Girl Scout Water Bottle or Drink Container

I volunteered to help with my daughter's end of the year Girl Scout party months ago.....which is fine if the troop leader had heard the word "HELP".  Anyhoo.  Oh, and little did I know that it would be the weekend before my daughter's party but, I've come to learn to roll with the punches. And I try to remind myself I "like" doing party planning.  I just don't want to spend a lot of money since it is the weekend before my daughter's party.

 

This is what I came up with.  I used this same idea also for the Batman party I helped plan.  It is so inexpensive ($1 total if you already have the vinyl).  I thought I had white vinyl but I didn't so I had to buy it.  I was super excited to see Michael's selling Silhouette products now.  I bought the white vinyl there for $7.00 when I used a 50% off coupon.  There is more than enough for lots of other projects.  I then used the green water bottles I had bought earlier at the Dollar Tree.  I was going to use these for my husband's golf party but didn't get around to it.

 

Ok, so long story short.  I cut the white vinyl with my Silhouette and put it on the aluminum water bottles.  I then topped it off with a brown and white polka dotted ribbon just to make it cuter for presentation and because they will now be officially be Brownies and no longer Daisy's. My little girl is getting so BIG!

Batman Birthday Party!

Holy Batman, I'm tired.  I've been through 4 parties in one month and I'm sick of parties.  Finally, they are over which is always bitter sweet.   So much planning and then it is over.  Here is our friends Batman party that I planned.  This was the tablescape.

 

 Here are the chocolate batman suckers....which were a big hit.  I made the sucker holder out of a $2.99 plaque from Hobby Lobby by drilling holes into it that were a tiny bit smaller than the sucker sticks so they would stand up nice and straight.  I then pained the board with black craft paint.  Voila, an instant center piece.
 

 Personalized water bottles and favor bags.  I strongly suggest printing at your local printing shop if you just have an ok printer.  For the favor bags I designed them using my Silhouette machine and printed them at Staples.  Came back home and cut them out.  The whole sheet cost me 50¢.

Here are the water bottle bottles.  I used regular Silhouette vinyl and bought the batman logo from the Silhouette store, downloaded the batman font and added each child's name in the middle, used transfer tape and added them to the water bottle. I tried doing these without the transfer tape but they looked bad and all crooked.  The water bottles I found at the Dollar Tree. You can't go wrong with $1 Personalized Batman Water Bottle.
 

Personalized water bottle labels with black straws I found at Michaels.

 

Pop labels that were so cute!  I even made sure to put the "POP" to the outside so when you are taking a drink that is what you see.  These were also designed in Silhouette. 

 

Super hero poster I designed in Picmonkey.  Took for.ev.er!  Probably because I did it completely different than the directions this lady so kindly tried to explain but it got done none the less.  Super cheap statement piece.  The more parties I have the more statement pieces I try to have because the little time consuming projects take up SO MUCH TIME! This was super cheap too ($3.50 for an engineer print at Staples).  It's my new go too item for parties.

 

Invite the mom sent via email. Designed it in Picmonkey.  Angela, have I ever told you, "thank you, for introducing the two of us?" 

Dog Birthday Pictures!

I made this as a trial run for a bigger project that I'm doing for a birthday party.  It turned out great!  I was going to add a border around the edge but was too lazy to go back and have another one printed.  This was the first time I created a vector image (an image you can get really big or really small without losing quality) using Inkscape.  I thought that this silhouette of a Weimaraner really resembled the birthday dog.  I printed it at Staples using the engineer print and it cost only $3.59 and it's huge (24 x 36).  So, if you want something cheap but has big impact this is for you.  Just remember to use a vector image or it will look really pixelated and you will NOT like it.

 

Look at that adorable birthday card another party guest made.  I think that is a picture of their Weim and his paws on the card.   So cute! 

Can you believe I didn't get a good picture of the birthday girl?  But, I did snap this one of her with her new birthday bone!

 

 

 

Dog Birthday!

Our dear friends wanted to celebrate their dog's first birthday.....and who wouldn't? So, we helped out and made some of the party goods. I thought that was the least we could do since we did tag along when they took her home for the first time.  Here is the cake I made using the recipe below.  Super easy and I modified it to work with the stuff I already had in the kitchen cabinet. Easy peasy.

 

2-½ cups water
½ cup canned pumpkin
1 egg (slightly beaten)
½ teaspoon vanilla extract
¼ cup peanut butter (chunky)
3-½ cups whole wheat flour
½ cup oats
1 tablespoon baking powder
½ teaspoon cinnamon

Directions:
Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a medium bowl, thoroughly mix water, pumpkin, egg, vanilla, and peanut butter. In a large bowl, combine flour, oats, baking powder, nutmeg, and cinnamon. Mix wet and dry ingredients together and stir well. Spoon into a greased mini-muffin pan, making sure each cup is filled completely and piled high. Bake for 35 to 40 minutes or until firm (but not too brown).
Cool completely and store in an open container or paper bag in the refrigerator. I used my daughter's first birthday cake pan (which I think is a 6 inch round) and it made two of those.

