This weekend we celebrated my daughter's 8th birthday with a very fun, panda-themed party! I wrote about my plan in a previous post which you can find here.

For the food, I went pretty easy and basically cheated by ordering chinese food from our favorite place. We had chicken and veggie fried rice, chicken and veggie lo mein, eggrolls, crab rangoon and, of course, fortune cookies. I also made a fruit salad and a pineapple, sprite, hawaiian punch. To make it a bit more fun looking I dolled it up a bit by transferring the food to small, cute chinese food containers that I purchased on Amazon. I also stuck a pair of plastic chopsticks and chopstick helper for anyone who was not skilled in the art of chopsticks (also purchased on Amazon) inside each container. As a bonus, the kids got to take home their chopsticks and chopstick helper. ​

The thing I am most proud of is this cake. I MADE this! I found an image of a cake on Pinterest that I really liked and for a brief moment, the stars aligned and everything went perfectly in the baking of this cake. It is EXACTLY like I wanted it and looks super similar to the original photo here from bloglovin. I cheated and used a box cake mix and pre-made icing for the layers. But, I did make the ganache using white chocolate chips, mint green food coloring and heavy cream. It was super easy to get the drip effect and I will definitely be using this cake style again in the future. I followed directions here for making the ganache.

The kids not only had the option of playing outside on the trampoline and swing set but, they also had the opportunity to play badminton and participate in several craft activities.

They were given the opportunity to paint a tea cup, color a panda bear coloring sheet and make a tea party hat. No one was very interested in the coloring table but everyone seemed pretty pleased with their craft opportunities.

I made the tea party hats by taking a white paper cup and hot gluing it to a piece of cardstock that I cut into a circle. Then, I hot glued it to a black, plastic headband blank that I purchased on Amazon. Additionally, I hot glued a few fake flowers to some of the hats. For decorating, they had pre-sticky gems, washi tape and markers.

At the tea cup table, kids were provided tempera paint and white, plastic tea cups that I purchased on Amazon. Unfortunately, the tempera began peeling off (I thought it might happen but figured I would take the chance instead of giving kids permanent paint) but, the cup was still usable so, they can paint them again and again or not! 

When it was time to chow down, they sat at a custom picnic area that I set up using pallets wrapped in plastic table cloths with a table runner made of black and white striped wrapping paper and balloon centerpieces. They sat on color coordinated pillows. I ended up buying the bigger pillow covers for only $10 total to add the pop of black and white and just stuffed them with plastic grocery bags (of which I always have a million). The other pillows were actual pillows inside of pillow cases I already had.

Aside from the tea cups, party hats and chopsticks, guests also got to take home a custom panda bear and panda bear mask handmade by ME!
I spent a good chunk of labor day weekend making the panda bears. I based my pattern off of this one but modified it quite a bit to get a shape I was happy with. I also did not sew it. I do not like to sew, even though I can, and instead created the pattern from felt and then hot glued it and flipped it inside out just like you would if it was sewn. Then, I stuffed it and sealed the stuffing hole shut. I cut out felt of a different color for the eyes, paw pads, legs, nose and ears to mimic a panda's markings and hot glued them down as well. I finished it off with black fabric paint for the eyeballs and mouth. I think they turned out amazing and my almost 2 year old quickly decided that "Bobo" was his new favorite lovey.
For the masks, I used one of my sons PJ Masks as a base for the panda face and then created my template by hand. I thought I had captured a few photos but upon looking through my camera, I realize I didn't. Oooops. Anyway, I used my template for the white base and then cut out the black eye, nose and ear areas all from felt. Then I hot glued again and attached ribbon to tie them on with. I made them over the course of two afternoons after work and probably only spent about 2 hours total. Not bad. Plus, I find this kind of crafting kind of zen like. After creating the pattern, it's just a repetitive cutting and gluing process and it is kind of like a form of meditation.

