Drive In Movies at Home

 Elijah has been recently obsessed with the movie Cars. (Actually, it was the first movie he ever sat through the entire thing when it first came out) He wants Cars toys and books and clothes... pretty much anything that has Lightening Mcqueen or Mater on it. I thought it would be fun to take him to see Cars 2 for a treat, but first, I wanted to watch the first movie to get him excited for the second (not that its necessary). I thought that I'd take the opportunity to make it an official movie night. But what better way to have fun with cars then to make your own out of a cardboard box and use it to watch movies in and drive around the living room with later?

I've been wanting to do this since before I was married and have held onto the project for a good five years now. So little to say, I was really excited to do this with the kids. Elijah was just as excited and he had a blast doing this too. He picked out all of the colors and even wanted to add the "number E on it for Elijah". He helped design Chloe's too. I just used stuff I had around the house (good thing we just moved so I have a TON of boxes) and we had a great time with it. I would probably paint the box next time (I just couldn't get to my paints) because the paper rips too easily with a toddler around. Obviously, if your kids are older/bigger you can do this with bigger/ longer boxes. You can even use one long box to fit in all the kids and not different boxes. This is such a fun and easy project and one that the kids will have so much fun with for hours and hours!

side not to self: mirrors face toward the driver not out :P

 And what's a movie without a little popcorn?

Capes for Your Super Kids

I have two of the best kids ever! I know that every mom feels the same way about their own kids, and that's great too. But I just love my kids. They are always keeping me entertained and they both try so hard to help out, especially Elijah. He's always been my little "big" helper. He even helps to chase his little sister around and tries to mind her for me and helps to contain her. It's such a crack up to see them together. So, like I said before, I know that every mom thinks her kids are the best and are really super, so why not make them a cape for them to show off to the rest of the world how super they really are? :)

Elijah always comes up to me and asks me to tie his blanket around his neck so he can have a cape and pretends to be a super hero, so I have been wanting to make him a cape for awhile now, I just haven't gotten around to it. Luckily though, my sister-in-law threw her son a really cute and fun superhero/Batman party and the kids were invited to dress up too. We just moved so I don't have access to my sewing machine right now but I wanted to make the kids' costumes. Since capes are easy to make and pretty much just a bunch of straight lines, I bought heat and bond hem tape and it worked like a charm. I hand sewed on their logos to the back of their capes and onto a shirt for Elijah. Elijah LOVES his new cape and mask. He has so much fun dressing up in his costume and loves being a superhero. He's such my super little guy!

for the capes:
http://floatingworld.typepad.com/superhero.pdf
http://pukingpastilles.com/?p=57 (this one is reversible)
http://thegoodlifebyerin.blogspot.com/2011/01/superhero-capes.html
for the mask:
http://uklassinus.blogspot.com/2008/12/2-down-1-to-go-and-superhero-mask.html

A ruffled dress and bow tie

Lately, I have been checking out a lot of different sites for toddler dresses. With Easter coming up, and my husband not wanting me to buy outfits for the kids, I decided I would try my best to make them. Right now I'm obsessed with all of the ridiculously cute ruffled dresses that are everywhere, so of course that's what I chose to make for Chloe's dress. This is my first time making a dress too, so I wanted something that looked easy enough for a beginner. I don't know if that was this dress, but it made all of the other dresses I made after seem really easy. (Those tutorials will be shown in a different post). But I discovered that toddler dresses are so easy and cost effective!

I followed these directions of how to piece the dress together, but I made mine differently since I used left over fabric that I had lying around the house. If you want to do what I did, just take the fabric and fold it in half. Take a dress that is about the size you want to make yours and cut around it keeping a 1/4 in around to sew it together. Or cut a rectangle of the size you want your dress and cut out arm holes and a neck line, then sew them together. (In a later post I'll have a tutorial that will show how to do this for a better visual)

Of course I also had to make a headband to go with her dress. As I was looking for tutorials, I stumbled across this website and instantly fell in love Snazzie Drawers. The best thing about it is that she sells her patterns! And if you don't want to make your own, she has her own etsy store. I used her headbands as my inspiration (I just copied hers).  (To make the flowers for both the dress and headband, you can use this tutorial.)

For my son, I really wanted to make him a suit, but alas, I ran out of time (hopefully, that will be a later post).  I did, however, make him a bow tie. I wanted it to match Chloe's dress a little, so used the same blue fabric as her flowers. Also, to make this A LOT easier, I used a white elastic for the band, so he can put it on or take it off himself.  He loves his bow tie, but didn't let me take a picture of him wearing it. 

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. :)