Posts Tagged ‘make it do’

This time of year I think we all start craving Spring.  I want greens, yellows, pinks, and purples.

And I’m tempted to pick up a big bouquet of flowers from the store as the late Winter snow flurries fly.  But a bouquet of flowers is a bit too frivolous for me these days, so I came up with a compromise.

These lovely little primroses were at the grocery store for less than a $1.50 per plant.  So for right around $4 dollars, I have this wonderful little centerpiece.  They are just the bright spot I’ve been craving.  And the best part is, once they are finished blooming… and the weather is suitable, I will plant them out into my garden.  Then they can be enjoyed year after year.

Here’s another little bright spot:

I have collected several favorite vases suitable for forcing a bulb.  Here is the hyacinth in bloom in my kitchen right now.  The scent is heavenly.  Over the years I’ve forced hyanciths, tulips, daffodils, and crocus, both in vases and in pots with soil.  There is a tutorial here.

Once they are done blooming, I cut back the bloom (leave the foliage) and plant it out in my garden.  It won’t bloom again the year you plant it, but it will bloom the next and subsequent years.

It’s also springy to grow a center piece of wheat grass:  There’s a tutorial here.

You don’t need to spend a lot of money to bring a touch of Spring into your home, you just need a little creativity.

We had quite a party at our house yesterday.  Ten little girls make for a very fun and lively time.

I loved the Woodland theme and it was difficult not to go really crazy.  But since I was on a budget, I needed to get creative, rather than buying a lot.

When the girls arrived, we started off with our craft.  Doing the craft first gave them time for the paint to dry.  Since we were painting with acrylic paints, I asked the girls to bring a paint shirt on the invitation.  Acrylic paint is nearly impossible to get out of clothing, and I didn’t want someone’s favorite outfit ruined.

I found these sweet little bird houses at Michaels for a $1 and I could hardly believe my luck.  They were the perfect craft for a Woodland party.

The finished products were so delightful.  I provided red, white, green and turquoise paint colors.  It’s always amazing to me how different all the houses turn out with the same few colors of paint.

Next it was off to games.  We played woodland charade.  I rolled up all the “characters” on slips of paper and placed them in a bucket.  The list included a rabbit, tree, owl, dragonfly and fairy, just to name a few.  This game was so fun, I wish I had a video.  The girls were quite creative in acting out their charades.

Next it was “Acorn, acorn,  whose got the acorn?”  All we needed for this game was a small acorn in place of the traditional button.  I was amazed that none of the kids had ever played this game before.  It seems like I played this game at almost every party in my childhood.  Just like charades, it’s an old-fashioned and simple game, but very fun…

We also played pin the fairy on the flower, which I had from another birthday party.

I wanted to play the game where you hold a plastic spoon in your mouth and have to race keeping an acorn or small pine cone on the spoon.  But we just didn’t have enough space to really make it challenging.  Those are the breaks with a winter birthday.

Next up was the Toadstool cupcakes.  The inspiration came from the fabulously talented Bakerella.  I used her tutorial for making Cupcake Pops to make these little toadstools.   I followed her instructions exactly, just changing the color of the chocolate to white for the bottom and red for the top.  I picked out the white confetti from our Christmas cookie decoration supplies for the white spots on top.

Angie from Bakerella makes everything she does look fabulous… and I would have given my eye teeth to have her help me make these.  They are very easy, right up until dipping the chocolate.  That part was a challenge!  If I were a perfectionist, I might have gone crazy.  But perfection is overrated and I settled into the idea that my best was going to have to be good enough.   So don’t look too close.  I used a cookie scoop to make the balls, which made the process fast, easy and consistent.  I looked everywhere for a plain round cookie cutter for the stem (see Bakerella’s tutorial) but ended up using a fluted cookie cutter similar to the one Bakerella uses.  It also helped to keep the cupcake balls really cold throughout the whole process.

The base cupcake was from a chocolate cake mix… because they were for kids.  I made buttercream frosting dyed green for the grass and used a #233 decorated tip on a pastry bag.

The girls LOVED the toadstools.  They all asked if I had more, and since Bakerella’s recipe makes almost 50 cupcake balls, I gave them all extras.

After unwrapping presents, it was time for the girls to head home… but not before getting their party favors.

In keeping with “Make it Do” I used brown paper lunch sacks.  They are inexpensive… but I loved how they turned out.  I used a little scrapbook paper and printed out the girls names using Little Days Font.

For the clothes pin at the top, I was inspired by a comment from a reader.  She recommended a wonderful site called Bake it Pretty.  There I saw the wonderful clothes pins made from wood.

I made mine out of paper using a 2″ circle punch.  I simply cut off part of the circle and rounded the bottom corners.  I used my hole paper punch to make the spots on the toadstools.   I cut out the stems free hand.

Inside the bags I placed the girls painted birdhouses, a small bag of chocolate eggs…

And these wonderful little pencils along with a small notebook.  I could not find the small natural pencils shown in the tutorial, so I ended up buying these red ones and cutting them with my husband’s chop saw.  I could have done that with natural pencils too, but I loved the red.  One friend suggested getting natural wood pencils from IKEA… which would have worked too.

At the end of the party, my girls looked like this….

And that was worth all the work.

If you liked this party you might be interested in how to make the invitations.