Oh! I also made the birthday girls shirt at the absolute last minute at 1am the night before. I created a panda face design in Silhouette and cut out a stencil. Then I used silver and pink glitter fabric paint to fill it in. It took no time at all and I think it looks adorable. She also had a black and silver tutu and panda leggings.

It was a fun party with all sorts of personal touches that I am very proud of accomplishing. I know that we are nearing the time when she will no longer want a big party with activities and I plan on cherishing the last few moments where she is my little girl and wants me to go all out so, until she decides it isn't cool anymore, I'll keep up the hard work for the big payoff that is her smiling face at the end of the day and hope that when she has a little girl of her own she remembers and is able to do the same for her.

Lillian is in love with pandas so her party had to focus on them this year. But, I struggled with planning activities and ended up combining the idea of a picnic and tea party into the panda theme. I made my plan above and have started getting to work!

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any stuffed pandas that were a good price and quality in bulk and decided to make my own. So, I spent a good chunk of the labor day weekend in my own personal sweat shop for stuffed pandas. However, they have turned out to be super adorable and my 1 year old won't put his, newly named Bobo, down. So, hopefully the  2nd graders will love them just as much.

I'll make another post detailing all of the projects and results after the party! Until then!

I enjoy painting and have several paintings throughout my home that are my original work. However, an unframed canvas lacks that expensive, sophisticated look so, I decided to remedy that by creating my own frame of sorts. This is a quick, easy and cheap fix that makes the painted canvas look super expensive.

Materials:
- thin wood boards (used to be called hobby boards at Home Depot)
- thin nails
- hammer
- sand paper

Head over to Home Depot (or another store that carries wood and has helpful employees) with your canvas dimensions. I was creating frames for a 30x40 canvas and wanted to make sure the edges of the wood pieces overlapped each other on the edge so, I ended up getting the 40 inch long boards cut to 41 to accommodate for the overlap. I found a helpful employee and he cut them for me for free!

Once I had 4 of each length (I was framing two canvases.) I headed home with my wood and grabbed a box of small nails on my way out of the store.

Once home, all I did was sand the edge of the boards where the Home Depot guy cut them, line up the boards to be flush with the front of the canvas and hammered in a few nails down the side. I put about 4 on each side to make sure they were secured properly without any gaps. It took very little time and only cost about $20 to frame both canvases!

A few years ago I made a post about an easy-change gallery wall. Well, I've just updated it to be a more substantial, grown-up project. We finally managed to get the living space walls painted and I was ready to commit to a bigger project. 

For this one, I headed to my local thrift shop and selected a bunch of picture frames of various sizes. I even laid it out on the floor of the shop to make sure it would all work together. I managed to get all of the frames for only $30!

Once I had my frames, I headed home and took out all of the art and taped the mirrors. Then I spray painted them all white. It took several coats and about 4 cans to make them all even. I just used a white primer spray paint.

Once they were dry, I used tacks and twine to create strings for hanging photos. Two of the frames were plastic and I had to hot glue the twine. Then, I used large paper clips for hanging the photos onto each string.

I am in love with how this project turned out and hope you like it too!

Sorry for the delay in posts recently! School started back and I've been busy juggling the myriad things at work along with dealing with the kids and general everyday stuff. So, yeah...

Right before school started back, I had a blast on a girls weekend getaway and I just had to shower my girls with some fun swag. So, I made girls trip goody bags full of fun stuff. 

I used my silhouette machine again for the cups, which I found for $2 each on clearance at HomeGoods. I was going to paint them with stencils too but that didn't work and I ended up ruining one of the cups with that adventure.

To finish out the bag I hit the Dollar Tree hard and grabbed snacks as well as the adorable flip sequin bags! Total score! Which worked out great for my friends since several hadn't remembered to bring a clutch for our night out. 

The bags took a bit of time but not too terribly long and at under $6 each were definitely economical. We all had a great time on a short, nearby trip to Memphis and stayed at the Graceland Guesthouse which, by the way, I totally recommend! It was super swanky and exactly what we needed to get away from it all and chill poolside! It was definitely a fun-filled weekend!