Small Business Saturday

Amex offered a deal this past Saturday to register your card and receive a $25 credit for shopping at a small business. In signing up for the offer, I knew where I was going to go, and who I was shopping for (her girls).

(Have you seen these wooden boxes at Michaels? Probably not if you live near me, as I cleaned them out)

Bella Cosa is another favorite local gift store, and it even has a display of items that would appeal to tweens. I bought a newspaper covered journal and a peace sign necklace for each girl (the ornament kit was bought last year with the girls in mind after Christmas at the polar opposite of a small business, Target).

I spent just over the amount I will be credited for their gifts (and *of course* found a few items for other people on my list). I love shopping small!

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Favorite of the day: It's the Rolo that makes it

Working on: More ornaments

Misc. gifts

Before we get into the thick of Christmas preparations, wanted to post a few gifts we have given recently.

(plus storage bag)

A big hit in a sea of Legos and video games was a boomerang for a nephew who turned 9. Where he will throw it, I don't know, but hopefully not near his house :)

For a 3-year-old girl, a small bag of items from the gift box with a music wand from my favorite local gift store.

For a 5-year old monster loving boy, a few creature and monster related items from the gift box and a monster making kit repackaged from this one.

Now let the Christmas craziness begin!

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Favorite of the day: Love every iota of this party, right down to the sparkly Toms.

Working on: Hostess gifts

Small Fox swap ornaments

So you may recall that this year's tree will be a ho hum run of the mill one. I decided last year that I would no longer do a unique theme tree for Christmas due to the waste involved in buying new ornaments every year. Of course if I had things down like this gal, I could make a unique tree every year with maximum impact but for little cash. Mary rocks!

I do have a few dozen ornaments on hand to decorate a traditional tree, but will need to add to the supply to fill a whole tree. I knew I wanted to join an ornament swap this year to get a few new homemade ornaments, and was lucky to get a spot in Small Fox's swap. The number of ornaments you sent was up to you, and you would get back as many as you sent in. I was able to complete 5 before the deadline, and am looking forward to receiving 5 in return.

Earlier this year, I saw this post using vintage curtain rings in a few different ways. I had one of those omg -- I need those NOW moments, and hurried over to etsy to buy a bag o' rings. I think the batch I bought had 25 rings. I knew at the time that I would incorporate some of them into Christmas ornaments, and figured the rest will languish in the craft closet for an unspecified amount of time. The snowflake cross stitch motif seemed neutral enough for a swap. I packaged the ornaments in glassine envelopes held shut using the Shim technique of skewering the package closed. For this project, I used collar stays as the "skewers."

Will post the pretties I receive as soon as they arrive!

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Favorite of the day: Another great ornament

Working on: Prep for more ornaments

Thanksgiving in a cozy cabin

This year for Thanksgiving we rented a cabin in the San Bernardino mountains with my parents. It is a location near where we camped this past summer -- headed up towards the very popular Big Bear, but on the back route, Highway 38. This is the type of cabin that operates more like a motel versus a private home rental. It probably would have been better to rent a house based on how tight our accommodations were, but making do was part of the fun. I mean, check out this kitchen

and stove

Can you imagine making Thanksgiving dinner here? Fortunately we had brought mostly pre-made sides and a Honeybaked ham, so didn't need to fuss over things too much.

My mom and I made the cabin festive with decorations brought from home. I still wanted to have a special table, so I made some paper cones filled with gourmet caramel corn and put the plates on gold chargers (staged shot).

If you want another laugh, here is a pic of our set table

Just a little on the small side, lol.

The randomness of mountain cabin decor always appeals to me. This gem was hiding under my twin size (haha - we slept I Love Lucy style all weekend) bed

and this little guy gave us heat all weekend

(Shown with a gift for my mom -- just set here for the shot)

We thought it might snow on Thanksgiving day, but the low hanging clouds quickly passed through. We did find a bit of snow for the little guy to play in, though.

Most of the weekend was spent working on ornaments for Small Fox's swap. The deadline to ship them out was this past Friday. I got them all done and ready to go, and mailed them out from the cutest post office ever

Delivered by Monday, guaranteed.

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Favorite of the day: Is there time for this?

Working on: Tree decorating

Cheers! It's a root beer baby shower

The other big party I was working on this month (the day after the Robot Rock party, mind you) was for a friend's baby shower. This was the same friend, Lena, from work who had the Great Pumpkin themed shower.

Lena's husband is in the beer business, so I suggested root beer as a theme for the shower (root beer being the baby version of beer -- get it?) She loved the idea, and another friend, Grace, and I ran with it.

The colors were brown, light pink, hot pink, and white. There were a couple root beer flavored items, and we also thought of decor ideas that would represent bubbles or foam. For example, adding a pompom cluster above the table seemed foamy

and a runner I made for one of the tables had circle appliques (very poorly done -- glad they were mostly covered by food!) to look like bubbles.

