Ducky Birthday Party

Perhaps you have noticed that I have scaled way back on my posting. I realized near the end of last year that this blog, and all the cute craftiness that went with it, were taking my focus away from where it should be.  I was becoming guilty of craftiness for craftiness' sake, something I said here that I've always disliked.  Not only does it take away focus from my family and other priorities, it's also expensive!  So, things got a bit sparse while I was busy.

But, I don't want the blog to disappear, so I decided I'm going to occasionally write some posts about parties and projects that I did before I started this blog.  There's no law that says my projects have to have been done right before I blog them, right?  :)  Plus, I have a few projects coming up that I'm doing because I want to or need to, rather than as fodder for the blog, so I'll be posting a bit more often.

The party I'm posting today was my youngest's 2 year old birthday party (he just turned 5...).  It's probably the cutest party I've ever thrown.

At the time, he was WAY into ducks.  Duck books, duck toys, duck songs, he loved it all.  So, what better party theme than rubber ducks?

The centerpiece of it all was this cute duck cake.  I modified this tutorial from Betty Crocker to make it.  

I made a bunch of cute garlands by punching out blue and yellow circles with a punch and then sewing them together on my sewing machine.  Seriously the fastest thing ever.  I just pedal-to-the-metal-ed it with my machine pedal and stuck a new circle under the presser foot each time the previous circle moved through.  

I also picked up a bunch of cheap and cute rubber duckies to sit around as decoration.  My little guy has thoroughly enjoyed having a bath full of duckies ever since.  :)

The blue punch (I think it was Blue Raspberry Kool-Aid) was so cute with little duckies floating in it!  And, I was so excited to find out that Target's store brand's generic "goldfish" crackers looked like little ducks!  

The birthday boy and his guests were all just toddlers, so the entertainment was low-key.  I gathered every duck book I could get my hands on, from our bookshelves and the local library.  I read them all a story, and then let them peruse their own books.  

And, in a slightly crazy move, I actually let them all play with rubber ducks in an actual bathtub.  I mean, how CUTE is this rubber duck bathtub?!  I put a plastic tablecloth underneath and only an inch or two of water in it, and it actually turned out fine.  No spills.  

 

 It was such a fun party.  Now if only my little guy was still that little!  :)

These boy party ideas were also featured on Spaceships and Laser Beams.

Flower Garden Baby Shower

I have a lot of friends who are having their first babies, so I'm throwing a lot of baby showers lately. This is my latest baby shower, a flower garden baby shower!

Having all boys, I enjoy getting to do girly stuff now and then, so this floral baby shower for a sweet baby girl was a lot of fun.

Here's the food table:

My favorite part of the food were these hydrangea cupcakes.  (Tutorial from Glorious Treats.)

(Picture by TiffanyB Photography)

I also tried out these flower pot cookies.  They didn't turn out like I wanted (they don't look much like the original), but after untold hours of working on them, I was going to serve them no matter how ugly they were. Sigh...  I need to work on my piping skills.

I should have started them more in advance than I did.  Then I would have had time for the frosting to set better so they could actually have stems, rather than just lean against the picks.  Oh well, they're kinda cute anyway, if you don't know what they're supposed to look like.

And, of course, we had various fruits and veggies and dips.  I got all those cute flower bowls and plates for free from Kohl's and JCPenney.  Do you guys get those $10 off $10 coupons from JCPenney and Kohl's?  I do, but I rarely shop at those stores, so rather than getting $10 off what I might normally buy, I just find things I like and get them for free.  I've gotten pretty good at finding just the right things to come right in at $10.  :)

And, like I always seem to do, I served lemonade to drink.  It's easy, not fussy, and won't stain my carpet if someone spills.  :)  This time around, though, the lemonade came with a fun flower straw!  (Tutorial from Martha Stewart.)

I've made the Martha Stewart tissue poms before, but this time I made them smaller and turned them into a fun garland.

