Fun with Cupcake Liners

I found this tutorial for these cute pompoms using cupcake liners. I loved them when I saw them and to make it even better, they're so easy to do. I love easy! And fast! The wreath took the longest and it only took me about 40 minutes. I didn't count how many liners I used but it was about 1 - 1 1/2 boxes of liners depending on the size of the pompoms. I was throwing a Girls Night for a friend's baby shower and was doing a cupcake bar, so I thought it'd be fun to decorate everything with cupcake liners. I also threw the party a week before Valentines Day so I kept up some of the decor (most of them I gave away to be used for the baby to be) since they're so frilly and fun.
Using the same technique I made all of these:

If you use a different color than white, wrap the wreath with matching ribbon underneath so you won't see any holes peeping through.

(The other lanterns were left over from Chloe's party)

My wall art and my banner says "oh so sweet"

I turned the liners inside out and right side in for this one

The look put together

Plus, here's a couple more cute ideas using cupcake liners.
http://papercrave.com/how-to-make-cupcake-liner-flower-tree/
http://www.marthastewart.com/article/cupcake-paper-carnations?backto=true

Robot Party

Elijah was obsessed with robots for awhile and wanted a robot themed party for his 3rd birthday. So I tried to find things in stores and online, and couldn't find much, that is until the day of his party... of course that'd happen. But if anyone else wants to throw a robot party here are some of my finds.

I went to Target to get most of the supplies for the party. They were the only place I could find robot stuff. And the best part was almost all of them were in their $1 bins. (I bought the slinkies there for $0.25!) I used these as party favors.

I used this printable for Elijah's robot cutout. I spent less than $10 on his cutout and all of the kids had so much fun with it. I think it needs to be made with something heavier than styrofoam though, so the kids can't run around the house with it. lol To make the cutout I went to Home Depot and found styrofoam insulation with the foil on it (less than $5) then bought some shelf holders (less than $2 each) and just hot glued them to the base so it'd stand up. I cut a hole out using a sharp knife and painted the robot body using acrylic paints. Voila! My own cutout stand for pictures.

I saw some cute robot sandwiches and used the idea to make my own. Mine are a lot simpler being only ham and cheese sandwiches but the kids seemed to like them all the same, and it's not like they knew what they were missing.

I traced some gears in Illustrator and used them for the labels for Elijah's birthday banner and for the food. (I had some robots that my dad made for me using Illustrator that I was going to use to "hold" up the gears on the banner, but my printer ran out of ink and I ran out of time) I labelled the food to go with the robot theme. And I thought that these tissue pinwheels were kind of like gears (maybe just to me), but it at least added some more color and I cut out some robots and glued them to the centers.

(I also had apples with the label saying "powered by apple" and chocolate milk for the "fuel")

Elijah also likes pinwheels so I used robot paper (found at Target) and made them into pinwheels using this tutorial.

Elijah's cake was really simple to do. I still wanted to have an "educational" aspect and thought it'd be fun to do a rainbow cake. I saw this cute rainbow cake on the Whisk Kid and thought I'd try it out. I used my own recipes, but used her technique. Only the head was cake. I wrapped it in fondant and made fondant eyes. For the body, I took a box and wrapped it, then glued on the "screen", and the legs are just cans with the labels removed. See? Super simple!

For crafts, I had a robot and rocket foam kit from awhile ago that I bought at Walmart and just busted it out for the party.

Some fun activity ideas I thought of doing were to play Robot Says (same as Simon Says, but doing robot things), a robot scavenger hunt where they find things to build a robot then they put one together, and of course have them dress like a robot. 

We had a robot dance party. I recorded Robot Dance A Lot on Disney and put it on for the kids to follow and it was really cute to watch all of the kids dancing and doing "the robot".

And here are some free printables: (I didn't use any of these, but wanted to)

Some robot coloring pages

robot and rocket printables
In case you want to go all out and make some paper robots, check this out.

I found these the day after his party, but really wish I had them before.

If I had the talent and time I would've tried to make these cupcakes by hello naomi

And if my husband would've let me buy these cupcake holders, I would've (and I still want them lol).

I hope this helps anyone who has a robot obsessed kid wanting a robot party. :)

Cherry Blossom Party

For Chloe's first birthday, I did a cherry blossom viewing party. I don't think anyone's going to throw a cherry blossom party anytime soon, but in case you do, here's some of the tutorials I used and things that I did for her party.

Most of the decorations had cherry blossoms on them. We also had authentic Japanese food that you would find at a cherry blossom viewing picnic in Japan. Here's what the table looked like put together along with the general decorations.

I made most of the decorations (or embellished them) with cherry blossoms that I punched out using a cherry blossom flower punch. I used this tutorial from Martha Stewart for the tissue flowers on the lanterns.

I folded small paper cranes for the ends of the toothpicks for the food. (I was going to make curtains of all of the cranes, but ran out of time) I also had regular sized cranes to hold the labels.

I also got some branches from a guy pruning his trees and glued on paper cherry blossoms that I punched out.

I made labels for all of the food and drinks and wrote everything in Japanese with the English translations underneath. For that I just went to Google translator :) For the water bottles I took off the labels and wrapped them with ribbon and glued personalized labels on instead.

I even tied the chopsticks and forks with pink ribbon. (Maybe a little overboard lol)

For the thank you's I put together some Japanese candy (because if you ever get Japanese food, they always give you candy with your check) and labelled them as well.

I made the cakes for the party and made fondant cherry blossom flowers. I found this video on how to do it. I did do mine differently, but I used hers to get the general idea. This was my first time using fondant and I think they turned out pretty decently. I tinted the fondant pink and used pink shimmer for the inside of the flowers and white shimmer for the edges.

I also had people dress up in kimonos. It was so much fun. Here's the cute birthday girl in her kimono.

I hope this helps if you want to throw you're own cherry blossom party. :)