A Party for a Birthday Girl!

It was a busy weekend in our household as we celebrated a milestone birthday with our little girl. When it comes to parties I am in the camp of people who like to make the decorations as opposed to buying them. This always seems like a good idea when I'm still in the planning stage, but once it gets to the executing stage I'm usually cursing myself for not buying all the party supplies.

The original party theme was a fairy garden, but it kinda turned into a big giant, pretty girly party...with some fairy and garden accents. I had other decorations I had made but didn't put out because as 1am was rolling around and I was taping streamers to the ceiling I thought just maybe I had enough decorations going on.

From the pictures you can't really get the feel of how everything looked but I have to say, this was probably my favourite party to have planned and decorated for. I pitched the idea of leaving some of the decorations up forever but Mr Bee wasn't going for that one.

1 &3. Paper Pom-Poms. I'm sure you've seen these on Pinterest. They look awesome, right? I was cursing Martha Stewart and the bedazzled horse she rode in on while I was making these. Did you know tissue paper is finicky? And did you know that having to separate 20 layers of it, while it's tied together is even more finicky? Well it is! I used this tutorial to make mine: http://imperfectlybeautifulms.blogspot.ca/2009/07/how-to-make-tissue-paper-pom-poms.html

*Note, I didn't have floral wire and was too lazy to go buy some, so I used string and it worked fine.I also found that tying a string for hanging before you fluffed it was plenty easier.

2. A basic vanilla cake that I made at the last minute and frosted with whipped vanilla frosting (mixed with purple food colouring) and sprinkles. The Birthday Girl made a big mess of this!

4. For Halloween I made bats that had bent wings so it looked like they were flying; I got the idea for the butterflies from that. I simply drew some butterflies onto scrapbook paper, cut them out, taped to the wall, and bent up the wings.

5. Plastic grass/flower mats from the Dollarstore for $2 each!

6. Originally, I had planned to cover my entire ceiling in streamers, all gathering to a balloon cluster in the middle. But, as 1am rolled around and I was climbing up and down a step-ladder, ripping tape, and side-stepping kids who both woke up (ugh!)...well, I decided to scrap the full-ceiling and simply do sections. And I actually like it better this way! I think it would have been too cluttered with a full ceiling. For the balloons, I used slip-knots to tie most of them together and then push pins to attach the necks of other ones directly to the ceiling (that way I could cover the tape marks from mounting the streamers)

7. The night before the party I decided to make a banner. My printer decided that same evening to run out of ink. Awesome! Not to be deterred, I simply cut flowers out of scrapbook paper, smaller white circles out of plain white paper, and then wrote "Happy Birthday" in a Word document in the font I liked. I wrote the letters onto the circles free-hand and then went over it in Sharpie. I love the way it turned out!

8. Hanging paper circles from the party store ($3), sheer curtains borrowed from my Mama, and flower garlands from the Dollarstore added just the right amount of whimsy.

9. There were 5 or so fairies around the house. They are just drawn onto a solid-coloured scrapbook paper and cut out. Simple!

It was the perfect party for a perfect little girl!

Meatball Soup

My husband had a wisdom tooth yanked a few days ago, so I needed to come up with some meal ideas for the week that didn't involve a lot of chewing. Obviously, soup is the perfect solution to that. And it just so happens I have enough homemade chicken stock in my freezer to open my own restaurant. Score.

So, in looking around Pinterest for some new recipe ideas I came across this soup: http://www.kitchenmeetsgirl.com/main-dishes/italian-meatball-soup-2/

To say I was skeptical was a bit of an understatement. For some reason, in my mind, meatballs and soup were not exactly to foods that go together. But I decided to give it a try.

You can find the recipe in the link above, but there were a few things I did differently.

I didn't add carrots because, well, I forgot to buy any...and anyway, I think carrots would have been weird with the rest of the soup.

I didn't follow the meatball recipe posted in the blog. I had meatballs frozen from the last time I made them and they worked perfectly with this soup.

I used sea shell pasta (I'm pretty sure that's not what it's actually called) because that's what I had.

And, I cooked the pasta in a different pot and then added it to the soup once it was ready to be served. I find that if you cook the pasta in the actual soup it sucks out a lot of flavour and doesn't reheat well. That's also a good note for when freezing soup, I usually omit the pasta when freezing and add it (cooked) once the soup is thawed.

