Curious George Birthday

My daughter LOVES Curious George, and well I love him too, so it was perfect for her 2nd Birthday Party.

I made this sign for the front door: 

And this for the gift table:

Guest Book and Party hats. The sign says "When I'm older I'll be curious who was here, please write a message in my book" and "Please put on a hat". I loved the image of George floating with balloons so I wanted lots of balloons in the decor. 

Cupcakes

I had my hubby pipe a blob of frosting on each (box mix) cupcake. I cut circles out of Wilton Sugar Sheets like I did for the Poke Ball cupcakes, used the scraps for the balloon-knot triangles and put them on the frosting blobs. I accidentally smeared white frosting on one and it looked like a shimmer on the  balloon so I added one to each of them. The ribbon was poked into the frosting after they were placed on the stand. After they were all in place, I gathered the ribbons for George's hand. 

I got the idea from Beth Kruse Custom Creations

Shortcakes 

Idea from Kitchen Fun With My Three Sons 

we served these with a bowl of sweetened strawberries and whipped cream.

Oreo truffles

Idea from Kitchen Fun With My Three Sons

On the bottom were banana muffins with cream cheese frosting and banana candies.

Savory {Monkey} Bread

Hundley Hot Dogs

Can I just say I love our hot dog roller, easy to serve, cook more after some have had theirs and great flavor! 

Jumpy Squirrels Mixed Nuts

Ice Cream Bar (pre-scooped the night before and stored in the freezer until time into paper cups from a restaurant supply store- best idea ever!) Had all the toppings for banana splits, but called them Banana Chops instead because we were using the bowls instead of boats. 

Buffet table, we just lined up crepe paper for a table runner. 

A variety of pudding flavors, Banana/vanilla, strawberry/vanilla, banana/strawberry, chocolate, chocolate/banana, ect. 

Quint's Fish Crackers (from the surprise birthday party episode)

Pisghetti's Rooftop Garden Veggies

Hand Picked Apple Slices

Renken's Bee Farm Honey and Peanut Butter Sandwiches

I didnt get a picture of the lemonade but we served "Steve's Lemonade" 

and "Barrel of Monkey Juices"

 Ellie in her Birthday Dress her Grammie Made her and a (Man in the) Yellow Hat (yellow hat + electrical tape)

#2 wreath I made out of cardboard, crepe paper and curled ribbon.

Table settings with Yellow Hat cups/plates (as seen in many places on the web). The centerpiece is bananas and red shredded paper with balloons on sticks.

Banner and Favors

The banner was made similarly to how I made the Strawberry Shortcake one but with poster letters and banana/monkey cut outs from Dollar Tree. The balloon cut-outs at either end were also from the Dollar Tree, it was my sisters idea to make it look like they were holding the banner up. 

I found these balloon cut-outs at Dollar tree but didnt know what to do with them. Last minute I got this idea because I had leftover letters from the banner. The CG logos were cut from a couple boxes of CG fruit snacks. At the top is a paper chain made from cheap event bracelets. 

The bags were for older children, the bowls were for the toddlers and baby. Inside were lollipops, raisins, animal crackers, bubbles, stickers and fruit snacks. The baby got some monkey and zebra socks from Dollar Tree and some crisp dried fruit.

Each family got a coloring book and crayons to take home. 

As I did last year, I played a slideshow of pictures of Ellie on our projection screen. I also downloaded a bunch of songs about bananas to play in the background with the Curious George movie soundtrack.  

Overall it was lots of great fun. 

Easter Dessert

Originally posted on my other blog Loftee Ideas

Using a knife, cut/break/shave the top off of as many eggs as you need. this really wasn't that hard. I only cracked one down the side, and used that as my hole, worked fine. 

we got a bag of 40 eggs for like $12 at Costco

You will want to prep the eggs and yolk first. The cheesecake sets up quickly and want to fill eggs before it sets up. 

you need a jello no bake cheesecake without the fruit topping. (or save the fruit for another use) you could also use a light orange jelly or apricot preserves for the yolk, I used lemon meringue

The meringue was too, uh, lemony colored (imagine that) so I added a couple drops of yellow food color. 

I didnt get pictures of the process, but you mix the cheesecake in the ziplock baggy per instructions on the box (you wont use the graham cracker crust). Snip the tip off the corner of the bag and pipe cheesecake in to each egg. then pipe a yolk on to the center of each egg. We had extra cheesecake and meringue so I piped them both into silicone cupcake cups to eat also. I estimate that 1 box could fill 20-30 eggs. If i were doing lots of eggs, I would not do a double batch of the cheesecake because it does set up quickly, i would do both batches separately. 

Then get a picture of all of the eggs instead of forgetting and then realizing when only one is left in the carton. 

Thanks family and friends for not wanting to be the one who takes the last egg. 

enjoy.

These were the perfect size if you had eaten a big lunch, snagged some of the kids candy, or got bunches of other goodies to eat.

Blue's Clue's Cake

I didn't have time to take pics of how I made the cake but I think I can explain it easily. I made a single layer cake mix cake, I poured the rest of the cake batter into both regular and mini cupcake cups. I frosted the cupcakes in blue and dipped them in blue sugar I had leftover from my wedding and the cake in green. I used cut up Twizzler pull and peel candy to look like the spiral. I had some of these red Wilton Sugar Sheets leftover from the Poke Ball cupcakes. I printed an outline version of the Thinking Chair onto card stock. I cut the chair out of the paper and held it up behind the sugar sheet and found that the sugar sheet was slightly transparent enough to see the outline through it when held up to the light. I cut around the outside of the chair, then placed the cut outs (still stacked) on my cooling rack and placed my phone under in flashlight mode* (I couldnt think of any other lights that would shine up, and fit under my cooling rack, or easily accessed) I piped on melted chocolate along the lines, and moved it to my green frosted cake. The letters on the paw prints are more Twizzler pieces. (I ended up having a few more cupcakes than you see.)

