Leave No Child Inside

Leave No Child Inside
Just another beautiful day!

Saturday, February 25, 2012

HOW TO: DIY Homemade 60th Birthday Invitations for mom

Without giving to many details away (come on I run a business here!). Here are the 60th Birthday party invitations I made for my mom! I used a couple different fonts (including a 60's font), hard card stock and creative computer skills to make these, print and cut them out. After printing them I added glitter, and a matted it with a light pink paper, and ribbon.

This and a computer are the only supplies I used! I can make custom creative invitations for less than a $2 each.

Friday, February 24, 2012

HOW TO: DIY Yo Gabba Gabba Birthday decorations

This is a series of photos of items I made from paper and other craft materials for my daughters 3rd Birthday party. She loves Yo Gabba Gabba, so that was the theme! I used images I got off the Internet and I used a font similar to that of YGG called "yahoo" and believe it or not I completely designed the radio from YGG by myself as there was not an image available anywhere that I could use. So I used a series of circles, squares and the best color matches on my computer to make it and it turned out great!! Enjoy!! 


This was a pennet banner I made that said Happy Birthday. We also used similar colored paper to make a bunch of rainbow paper chains and used that to add to the decorations. I love paper chains because they are easy to make and use and make a HUGE statement and look so festive!!

Above I cut the arms off the characters so they were more mobile and also made a pennet looking banner that went over the window.



This is a centerpiece I made - i actually ended up making two because it turned out so cool. Just goes to show you what you can do with materials that are just sitting around the house. So metallic duck tape and a printer!



This was the party bags - using my favorite DIY bag pattern I plug in some YGG and voila a custom party bag!

And of course what would a party be without invitations. So I used my awesome radio and went to town to design a unique custom - open in the middle invitation that really ROCKED!! Yes, I am for hire :)

DIY: How to make Homemade Felt Food for kids and Homemade Yarn Food for kids.

DIY: This is how to make FELT Food and YARN or CROCHET foods for your kids pretend play or for a great gift. I got this idea from our Children's museum, they used scrap craft materials such as felt, yarn and ribbon - with no real shapes they just let the kids make what they want out of what pieces they find. I like the idea of having to use the imagination, and these days the plastic toy food is so realistic, it hardly leaves anything to the imagination. So I figured I would leave the "sandwich", and the "salad" in forms of vague shapes and shades resembling food, so there could be some creativity and freedom of imagination. However, I couldn't resist making the rest of the food as realistic as I could. And because I had no patterns, it worked out that while they resemble the intended food, they still leave something to the imagination :) Plus, it's handmade, using some recycled materials and makes for a precious gift that took time, effort and love to make! Enjoy!

"Making Bacon" - Crochet Bacon using brown and white yarn.

Finally looks like breakfast is ready :) - making crochet bacon, and crochet fried eggs.

The pile and box full of recycled containers I am going to use to "package" the food. Hey it's fun for kids to use real containers that they see us use. Plus, it's great to recycle and saves some money, as I did not have to buy containers.



These are cute little "milk" containers, I have recycled Dannon yogurt containers, washed them and then made cute little labels for them, great addition to my homemade breakfast.  Or as you see in the last photo with the crochet Oreo cookie - it's cute to make cookies and milk!
And of course encourage your little ones to be creative and use various shapes and sized fleece scraps to make a "salad".
ENJOY!!