(Picture by TiffanyB Photography)

(Picture by TiffanyB Photography)

I liked my pink pom-pom flower garland so much that I kept it up for several days after the party.  I couldn't quite bear to take it down, it was so cute.  :)

And, of course, you gotta have flowers at a floral-themed Party!  I loved having an excuse to buy myself flowers.  :)

Peach Jam

I just canned for the very first time ever! I watched my Mom do it when I was a kid, even helped her sometimes. But, this time I did it all by myself (okay, I called home a few times). :)

I was fortunate enough to get a box of yummy Palisade Peaches.  I made some pies, but I decided to use the rest to make some peach jam.

The peaches looked yummy and juicy after I blanched/peeled them.  

Look, I'm canning!  :)

It was rather satisfying to see all those amber-colored jars lined up on the counter.

I used the Ball Blue Book recipe for peach jam:

(I doubled the below recipe so I could use pint jars rather than half-pints)

1 quart finely chopped, pitted/cored, peeled peaches or pears

7 1/2 cups sugar

1/4 cup lemon juice

1 pouch liquid pectin

Combine fruit, sugar, and lemon juice in a large saucepot.  Bring slowly to a boil, stirring until sugar dissolves. Stir in liquid pectin.  Return to a rolling boil.  Boil hard 1 minute, stirring constantly.  Remove from heat.  Skim foam if necessary.  Ladle hot jam into hot jars, leaving 1/4-inch headspace.  Adjust two-piece caps.  Process 10 minutes in a boiling-water canner.

Harry Potter Party

I hope everyone had a fabulous Fourth of July!  Now that we're done celebrating, it's time to get down to business...  Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2, is being released in only 10 days.  :) 

I am a serious Harry Potter fan.  I started reading the books in my early 20s and fell in love.  My boys have caught the bug, too.  One of my 8 year olds has read all of the books, the earlier books at least 5 times each.  He has bought himself his own copies of many of the books so he doesn't have to share them and can read them as often as he likes.  The older boys have even taught the 3 year old some spells.  There's not much cuter than a pudgy little boy pointing a tinker toy at you and shouting, "Ex-pewo-ee-armus!"  That's Expelliarumus, for those of you who don't read 3-year-old.  :) 

So, of course, our family enjoys having Harry Potter fun whenever we can.  We had two Harry Potter parties in the last year.  First, for the movie release back in November, and then this spring for my twins' birthday party.  The movie party was for the adults (and teenagers) who were going to the midnight release showings. 

Since some of you are probably planning movie release parties of your own, I'll show you what I did for my last movie release party.  (I'm tweaking an old post I wrote about it on my family blog before I became a craft blogger.  So, the pictures are less than stellar, and I'm lacking a few sources.  If anyone recognizes a source, give me a shout-out and I'll post it.) 

I sent out invitations that looked like the letters Hogwarts sends out to let kids know they've been accepted. I even had Harry Potter style fonts (Lumos and Harry P from dafont.com).  (Minerva McGonagall's signature from The Leaky Cauldron)

 

I had a fun time decorating and doing the food for the party. I made 36 Gryffindor scarves out of gold and maroon fleece.  I sewed together alternating strips of gold and maroon until it was long enough to be a scarf, then cut in the opposite direction to make striped scarves.  It was a fair amount of work, but much less than if I'd sewn a million little squares together.  We had enough no-shows from the party that I had left overs to give out as party favors at the birthday party the next spring.

I turned joke glasses into Harry Potter glasses by removing the nose and cutting off the eyebrows from the glasses.  Way cheaper (at around $2 for 12) than ordering similar Harry Potter glasses from a party store.

I made house banners out of felt and iron-ons made from graphics I found online.

I even turned my porch into Platform 9 3/4, with a red brick "wall" made from felt hanging from a shower curtain rod over my doorway.  (Idea for the wall from Martha Shmartha.)

I was pleased with the fun food I came up with.

I made pumpkin pasties, which turned out really, really yummy.  I just mixed canned pumpkin with some sugar, nutmeg, and allspice.  I made my favorite pie crust and cut it into circles.  I put a dollop of pie filling inside, folded the circles in half and crimped the edges.  I baked them about 10 minutes at 350, I think--it's been awhile and I didn't think to write that down.  Ooops.  :)  I made a glaze of powdered sugar and water and brushed it on after they'd cooled. 

