Valentines Day!

What's Valentine's Day without Valentine's cards for friends?

Well I got this idea off of pinterest; it is candy bar robots. After digging through my scrap pile I decided to make mine pink and red because I had a lot of that paper. These are going to be for my son's preschool class.

The Robots were a little more time consuming than I had hoped, especially when you have a 4 yr old and a 1 yr old helping you every step of the way. So since for Daycare I needed 20 valentines a piece I went a different route.

For my son I cut these airplanes out on the cricut and came up with a quick saying. Once again I just dug through my scrap paper, that's why all the different colors.

For my daughter I just stamped a heart on paper and cut it out, then with some pop dots I wrote her name. Super easy, plus she's only 1 so all she cares about is the candy.

What's Valentines without Decor?

I usually search and search for ideas for decorations, but now with pinterest it seems like you can find everything in one place. It's easier, but now that it's easier, I'm not the only one making things. This is an idea off there; I've seen it in different designs for many holidays.

This little pom-pom I seen a tutorial somewhere and then just got creative with what I already had on hand. I used a bucket I've had for a few years stuffed it with Styrofoam, glued some greenery on top so you wouldn't see the Styrofoam. Cut down a stick to the length I liked and poked it into the Styrofoam in the bucket and the pom-pom.

Here is another pom-pom type thing I was going to make into a topiary, but decided it looked just as good on a candle holder I found at the local thrift store and painted it red. For the pom-poms I found Styrofoam balls at the local $1 store and glued either 1 inch red circles cut out of felt, or roses made out of crate paper.

Not sure how well you can see this, but I cut hearts out on my cricut, than I put two together and sewed them on my sewing machine. I pulled the string a few inches between each set of hearts and keep on sewing. This is the end result. Just fan out the hearts to give them some dimension.

When I was at my mother-in-laws I was looking for a craft to do. After Christmas there is not much money left over for decorations, so I've never had a Valentines Wreath. I saw a picture on the Internet of a wreath made out of sticks. Being in the country I went to the backyard and started gluing sticks together, thinking when I was done I would head over to the saw and cut it in the shape of a heart. Not so much. The sticks weren't glued together enough and the saw had a hard time cutting through the greener twigs. So I cut a template out of cardboard instead, then cut each stick down and glued them one by one to fit on the cardboard. Not quite what I had in mind, but with a valentines bow it looked alright.

Pickles

Look at these beautiful homemade pickles. My husbands grandmother taught me to make her famous pickles a few years ago and every year since I have to make them because our family loves them.

This is the fresh dill a friend gave us growing wild in his backyard.
Aren't these cucumbers wonderful. I always try and grow my own pickling cucumbers, but in a pot in our backyard they just never seem to turn out. A friend grew these in their garden for me.

Halloween Costumes

I love to make my own costumes for my kids, besides cute costumes sale for like 50 bucks now a days. This year I just couldn't come up with the time from training and recovering from the marathon. These are there 2011 costumes. Wyatt was "super Why" for those of you that don't know who that is its a show on PBS that helps kids learn to read.

Madison was a cute little Pirate. I threw this together from scrap fabric of Wyatt's 2010 costume.
Wyatt was definitely the cutest pirate I ever saw in 2010.

Wyatt's 4th Birthday

Wyatt wanted a train Party. Well he wanted a Toy Story Party, but he had one last year so Train was his second option. We made the kids a choo choo train to pull behind the 4-wheeler, like they have at the carnivals. We made it out of a dolly we already had in our garage and a water barrel. We were going to make another until we realized how much dolly's are. The barrels are quite pricey to, however you can find them at recycle yards or buy them from people once they get holes. The train rides were definitely the highlight of the party, the kids couldn't have enough turns.

I made this train out cardboard boxes for the kids to play bean bag toss.
We also had the kids make choo choo trains out of candy.

For prizes I bought train hats, suckers, and choo choo whistles from oriental trading. They were quite cheaply priced. They shipping was the worse part.

Wyatt already being a fan of trains had a small train set that we set out for them to play with.

For lunch I made Pb and j a kids favorite and shaped them like trains. We also had other kid friendly foods like gold fish. jello, etc. Wyatt's grandpa made him a wooden train set for Christmas that we strung along the food for decor.

Cake Pops! not the best looking. I shaped them by hand, no fancy machine or pan.

I'm a huge cupcake fan for birthdays.

Maddy's 1st Birthday

Maddy is to little to decide what she wanted for her Birthday, so I decided for her. I went with the Owl theme because that seems to be the big thing right now.

I made this banner, and I put the one in ribbon so it could be removable, so if I wanted to sale it, or someone else in the family wanted to use it they could change the number.

These were the invitations to the party. The wings open (flapped out) and inside was the information.

I made this hat for her out of paper. It was my first one so it took me awhile, and it still ended up a little small.

Cupcakes in different flavors, sticking with the pink, black and gray theme.

My sister found this stand for $5 when she was working at Costco. I love it.

You can't really tell, but I sewed a one on a onesie in the same ribbon as her banner and hat. This picture is kinda scary.

For party favors I put some candy in baggies and tied them with ribbon an owl decal.

And bubbles..What one year old doesn't love bubbles?

I made her her own personal smash cake. As you can see one of the kids already put their finger in it.

It's a little over a month until her second Birthday, but she demands a Minnie Mouse party. She is obsessed with "Mim-me"

Baby Jordy's 1st Birthday

We got a late start planning my nephew Jordan's Birthday Party. I had this banner already made from a different year and we just added some Mickey Mouse and friend stuff to make it go with our Mickey theme.

You can't really see his shirt to well, but we put a cute little Mickey and a #1 on his shirt out of iron ons. I made him a cute little Mickey hat out of paper.

For me cupcakes are so much easier to decorate than cake. I was a cake decorate and know how to decorate them, but the stuff is way more expensive and this way each kid gets a decoration. I came up with Mickey hands and Mickey shilouttes. I found a pattern for the hands online and just played around with circles for the body until I found the shape I liked.

We had homemade root beer and lots of other fun stuff the kids really liked.