 

 I also made a little cake stand.  Guess how much?  Less than two bucks.  The plate is from Walmart less than $1....I think 86¢ to be exact and $1 candle stick from the Dollar Tree.  I spray painted it with some spray paint I already had and hot glued it on the plate. 

 

Here's the invite.  Also so easy to make on the computer. She didn't want anything too formal so she just emailed it to the party goers. Personally, I would have printed those dudes out and mailed'em off. With matching envelope liners, of course. Stay tuned for pictures of the actual party.  I loved helping out because this makes it so easy for my own doggies party coming up in April.  Hard work is already done!

Batman Party Inspiration

 

I'm helping with a batman party.  Here is the inspiration.  I HOPE to have all of this at the party.

 

This is for you Heather.....let me know if you like it.

From left to right:
Batwiches  - Easy sandwiches cut with batman cookie cutter you can buy on Ebay.
Cheetos cones   - Easy way to hold chips.  Print off comic book pages online if you don't have any.
Hot dogs with comic holders  - Again print off comic book pages and hand fold the corners.
Joker Juice - Afix batman sign to punch with paper or vinyl.  I'll probably use vinyl since the paper bleeds if it gets moisture on it.
Pop - Print off POP paper and wrap around cans. Easy way to jazz up regular o'l cans.
Pow, Bam, Wow, Banner
Gift Bags - Cheap bags you can buy at Michael's and afix batman logo too.  Great way to incorporate girls at the party too.
Birthday Boy shirt - You can freezer paper stencil this or use iron on vinyl with Silhouette cutter.
Mom shirt - You can freezer paper stencil this or use iron on vinyl with Silhouette cutter.

Chocolate Suckers - Buy mold off of Ebay for statement piece on table. 
Birthday Cake Topper - Easy way to jazz up a store bought plain cake.
Bat Streamer - Cute, party city.
Pow Signs - Have to have some comic words.
Batman Plates, cups, napkins - Easy, Walmart.
Gift Table with Batman balloon - Love to have a gift table. You can buy the balloon at Partycity.  Kind of pricey I think but it makes a statement.
Water Bottle Labels - Hopefully will be able to recreate these with Gimp (a free editing program) or you can always buy them from etsy.com
Banner - Will try and recreat using Silhouette.  But, I've never made one that elaborate before.
Party Favor (Water Bottle with Batman Logo)  - Made by me with Dollar Tree water bottle.  I used my Silhouette to cut out batman logo and type birthday boy's name in the center.  I didn't use permanent vinyl so they will have to be hand washed.

Girl Scout Door Hanger - For Cookie Sales

My sweet little girl and her Daddy went to sell Girl Scout cookies.  Did I think that they would come back having sold 106 boxes? Uh no. He travels....a lot.  So, I knew I would be the one having to deliver all 106 boxes.  Great.  With my toddler this would surely be fun.  So I tried to have everything orderly so we could be as proficient as possible. One thing I did make that I thought would help our delivery was make these little "we missed you" door hangers. They were easy and simple enough. Last thing I wanted to do was have to do this outing more than once.  But in the end I was over the moon she was happy that she had sold all the boxes, made the multiple sales, and had the interaction with adults to help her speaking abilities. 

We also made thank you notes that I thought were adorable.  We saw this version of the idea here. Again, with the same theme of proficiency I added a place for the buyer's name and amount owed. I used a thin tip Sharpie to fill it in. I left space on the left side to hole punch so it could be threaded though the ribbon for the boxes that were together. This did not work out. The cards were too bulky for the tied boxes. Thankfully, the thank you note slipped easily between the ribbon.  Orders that had four or more boxes were put into gift bags. The thank you note did get tied to the ribbon and those looked cute.

 

 

 

100th Day of School Shirt

I can't believe it is our second year celebrating the 100th day of school.  My baby is getting so BIG! She thinks she is a teenager at the age of 6.....just look at her posing.  I think this is her model pose??? 

 

Last year I did this for her Kindergarten's100th day. But this year we did freezer paper stenciling. I got the idea from here. It is really easy if you have a cutting machine (Silhouette is what I have). It makes it easy and quick. If not you can do it the old fashioned way with an exacto knife.

Cut stencil using Silhouette machine or with exacto knife. 

  

Iron paper on the inside of the shirt. This is to keep any paint from bleeding through. 

 

Iron on stencil to the right side (shiny side down).

 

 

 Paint all the tally marks.  I did two coats because they were dark colors.  The paint bleed through a tiny bit on the red and one of the other colors but it was only really noticeable to me.  I explain the whole freezer paper stenciling a little better on this post.

 

Voila! Custom 100th day shirt!