Bliss & Miscellaneous

I’m already starting to think about Baby E’s 2nd birthday despite it being FOUR months away. Mostly, I don’t want it to get lost in the new baby shuffle mid-April. I’m afraid that by the time I get the whole “two babies” thing under control it’ll be the week before his birthday and I won’t have anything done.

I already decided that I like these colors:

Which incidentally are the same ones that I used for his first birthday last year (hey, at least I’m consistent if not original). Regardless, picking the colors at least allows me to buy things like balloons and paper goods (like stripy straws – just because I love them).

I haven’t decided on a theme (which means I’ll probably end up with “birthday” being the theme again) but there are a couple that I like that go with these colors…either Monsters or Dinosaurs.

I’m definitely not into having a specific-character themed party but I’m leaning towards Monsters because right now E’s favorite characters on Sesame Street are “Cookie” & “Melmo” and we read the book Tickle Monster nearly every night. Perhaps a “Monster Cookie” party – featuring generic monstery creatures and a cookie bar for dessert (since last year E totally ignored his cake for the cookies).

Here’s as far as I’ve gotten so far on Pinterest…there are a lot of fun printables for a Monster Party (monster mouths, and those ad1orable PlayDoh Monster favors), plus look how cute that monster cake is!

More to come soon…better get to designing his invitation!

I recently hosted a Mom’s Night Out Holiday party. Since it started at 7:00 I figured most people would have eaten dinner but wanted to have a little something for my guests to snack on.

What’s better for a holiday party than
hot cocoa & cookies?

Initially I thought I’d do basic powdered hot cocoa but while shopping at Homegoods I happened to run across some packages of hot-cocoa-on-a-stick. I hadn’t seen it before but thought it would make it a little easier for people than having to measure and scoop. I’m not sure where else these would be carried but TomKat Studio recently had a recipe if you’d like to make your own.

Since all the flavors looked the same I created some different colored flags to let people know what flavor they were getting.

When it came to cups, I realized normal paper cups wouldn’t do for hot cocoa but when I looked for disposable coffee cups in a small quantity, sadly all I could find were some generic Dixie cups.

This didn’t really seem to be too festive.

So I created a cup wrapper template and found some fun holiday paper (I used scrapbook paper but wrapping paper would be fun too). I also created a little label inspired one I’d seen on pinterest (which sadly the website for doesn’t exist anymore).

Hot milk was available in an insulated pump pot and I provided some fun toppings for people including marshmallows, mini chocolate chips, whipped cream, vanilla filled pirouettes and sprinkles (crushed peppermint and caramel would be good additions also).

I had a few treats to go along with the cocoa.

Gingerbread Cookies

Sugar Cookies

 Store-bought truffles & cheescake bites (which I just popped into some mini cupcake wrappers) and peanut butter blossum cookies.

I also made the water bottles a little more festive with some quick & easy bottle wraps.

If you’d like to make your own download the FREE printables below!

(Click the image to open the PDF)

Merry Christmas!

This past weekend was my mother’s birthday celebration. Since the party was out of town
I couldn’t do much to decorate, so I decided to make a few things small things
including placecards, favor boxes and a banner for her cake.

BEST of ALL…
I’m sharing the files so you can make some too!

(Links at the bottom of this post)

I choose pink and gold because it was a big birthday and I thought it would be fun to do something kind of girly too.
I wrapped her present to match.

We also made her a memory book. We called it her “Third Twentieth” birthday!

Pop-up Placecards

Pillowbox favors with almond Hershey Kisses

For her cake we got an un-decorated store-bought cake and added fun sprinkles and a banner (I like easy projects).

I love the cake banner! The long taper candles were from Party City.

 Want to make your own??

I used my Silhouette Cameo eletronic cutter for everything, including the writing which was created by using the metallic pens.

If you don’t have a cutter you can still print the files and cut them out – just remember the dotted lines are score & fold lines (so don’t cut those).

PINK & GOLD BIRTHDAY PARTY SET

DOWNLOAD SVG   |   DOWNLOAD PDF

PILLOWBOX FAVOR BOXES
(I could fit 4 of these on a 12″x12″ piece of scrapbook paper – you’ll have to scale the file down to fit)

DOWNLOAD SVG   |   DOWNLOAD PDF