Grace and I had a lot of fun decorating the table. We both love Pinterest, and found a picture of a cute root beer themed centerpiece (with brown marbles to look like root beer and white flowers to look like foam). The amazing part and what let us know this shower theme was meant to be was finding out that the mama-to-be already had giant mugs we could use (remember the beer connection) and Grace found brown marbles on sale at a Borders going out of business sale. Who knew Borders even sold something like that -- and only brown was available!

Also on the table were root beer mugs filled with root beer barrel candy (found at the dollar store). Grace made the little name charms -- aren't they cute?

I made cupcakes and stuck a striped straw in to represent root beer. Yes, they were supposed to be root beer flavored cupcakes, but I did not realize that you needed root beer extract to do that, and wasn't about to go running around town looking for that the night before the party.

Another Pinterest find was to wrap water bottles with fabric to look like a diaper. Very cute and easy detail.

For food, there was initially a stronger root beer focus, but we shifted towards things we actually wanted to eat. There was pulled pork and chicken salad to make sandwiches, caprese bites, fruit skewers, sweet potato fries served in fry sleeves from Webstaurant, and

beautiful root beer floats! I love it when parties and weddings use these tall skinny glasses to serve drinks. The "real" glasses were cost prohibitive. I couldn't believe my luck to find them at 99 Cents Only store -- and they were two for 99 cents! I was thrilled to see this element of the shower come out just like I envisioned. Fortunately I didn't spill them passing them out on a hot pink tray.

There were several games and activities. We had guests fill out their return address on Thank You cards for Lena to use (I went to a shower that did this years ago, and like to do it at showers I am part of. One less thing for the mom to think about.) They also wrote a piece of advice for Lena on a cardstock onesie to put in a memory book. Lena also brought a fingerprint tree that a cousin made for her and was filled in at her family shower.

Our games included a door prize raffle, the "don't say baby" game, a game to identify celebrity baby pics, and a game I created to do a root beer taste test.

Guests were given small cups filled with 4 root beers. They were asked two questions about each brew -- things like describe the color, or at which meal would you drink this root beer. Their responses were then put into a Mad Libs type story about the future dad dealing with a pootastrophe. It was fun to come up with the Mad Libs (used this site for some guidance), and just to say in case you need it that there is an entire website devoted to poop related stories. Why???

The shower was a blast to put together, and everything went off without a hitch. I was worried having two parties back to back, but all told everything went very smoothly!

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Favorite of the day: Too busy for stopping and looking

Working on: Ornament swap

We're three -- bring on the batteries

You may recall our goal to remain battery free until age 3. We did end up with a few battery powered toys and devices over the last few years (see year 1 and 2), but think we did pretty well keeping toys of this type to a minimum.

In his third year, Hank received two battery powered greeting cards, several used toys (most were donated -- the only one I can think of that stuck around was a GeoTrax set), an R/C car (batteries were removed as the car was too frustrating for him), a Toy Story Woody doll, and a Happy Meal toy or two that lit up.

The third birthday party unleashed the battery power. Almost every gift Hank received has lights, noises, and/or scuttles across the floor. Some are welcome additions, like several Hot Wheels sets. Others, well, may be sneaking out the door to Goodwill before the next barrage of batteries hits us for Christmas.

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Favorite of the day: Cute gift idea

Working on: Thanksgiving prep

Rock...Robot Rock

Planning for Hank's 3rd birthday party started before his 2nd birthday party even happened. Fingers were crossed that the theme -- Robot Rock -- would still be applicable a full year later.

Around the two-year mark, Hank and BT sang a version of Daft Punk's Robot Rock. They made up their own lyrics -- something like Robot Rock coming to your town. Robot Rock going to party down. There was also this ad from Kenneth Cole cut from a magazine when Hank was just a wee one that served as inspiration.

A cardboard band set -- the possibilities were endless.

(Our version ended up having a drum set, two mics, two guitars with amp, and a keyboard)

I got to work planning using Pinterest as a guide. Some preliminary thoughts were using paper fans to represent gears, having a paper streamer backdrop behind the band set, a prize dispensing robot, glow stick centerpieces, and, of course, the band set itself.

This was all planned taking advantage of our still yet unfinished yard. I figured we could use our extra long driveway for seating, and have a bounce house directly behind the house to prevent kids from wandering out of the yard through the open fence or into the neighborhood cat box. Yeah...hoping to report some progress on the yard front in 2012.

