DIY Picnic Table

I had to share this AMAZING project my husband did. This picnic table with a cooler in the middle is absolutely wonderful. It took my husband one week, working only a few hours each day to build this all by himself and it turned out great! He found the FREE plans on The Design Confidential. Below are pictures of his progress.

 

FINISHED!

 

Thirsty?

 

 

 

Ellie's Birthday Cake Martini

So I found a couple recipes on Pinterest for Cake Batter Martinis or Shots and I really wanted to try the martini. Well....that was A LOT of alcohol. So looking at the two recipes, I came up with my own. So if you like tasty drinks with a hint of liquor, this will work for you.

 

My recipe:

2 oz Cake Vodka

1/2 oz White/Clear Creme de Cacao

1 oz Godiva White Chocolate Liqueur

3 oz Half & Half (I used Fat Free)

2 (heaping) Tbsp White Cake Powder (I used Funfetti)

Ice

Sprinkles (for glass rim)

 

Pour sprinkles onto a plate. Wet rim of glass with water or half and half (I used water). Dip rim of glass into sprinkles. Add all other ingredients to a shaker and shake for 30 seconds. Strain into martini glass. Enjoy!

 

Recipe makes one serving.



Pinspiration Sunday: Mustache Mugs

So you may have seen my AWESOME birthday party favor for the adults from my son's 1st birthday party...mustache mugs. But if you missed it, here's what I made:

So where did I get this idea? Pinterest, of course! A Beautiful Mess posted this great tutorial. This was probably the easiest project EVER! All you need is a mug (I got the white ones from Amazon for $20 per 12 mugs (unfortunately they only had one box left) and the black ones were from The Dollar Tree), a sharpie (I used black on the white mugs and silver on the black mugs), a baking sheet and an oven. Here's how I made mine...

I used my cricut machine with the Billionaire cartridge cut the mustache out of vinyl (which I already had because I was using the vinyl to make mustaches for the balloons). I stuck the mustache on the mugs and then traced around them. Next I took the mustache sticker off and colored it in. Then you bake them at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

take them out and allow them to cool. These mugs were a HUGE HIT!

**SPECIAL NOTE** do not use in a dishwasher! Just gently hand wash them.

Pinspiration Sunday: Homemade Ornaments

I found a really fun and easy tutorial on Pinterest for DIY ornaments. So I had pinned it awhile back thinking maybe I will make Christmas gifts someday. But then I got the awesome idea to make mustache ornaments! What a great favor for Grayson’s 1st Birthday party. Especially since his birthday is just a few weeks before Christmas. Now let me start by saying that I made one batch of these and they DID NOT turn out. The directions are simple…but here’s what I didn’t do: I didn’t knead it before rolling out. I didn’t bake on parchment paper (I used a Pampered Chef stoneware bar pan). The holes I placed in them for the string left a narrow area in the middle which is where most of them broke. And finally they didn’t seem to have completely dried out. Soooo…I decided to try again. This time I still didn’t use parchment paper but I did have wax paper so I used that on a metal cookie sheet. I bought tiny eye hooks that I inserted from the top in the middle that I could then put ribbon through to hang them. I also baked them for an hour and 20min (ten minutes longer on each side). This is how it works:

Ingredients:
1 cup baking soda
½ cup corn starch
¾ cup water

Place all ingredients into a small pot over med-low heat and stir.In the orginal directions it say this process takes a few minutes (which to me means like 5) however it takes about 10-15min.

You stir the pot until it thickens like “smooth mashed potatoes”. Then place dough into a bowl and cover with a damp cloth until cool.

Once the dough has cooled then you can roll out to ¼ inch thick and start cutting. I used Fred & Friends Munchstache cookie cutters that I bought from Amazon.
I inserted the eye hooks prior to baking. I baked them at 175 degrees for 40 min then flipped them CAREFULLY as they were still fragile in the middle. Then baked them for another 40min.

Once done, I removed them from the oven and placed them on a cooling rack overnight (just to be sure they were good to go).

Then I used some paint stain I already had (from ACMoore (it’s the same stain I use on my recipe boxes)) in the following colors: walnut, cherry, and mahogany. You can use craft paint but I wanted the detail to really stick out so I used the stain. I could have watered down the paint a bit but again I had the stain so that was easiest for me.

I then sealed them with mod podge. Finally, I added ribbon through the eye hooks. Here's how they looked:

This is the walnut:

Here is the cherry:

Here is the mahogany:

And here are all 3 together:

I plan on taking a 4 foot Christmas tree to Grayson’s party which I will have the ornaments hanging from with a note telling guest to take one home. Check back after his party to see great pictures from his big bash!

Birthday Banner

I just wanted to share a few pictures of the banner Angela and I worked on for my son’s birthday party. We struggled with what colors and pattern of papers to use. In the end we decided to go with a gray with small white polka dots for the letter flags, and gray and white chevron for the flags between words. I used the Cricut Craft Room software (FREE!) to weld the triangle from George and Basic Shapes cartridge (widen it a bit and elongated it to get the flag) then used the font from Cuttin’ Up cartridge for the words. I used the Billionaire cartridge for the mustaches. Here’s what we came up with:

Pinspiration Sunday: Color-A-Stache Coloring Book

So I came across this blog called Life According to the Street's which had a post about their Mustache Bash themed birthday party. She had made her own coloring pages for an activity. I thought this would be great too. So I decided to look up images of mustaches that could be colored in. It took some time but eventually I found a Mr. Potato Head, the Lorax, glasses, nose and mustache and finally (since his birthday is in December) I chose a picture of Santa. I used the printable scrapbook paper I bought from Honey Bunny and printed 2 pages per book as the cover with cream colored cardstock.I made a cover calling it Color-A-Stache and put a big picture of a mustache on it.

I printed the coloring pages out on regular printer paper.

Then I used my Zutter Bind-it-all to create a binding using 1/2 inch O wires.

Here’s the finished book.

It was actually a super easy creation and I think it's super cute! I hope the kids like it!

Pinspiration Sunday: Mustaches!

Well this isn’t necessarily something I found on Pinterest but because of Pinterest I’ve fallen in love with mustaches! There is just something so fun about putting a mustache on….anyways, I also love the concept of them incorporated with babies…or little men…and my son is such a little man! So for his first birthday we are planning a Mustache Bash! I looked online for invites but either couldn’t afford the really nice ones or they just weren’t what I was looking for. So I decided to make my own. Here’s a test run of it. I’m trying to find an affordable Billionaire Cricut cartridge so I can get the mustache cutout but in the meantime I used a stamp from inkadinkado. I bought printable paper from Honey Bunny Studio on Etsy. This Little Man collection was only $5 and included 10 different designs. The special font I got for FREE from dafont called Quinten Caps. The front shape was Cartoche from the Sweethearts Cricut cartridge at a 3 ½ size setting. For the inside, well that took some work. I am not savvy in the digital design world. I used Microsoft Word 2010 and somehow through inserting a 2 X 2 table and inserting a text block over the font and shifting to behind the words…I got what I got…I honestly can’t explain how. And you are most likely laughing at my stupidity, but I’m okay with that. In the end it all came together and I couldn’t be happier. I printed the pattern on an 8.5 X 11 cream cardstock. Flipped it over and printed the inside. The allowed me to make 2 invitations per sheet. Finally I just inked the edges. Here's what I finished with...