But anyway, this soup was delicious. My husband ate two or three bowls and even my toddler, who has developed a picky eating habit lately, devoured it. This is definitely one for the recipe box. And it was pretty easy/cheap to make, too. So, that's a double win in my book!

One Little Pumpkin Sitting in The Rain

Monogrammed pumpkins. A simple and easy alternative to the traditional carved pumpkin!

Halloween: DIY Bloody Hand prints

Someone, PLEASE save me from the madhouse I live in!

Door knocker from Le Dollar Store

My husband gave me the weirdest look when I began making these handprints. And I was all, "what? You don't think these bloody handprints perfectly complement the rest of our house?" Then, as I was applying them to our front door (while wearing my pajamas, no less) our new neighbours and their kids happened to walk by. I'm great at first impressions...nothing says "I'm a normal, sane neighbour" like bloody handprints!

But you can't tell me these don't look cool! And the best part is that they are deceptively easy to make.

All you need are:

White school glue
Red paint
Plastic wrap or a ziploc bag
A hand

You just mix red paint into the white glue until you get your desired blood colour. Then, weigh down your plastic wrap or ziploc bag (I used a ziploc bag because it was thicker and all I had). Then, dip your hand in the blood mixture (or spread it on with a spoon) and press your hand onto the plastic wrap.

For a thinner/paler handprint (like the bottom one in my picture) only do one thin layer. For a thicker print you can spread more "blood" on your hand or do a second/third layer after the first has dried.

Once these are dry you peel them off the plastic wrap, being careful not to tear them. I actually ripped off a finger or two on my thin one but it was easily repairable by wetting it with a tiny bit of water.

To attach these to my window I pressed them on and then used my finger and a bit of water to wet the edges. These should just peel off when you're tired of them. Or you could leave them up forever and make your neighbours really question your sanity.

For extra ghoulishness you can write out cheery phrases like, "help me", "save me", "beware", or "we have two kids...enter at your own risk". Some drippy blood splatters are the perfect final touch, too.

The best part about these are that since I put them up we've had no door-to-door people pay us any visits. Coincidence? I think not.

Halloween!

Halloween is one of my favourite holidays, and not just because of all the candy. It's one of the few holidays where I feel I can really go crazy with my decorating and there are just so many options for what you can do.

The past few days I've started decorating the inside of our house with Toddler Bee and today we also started on decorating the outside (that can be a post for another day, I think).

So, without further ado, here are some pictures of our Halloween decorations so far!

White streamers and black paper cut-outs make for a very nice Mummy door!

Streamers for the hair, tape for the mouth, and paper plates for the eyes! This is Frankendoor!

Little mice are scurrying about our home...

These potions are my favourite part of our decorations. I collected jars in different sizes and then made my own labels. We have:

 -a Love Potion, which contains red glitter, dried flower petals, a lock of (fake) hair, a name on a piece of paper, nail clippings, and some seeds.

-Heartbreak Teardrops, which are actually a small bottle of pina colada mix.

-Pearls of wisdom, which re foam balls painted silver with glitter

-Sleeping Draught, which is simply some sprigs of rosemary, some coffee grounds in water, a branch of thorns from our rose bush, and some other random plants.

-Moonseed Mixture is a collection of whatever seeds I could find.

-And, Angels Trumpet Draught, which is made from more diluted coffee, garlic and onion peels, rose of Sharon seedpods, thorn branches, and some other random plants.

The longer they sit to fester, the better they look!

Then, I simply hot glued coffee filters onto the lids, wrapped with twine, and melted some crayons in spots to make a wax seal. 

For the rest of the display:

Candles: I held a crayon in the flame from a lighter and let it drip onto a candle (that's my bloody red one). For the other, I lit a brown candle and poured the wax over (much easier)

The cobwebs are made using a hot glue gun. You just let it heat up, add small dots of glue to spots and trail the residual "glue hair" along your props.

The other props are flowers from my garden, some rosemary, pine needles I collected and tied together, and  some fake black roses.

More and more lately it seems people don't really decorate for the holidays, which is baffling to me because it makes things so much more FUN! There are several ways to decorate for Halloween, on the cheap, too and decorations are easy to make! Happy Halloweening!