I found labels online (which I've sadly lost the link for, so I can't credit the designer.  If anyone recognizes them, let me know!  *EDIT* They are available here.) for butterbeer from The Three Broomsticks, and The Hog's Head Tavern, that I printed off and taped to IBC cream soda:

We had Drooble's Best Blowing Gum, Pretzel and Licorice wands, Dumbledore's lemon drops, and Chocolate Frogs (which I made from melted chocolate chips with a frog mold I bought at Hobby Lobby).  And, we had Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, which were really Jelly Belly's Bean Boozled beans, so they really were every flavor, including Baby Wipes and Centipede.  I was most excited about the Fizzing Whizbees, which were the new Fizzl'd Fruits Skittles, which have a Pop-Rock-like powder coating on them, so they actually fizz. 

The decorations were mostly the banners and Harry Potter movies and books (as well as the Entertainment Weekly with the Harry Potter cover) displayed around the house.  But, I did add this cute little sign and this owl, which is actually a Christmas decoration I found at Target.  And, we had a House Cup, filled with Gringott's Gold (ie, chocolate coins) to go to the winning team in the Harry Potter Trivia Challenge (Gryffindor won, which I thought was appropriate). 

I also printed out some movie posters, including the fun Undesirable No. 1 posters you could make on the movie's website, with my party guests' faces in them.  And, I bought a cheap Halloween broom and had it float (hang from fishing line) in the living room next to a Broom Parking sign. 

After the food and fun, we headed to the movie theater for the midnight showing. 

To adapt it for a kids' party, I pretty much added some kid-friendly games and made a birthday cake instead of some of the other food I'd made for the first party.  I reused most of the decorations.  It made for a pretty easy home birthday party!

I made a simple sheet cake with a lightning bolt on top for the birthday cake at our Harry Potter Birthday Party.  It wasn't very well decorated, but it was a busy weekend and I ran out of steam.  You can still see the crumb coat (I ran out of frosting and decided the kids wouldn't care.)

We had Butterbeers again.  The kids had never heard of cream soda.  Weird. 

The treat bags.  I printed the Harry Potter logo on plain lunch sacks.  Inside were Harry Potter silly bandz, Harry Potter stickers, HP glasses, and candy of their choosing from the candy jars by the cake.  They also each got a homemade (leftover from the other party) Gryffindor scarf. 

No, that's not a "flying ring" taped to my wall.  It's an Indoor Quidditch hoop!  They had to get 3 quaffles (nerf balls) through the hoop. 

We also played "Pin the Scar on Harry."  And, the entrance activity (as we waited for everyone to arrive) was to draw pictures of Hogwarts.  (Don't laugh at my drawing ability, or lack thereof!  :) Drawing is NOT one of my talents.)

So, there you go, my two Harry Potter parties.  I won't be throwing a Harry Potter party this year, since we've got other things going on this month, but you can bet I'll be seeing the movie on opening day!  How about the rest of you Harry Potter fans?  Are you throwing midnight release parties? 

These boy party ideas were also featured on Spaceships and Laser Beams.

Book Club: The Devil in the White City

Have you read The Devil in the White City? My book club read it this month and I thought it was great. Very interesting, especially if you're at all interested in history.

It was my turn to host this month, so I was in charge of the treats (can't have a book club without yummy food to eat, right?). Usually we try to make the treats have something to do with the book we read, if we can at all manage it (some are harder than others). This book lended itself perfectly to a fun food theme. Since the book is all about happenings at the 1893 Chicago World's Fair, of course I had to make some Fair Food!

Here's the spread.  It was a low-key affair, so no real decorations, but I did print out a few pictures of the fair to display on the table. 

I made homemade funnel cakes:

Lemonade:

Gotta have some cotton candy!

And, watermelon:

Plus, we had some soft pretzels (not homemade, just SuperPretzels).

I did make some homemade CrackerJack, though.  And, I used these adorable labels from Tried and True. Love them!

It was a fun night of book discussion, and a lot of fun putting together all the fun fair food!