Travel Baby Seat

My youngest niece is turning one tomorrow and has graduated from baby to toddler. It's getting hard to have the whole family sit down to dinner when they come over because I don’t have a high chair and she wants to be where the action is.

I saw this tutorial on Pinterest and thought I should make one for my niece.

I really wanted it to be durable and washable so I decided to use a towel instead of fabric. I went to Good Will and picked up a couple of towels for $1.99 each. I fell in love with the black one because it will hide stains and the pink heart appliqué. I found a pink towel to match the heart.

Just like the tutorial by "This Mama", I cut the pieces – 2 of each.

Sew them up, turn right side out, top sew all the way around. (This step included rethreading the machine multilple times and breaking a needle. It is pretty thick!) Add the Velcro.

Here is the final product.

With the scraps I have left over I could make another one in contrasting colors. I guess I only needed one towel but I love how this turned out. Thanks to "This Mama" for the idea and tutorial!

Halloween Party Invitation

This year we are hosting a Halloween Party for my nieces and nephews. We are all getting really excited and I'm in full-on party planning mode. I'm planning on a witch theme or more specifically, witch legs. Like when Dorothy's house falls on the Wicked Witch of the East. I've got lot's of ideas to share but first, I'll start with the invitations.

My inspiration came from Pine is here.

Materials:
- 8.5" x 11" black cardstock
- 8.5" x 11" orange cardstock
- rounded corner punch
- news paper
- black or purple ink pad
- orange gel pen
- Cricut and Happy Hauntings Cricut cartridge
- Pixie Sticks

Start by cutting your black cardstock into thirds vertically. Then measure and fold each strip 4" from the top.

Print out the invitation poem on orange cardstock. I printed them business card size (2" x 3.5") and was able to get 12 on a page.

The poem goes like this:

Double, double, toil and trouble
Fires burn, and caldrons bubble.
Food and treats and witch's brew
The only thing we need is you!

Grab your broom and fly on over
Friday, the 28th day of October.
The fun begins at six at night.
Wear your costume, 'twill be a sight!

Cut them out and then cut off the corners with the corner punch. Glue to the top flap of the black card.

Cut a strip of newspaper the same width as the black card stock and about 4-5 inches tall. Glue to the bottom flap of the black card. Ink around the edges of the newspaper. My black ink pad is really old and turned purple. I actually like it better than if it were black.

Glue the top flap down on both sides.

Using your Cricut, cut out 2 witch's boots at 1 1/4 inches. Draw little buckles on each boot with gel pen. With a glue gun, glue each boot to a Pixie Stick. Insert into invitation and give to your friends.

Here it is again with purple legs.

Googly-Eye Mirror

I just made a really cute Halloween mirror. See...

I saw this picture frame and just had to make one for myself.

At Michael's I was looking at the picture frames for $1 and right next to it was this unfinished mirror. Light bulb! What if you looked into this mirror and there were a bunch of eyes staring back at you. And what if it said "Boo" instead of "Eek"? I always have to make a project my own so I paid a little extra for the mirror (I think it was $2.99) and headed to Dollar Tree for googly-eyes. I bought 3 packages but ended up using only 2.

When I got home I could hardly wait for dinner to be cleared off the table to start painting. I didn't take pictures of the process but it was pretty self-explanatory. I painted the background in dark purple acrylic and waited patiently for it to dry. It only took one coat since I was covering it with eyes. Gluing the eyes on was the time consuming part. It took me about an hour and a half of gluing little dots and placing eyes. For some reason, random patterns are hard for me! I started with the big eyes and filled in with the medium and small eyes.

Once all the eyes were glued on and mostly dry, I cut a strip of orange-on-orange polka dot ribbon and taped it to the back with masking tape. This way I can remove it or change it if I get tired of it. I cut out the word "Boo" with my Cricut on lime green card stock. I probably should have used chip board as well but I was too excited to just get it done. I glued the letters onto the ribbon only and viola! it's done. I can't believe I finished a project all in one night!

