding tulle around them with suckers attached.

Ps. you have to tie candy on to favors like these because some kids aren't as excited as the parents are to get books as their favors. So trick them by adding just a little sugar. Parents are happy that it's not a ton more sugar that they wind up having to eat so their already sugar overloaded (from the birthday cake) sweeties don't eat that much more on the way home.

A&J

Fancy Nancy Cake

How to make your own Fancy Nancy Cake.

First, I had a bakery make a simple two layer cake. I'm not a great baker so this saved me quite a bit of work. Plus, they don't charge you much at all so this is actually one of the cheaper cakes I've ever done. I really wanted three layers, but that's a lot of cake, so I stuck to two.

Next, I added ribbon. I simply placed the ribbon around the cake and taped it together in the back. I did two layers of ribbon to give extra pizazz. Of course adding a big fake diamond embellishment for extra bling.
I then added a feather boa around the bottom, and cut a little off to stick on the top. Added a fake crown to the top layer, then added the mesh butterflies. The 2 (below) is just made of stock paper. And.....Then the for the finale...I added the plume feathers on top and voila.

The fanciest cake on the block. A few tips. Make sure the cake is very cold. Since this cake turned out to be bigger than what my refrigerator could hold, I practiced the night before. Took a picture, then put it back together right before the party. When the cake is warm, the butterflies were wanting to droop and fall out.

A&J