3.22.2013

Mercury is 3!

Rainbows and Ponies...

As girly as you can get for a party theme but here it is:

Birthday Girl's Outfit:

Birthday girl in a custom made rainbow dress, rainbow shoes and rainbow unicorn headband.


Purple sparkly shoes from the store with rainbow sequins hot-glued on one at a time.  For the rainbow unicorn headband I made a horn shape out of tape covered paper and glued the majority of the sequins on before attaching it to the headband.  When I got to the lowest section- the purple section I taped the horn to the headband, wrapping the tape around both the headband and the horn until it was secure. Then I wrapped purple ribbon around the area to hide the tape and glued it into place.  Next I finished the final, purple, layer of sequins.  Then I attached the felt ears (filled with stuffing) by hot gluing them to the headband and then wrapped ribbon around both them and the band.  I continued the ribbon down the headband to the end of it.

Decorations:

Rainbow "Happy Birthday" banner and paper chains for doorway.

Balloons, Balloons, Balloons. Believe me- these were fun for everyone!  We also included, up high on the fireplace mantle, a cup of permanent markers so that adults and older kids could decorate the balloons.

  
More paper chains for the window along with paper and ribbon rainbows hanging from the ceiling.

Ponies and horses taken from her collection were adorned with rainbow ribbons.



Rainbow colored canvas bags (6"x6") I got online and decorated with cut felt 
(again, hot glued on) in the first letter in each child's name.

Activities:

The dining room transformed into activity room.

Plaster ponies for painting.  The "pallets" are paper plates with little plastic 
cups hot glued onto them- cheap and effective!  The purple cup had some company's logo on
 it so I glued ribbon and a paper cloud on top of if.

More "pallets" with rainbow beads and lanyards for custom-made necklaces.

Edibles:

Rainbow silverware- I keep all the left-overs and always buy on a color theme so I had mostly
 all of the colors already on hand.  I used two of the clear drinking cups and glued a strip of left 
over felt to them to spice them up a little.

No small child can say no to rainbow cereal and rainbow goldfish.

What was the ice bucket for? The rainbow ice cubes made with kool-aid!  Word of warning- I would avoid the blue colored ice.  It made the drinks a muddy brown once they melted too much.  The kids loved it, "it's like popsicles in my drink!"  The adults used the leftovers later that night for their grown up beverages.

The gigantic confetti rainbow cake with purple icing and three ponies on top.  It is 
around 18" tall.  But wait, there's more... 

It's even cooler on the inside.  


Yes, a rainbow cake BUT the filling in between the layers is 
whipped cream and fruit.  Strawberries, peaches, pineapple, kiwi, and blueberries.  
This made it a bit less sugary and more naturally sweet.



And here it is after the dads and other adult males got their hands on it:
It doesn't stand so well when 85% of it is gone.

So, overall a successful Rainbow and Pony birthday party.  




















2.27.2013

Birthday Party #3 is coming...

My daughter will be three soon and I'm working hard preparing decorations for the festivities.  She's chosen and all-girl theme of Rainbows and Ponies.  Here's a teaser or two:




Three days until party...

12.30.2012

Wreath

I've loved these kinds of wreaths for years but they're [in my opinion] way overpriced and so is the garland.  I found some on sale (70% off Christmas at craft stores right now) for cheap and made a wreath with one of my least favorite barely functional embroidery hoops.  Just hot glued the garland on, all facing the same direction.  Very pleased with it:


12.29.2012

Christmas Projects


 Here are some of our Christmas Projects for decorations and gifts this year:

 
                                        Advent Calendar: There was a different picture in each pocket.

Paper hand print tree.

My favorite project I did with my class:
   
 Two of Mercury's paintings, gifts.
 

   

Hand-strung necklaces as gifts from Mercury.
She picked the beads and strung them all herself, I just added the clasps when she was done.
 





Christmas pictures, just for fun.
 


  




12.23.2012

Fancifully Adorned Stick

Check out this fun project I did with Mercury today:

  
                                                                                       
Mercury has a thing for sticks and picked another one up the other day while we were outside so we thought we'd dress it up a little.  We found a bunch of random beads/buttons- I am a bead/button hoarder and have hundreds if not thousands of beads and buttons that I will likely never use.  I have a whole container my mother gave me last year that she'd had for years...I have beads from my great grandmother.  So, we got those out and some paint pens, ribbon scraps, snippets of old colorful drinking straws, scrap puzzle pieces and googly eyes.  She told me what she wanted and where, while I manned the hot glue gun.  She's getting really into processes in her art now.  She colors with all manner of coloring media and then cuts and glues and uses stickers on the same paper.
     
                   
finished products

Using multiple techniques within one project makes some great end products.  It also gets me really excited about her making something more than just some scribbles on a color page.  The stick has started to become a character and will probably star in its own story that we will write and illustrate.  The whole thing was a blast, I would highly recommend it.

11.26.2012

The rest of August's art camp...

Here are the rest of the art camp photos: 

We explored alternatives to traditional painting methods:

We used spherical objects to create paintings:
 

We did multi-day, multi-layer large scale paintings:





And for the grand finale we did large scale outdoor- 
get as messy as you can- hands and feet paintings:
 


 

It was a very fun couple of weeks.  
The kids went home quite filthy and extremely happy by the end of it.