Here are some pictures of my nieces and nephew making scary faces in the mirror.

Spy Party

I was asked to put together a Spy themed party for my niece (8) and nephew's (7) joint birthday. Last year they had over 26 kids at their Carnival themed party so I knew I'd have to plan big! Since all the loot came in packages of 12, we settled on 24 kids for the party.

While brainstorming at Denny's, my DH and I came up with a name for our Spy Agency. I wanted an acronym like "The Man from UNCLE" but friendly enough for kids. We decided on "Secret Missions In Law Enforcement" or "S.M.I.L.E."

The logo:

The invitations: Folded in quarters so the fold is at the bottom of the file folder.

Front: Case No. is the birthdates of my niece and nephew.

Inside: Coded message read by holding to a mirror.

Decorations: We decorated with balloons and crime scene tape (it pays to have a friend who works at a police station). I was going to cut out shoe prints with my Cricut but we were dealing with a lot of wind and they would have blown away.

The Party:

3:00-3:30 - Sign-in and fingerprinting process (As kids arrive)

I had my mom sitting at the table nearest the entrance and she helped this kids sign-in on an official looking form with the SMILE logo. Each kid then picked a code name - I had printed them out, cut them up and put them in a jar. Some examples of the code names are Ace, Buttercup, Domino, Scorpion, Hawk, etc. Each kid got a name badge with their name and code name on it, in a plastic badge holder on a piece of cotton twine to wear around their necks.

Badges:

Fingerprinting: Because of the wind, we ended up skipping this part. It's too bad because our friend at the police department had got us a big stack of official fingerprinting cards. We also had the washable ink pad and baby wipes for easy clean-up. This may have taken too long with all the kids we had too.

3:30-4:15 - Spy Training

This took a lot of help from parents and adults at the party. We split the kids into 4 teams (Red, Yellow, Blue and Green). I cut pieces of colored cloth for each kid to tie around their arms so we could keep them in the right teams. Each team was assigned an adult "Team Leader".

Activities: Teams were given 5 minutes at each activity to train for the Final Exam. We assigned one adult to each activity to help explain what to do. I gave them license to conduct the activity however they wanted.

Physical Training – Part 1 - Stretch and jog around the yard

Physical Training – Part 2 - Laser Field – cross the field without touching the "laser" - yarn tied around stakes in the ground with bells. (Think "Entrapment")

Communication Training - Listen to a story (or riddles) and solve them.

Weapons Training – Part 1 - Grenade toss – toss grenades into buckets (Foam grenades)

Weapons Training – Part 2 - Target practice – shoot down targets with water gun

Mastering Disguise - Dress up relay race - When you say "GO" the first player will run to the suitcase, quickly put on 3 items, and run back to tag another player. The next player, takes a turn and so on until all team-mates have had a turn.

4:15-4:30 – Final Exam

Team leader chooses one person on their team to run each leg of the race (best in that activity). As they complete each activity, they get a puzzle piece from the Adult Activity Helper. Bring puzzle pieces back to team leader. When they have all 6 pieces, the team puts together the puzzle. First team done wins. (Their prize was that they got to "Graduate" first.

Puzzle: I printed each puzzle and then cut the pieces on my Cricut. I also cut a piece of foam and then glued the paper pieces to the foam pieces.

4:30 – Graduation - Pass out Certificates and Spy cases

While the kids were doing the activities, I had my mom write the names of the kids on the Certificates and Spy Cases. Before the party, I had the birthday girl and boy sign each of the certificates. The Certificates were small enough to fit into the Spy Cases.

The Spy Cases were pencil boxes which contained a note pad, pencil, play camera, magnifying glass, puzzle, Chinese finger cuffs, disguise glasses with nose, gum (to be a gum-shoe), Life Savers and Smarties. They had a label on the top for the kids names.

4:45 – Cake & Open gifts (Cake had disguise glasses on it)

The party was a great success. Everyone had fun. Maybe next year we'll have it indoors so we don't have to contend with the wind.