(Homemade cake-- and a random carrot)

Mother Nature had other plans for us, with a prediction of rain and cold weather the night of the party. My sweet husband took the reins and called around town until he found a pizza place that could accommodate us. The "party room" wasn't really a room, and was pretty tightly packed with tables, but we came up with ways to adjust our original plans to fit the new space.

or

One thing that had to be adjusted was the prize robot. If the party had been at our house, BT was going to be the prize robot, walking around the party and dispensing prizes. But, we figured there wouldn't be enough room to walk around the restaurant in a cardboard robot outfit. Originally the kids were going to use robot bags I found at Walmart to collect the random prizes they received. I had enough prizes to assemble the bags half in a robot theme and half in a rocker theme. Part of the fun was choosing a bag randomly to see if you were a rocker or a robot.

Other adjustments worked out just fine. The cardboard band set (barely) fit in an open spot by the emergency exit.

(Future rock stars)

I spray painted a paper lantern with silver Glitter Blast to serve as a disco ball. The streamer background I had spent too long cutting not to use became a backdrop for the food table.

The glow sticks still worked in the dark space as a table decoration, and pre-lit bracelets were available to the kids in a jar.

There were pictures of robots and rock stars to color on the tables.

My friend, Jenn, even found a small place to put the paper fans that were originally intended to be a backdrop for the food table if the party had been at home.

A fun element several friends helped assemble before the party were these candy kebabs. I found several gummy candies on the Oh Nuts site that seemed to fit with a Robot Rock theme, including gummy stars and these cubes. The twist we added to the stick was a marshmallow robot. We put a small piece of spaghetti through the back of the "head" and forced Jujubes onto the ends. The faces were drawn on with edible ink. Jenn re-painted the box we used at her daughter's party to use as a holder.

(Hank was sad at this point because he thought he was going to be the robot. Not as sad, though, as poor Kylee in the background)

A special treat was having the rock robot come dance to his theme song. Hank was upset at this point in the party, because, you see, all week long when BT was constructing the costume, Hank thought he was going to be the one coming to the party dressed as a robot. BT wished he had had time to make him a mini robot costume as well.

(Kylee recovered from her robot scare and rockin' out)

All told, I was actually glad the party venue was changed. I was a little worried about using our tiny house to host a party of 40+ people. Also, the food was taken care of, and most of the clean up.

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Favorite of the day: Cute stocking stuffer ideas

Working on: Cutting out more Josephs

The Goodie Bags

Pshew!

That was a whirlwind! This past weekend was proof positive that I am NOT meant to be a party planner. Hosting two parties in one weekend totally expended my mental and physical resources. I can't imagine having additional parties in the works that you would need to concurrently be planning for. I give the ladies in the party planning biz plenty of props!

Before we get to the parties themselves, here are the goodie bags Hank brought to school the day before his birthday. A pirate theme was chosen to use some cute Ziploc type bags I had picked up a few months ago at the Target dollar section. There were two sizes of bags -- a sandwich size and a snack size. I knew I wanted to fill the larger bag with Pirate's Booty, but knew that the school prefers packaged items. During Halloween, I had my eye on a 20 pack of snack sized bags of Pirate's Booty at Target. The box itself was printed for Halloween, but the bags inside were not Halloween themed.

Two days after Halloween, my co-workers and I were on our daily shopping trip when I asked if we could stop at Target (not the Target we normally go to). We found a whole end cap of Halloween Pirate's booty on sale for $3.50. BUT, best of all, there was a representative from the company there passing out dollar off coupons and "booty" like eye patches, tattoos, and stickers. Such a random but welcome coincidence! Between the three of us, we filled a cart with boxes of Pirate's Booty. We must have looked like crazy women, but we felt like we had found a hidden treasure.

I also bought the foam eye patches at Target. I thought they were a little friendlier for the young kids. The goodies bags were completed with a red bead necklace, gold chocolate coins, and a box of raisins. I made a sticker to adorn red lunch bags and tied them off with a piece of ribbon. They were well received by kids and parents alike!

Next up - Hank's Robot Rock birthday party.

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Favorite of the day: Cool clay gift tags

Working on: Cutting out Josephs

A dirty gift

I consider myself pretty well educated in environmental issues. It's my job, for one, and two it just feels right to implement small lifestyle changes that preserve our resources.

Just recently I realized a mistake I have been making in terms of of reducing plastic bag usage. I have been taking cloth bags to stores for years -- long before there were designer reusable bags and cities adopting bans of plastic bags. But -- when I went on a trip, I took it for granted that there would be a plastic bag available for dirty clothes in the hotel room, or, if we were camping, that I would use a garbage bag.

A reusable laundry bag was in order. I made one for our family, and one each for the women who helped with the Great Pumpkin baby shower. The best part was that one of these women had just given me a large stack of fabric she kept after her mom passed away. She was touched that I used the fabric to make a useful and practical gift.

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Favorite of the day: Fabulous party site

Working on: Managing party planning insanity!