DIY Sheriff Woody Costume

Halloween is slowly approaching and that means it's time to start thinking about what your little one(s) are going to dress as for trick or treating. After much debate, Toddler Bee has decided he wants to be Sheriff Woody from one of his favourite movies, Toy Story. Awesome! It's a pretty simple costume and I'm sure it will be easy to find one.

So, we headed out to some stores to look for a Woody costume. Walmart was the only store that had one and it was $25 for a one-piece jumpsuit with hat. What the what?! I was standing there looking at this costume and thinking, "I could totally make that, and for a heck of a lot cheaper." And so the idea was born!

I'm a pretty crafty person but sewing is not at all my area of expertise. So, I wanted to make this as simple as possible.

I braved my local thrift store and happened to find the perfect yellow long-sleeve shirt for $4. Bargain.

After that, I bought a roll of white foam from the dollarstore for $1.50.

And, the dollarstore even had cowboy hats! I've never seen them there before, so it must have been a sign. The hat cost $2.

The rest of supplies I had at home: a red Sharpie, brown paint, gold paint, black sharpie, a straight edge, red paint, yellow paint, hot glue gun, patience. (Ok, so I was lacking a little on that last one)

The Steps:

I started by drawing red lines on the shirt to make it match Woody's (this is where you use your red Sharpie and straight edge).

Then, I cut two vest shapes from the white foam and drew on cowprint with a black Sharpie. The vest was hot glued onto the shirt.

Out of my white foam I made: the belt, belt buckle, and gun holster. I drew my bull's head onto a piece of foam, cut it out and glued it onto the oval for the buckle. I made a ribbon for the front of the holster out of the foam, too.

Make a badge out of your foam, paint it gold and write "Sheriff Woody" on it. That gets glued onto the vest.

Then, I decided to be ambitious and make boots. I grabbed my son's winter boots and wrapped them in white foam. It was a little tricky to get the boots totally wrapped but by this point I wasn't worried about perfection and didn't think he would really care if some blue sole was showing through. This part was a bit like assembling a puzzle; I had to cut, turn, shape and glue the pieces down to make it resemble a boot. But, mainly, I cut a piece long and tall enough to wrap around the boot just above the toe, made a semi-circle for the toe and filled in the bottom parts with more foam (confusing, no?). Then, I painted it brown, made some spurs from foam and cardboard and glued those on, too. None of the foam is actually glued to the boot, so these won't be forever cowboy boots.

Now, all that's left is to tie a red bandanna around his neck and add a string and loop to his back for the pull-string.

I am quite please with the outcome of this, especially since it's my first foray into costume making and it only cost about $8!

I am in LOVE: Caramel Apple Cheesecake

Fall is officially on my mind these days and Mother Nature must be in a similar frame of mind because today was cool with a distinct crispness in the air that always seems to accompany autumn. It was also rainy for  a good portion of the day, so it seemed like the perfect time to try out a new recipe. Caramel apple cheesecake seemed like the perfect way to bring fall into the house and make my belly happy.

So, I turned to this recipe: http://www.closetcooking.com/2011/12/caramel-apple-cheesecake-bars.html

Seriously, you can gain 10lbs just from looking at the pictures.

The recipe seemed pretty involved and I was sure I was going to be slaving over this for hours. Not so! It actually came together pretty quickly and simply. I used margarine instead of butter, quick oats instead of old fashioned, and didn't at all follow the recipe for the caramel sauce...but it was still amazing. Like, eyes rolling back in your head amazing. I had to fight the urge to squirrel this away from the family and eat it all...with my hands.

I was a little unclear on whether or not I had to let this set overnight, but I figured that since it's baked I need not worry about that and instead let it cool in the fridge and then poured the hot caramel on it. In the words of my toddler, it was "dee-wicious". I am actually in love with this dessert. The bottom is like a shortbread cookie, the middle is delicious cheesecake, and the top is like an apple crisp. That is pretty much three desserts in one bar. What is not to love?! It may seem like it makes a fairly small quantity but these are so rich that you won't want to eat a huge piece. I think I have about 8 or 9 left in the pan and we ate two generous servings after dinner.

Seriously, go make this. Like, now.