*IPHONE TIP If you go to camera and turn it to video mode and turn the flash ON, the flash will shine like a flashlight without having to download an app for that. The camera is easily accessed from the lock screen, so its great for quick access. Beware, I'm sure that this drains the battery, so only use until you find a flashlight if there's a chance you cannot charge your phone, like in a power outage.

Curious?

Sneak Peak of Ellie's Curious George Birthday

got the idea from here

Banana Invitation

I forget where I saw it first but I loved the peeling banana invitation idea.
Here is my version. I gave my banana a back peel, partly because I thought it would look complete and partly because the off-white card stock wasn't as sturdy as I thought, it was packaged with a piece of cardboard in the middle of the stack.
To tie it into the Curious George theme I made a produce sticker that says Curious? Peel me. I added a generic monkey or banana sticker to the back of the envelope.

How I did it:
Found a clip art banana shape (unpeeled).
Using Paint made it an outline.
Copied outline into Publisher and, using multiple text boxes, filled the top half of banana with details
Grouped the design and copied multiple times on a page, close together. (didn't worry about overlapping/losing the outline of the banana as long as the words were there.)
Printed as many pages as I needed.
Printed 3 banana outlines (in the same size!) on a sturdy card stock.
One outline was cut on the inside of the ink outline (cutting away the black outline) also cut stem off of this one (just eye-balled a rounded top)
Cut on the outside of the other 2, cutting the stem off of one.

Using the smaller stem-less banana, I traced (in pencil) the banana around the words anywhere that the outline had been cut off in publisher.
I cut out the paper bananas, just to the inside of the ink outline/trimming off just a bit of the ink/pencil marking.
The other, slightly larger, bananas were traced onto yellow felt using a brown marker. I traced an even amount of stemmed and stemless felt banana shapes.

Using the same brown marker I colored the stems of the stemmed ones, and added brown blotches (not on the on pictured) and drew the line (where the banana peel separates) down the entire banana of the stemless felt banana.
Next I ran the paper bananas through my xyron, words side up.
The sticker bananas were placed centered onto the stemmed felt banana.
Using the paper banana as a guide, I cut down the stemless felt banana, about half way, just to the bottom of the invite info.
I spread glue evenly onto the bottom, wordless, half of the paper banana, and stuck the cut felt banana to the paper banana, covering the paper banana.

For the stickers:
I found a good quality curious George logo and snipped (screen shot) the image of "Curious", copied in Paint.
Then, using Word, I made a yellow ? with a shadow and snipped/copied it to the Paint also
I had to edit the Curious part a bit so the ? would show up behind it.
(I couldn't match the font of "curious" perfectly so I thought it would work to put the ? Behind in a similar font/different color rather than try to add a ? to the end of the logo.
Under the curious? I put the words "peel me" in the same font as the ? (ms script bold I think). I added the oval around it all to mimic a Dole or Chiquita sticker.
I saved the sticker image to my computer.
Using Avery.com, I put the image onto mailing labels (2 ovals per mailing label, 3 will fit vertically but 2 horizontally gives some wiggle room)

(the image could be printed a bunch of times on paper then ran through the xyron or just glued but I have a small label obsession.)
Cut out the oval and stick to the banana skin.

Around the World Party

A good friend of my husband was having a 40th birthday party and his wife asked if she could use our shop for a surprise party. I offered to help plan it. She couldnt decide on a theme until about a week before hand so we didnt have much time. This is what I came up with. 

She finally decided to send her husband on an Amazing Race around town, ending in a clue/mission to get the movie "Around the World in 80 Days" from our movie collection. When he arrived after his adventure, a bunch of friends welcomed him with this party. 

Walking into the party space we had an Amazing Race inspired Finish Line (but I failed at getting a picture.)

The Welcome Table was world themed. My Friend brought a picture frame (not pictured) for everyone to sign. My personal globe collection decorated the welcome table. There were country themed stickers all over the table and book case behind. 

Since we were serving classic American food, so we set up the food tables using 4th of July decorations I had. 

At the end of the American food table we set up some chips, salsa, and guacamole with some old fiesta decor I had. 

The Dessert table was Europe themed. German Chocolate Cupcakes, "Hungarian" Cream Puffs, and Ice cream "Gelato" sundae stuff. I made a sign that said "Happy Birthday Derek" in German

I did some Googling and found that some of the candies and other sundae toppings could be tied to different European countries and labeled them in the respective languages with respective flags.

The Drinks table was decorated with St. Patrick's Day decor I had on hand. My friend bought beers from all over the world, as the birthday boy is a fan of beers. 

Each table had a different continent theme. 

This is Austrailia. We hung boomerangs from the rafters, and used some coastal theme decorations that I had on hand for a future party idea. The alligator (crocodile?) came from my father-in-law. 

This is Antartica, Its hard to tell but there are white snow flakes hanging above. In the various shaped jars are marshmallows. There is a map of Antartica on the table with some white "snow" batting under. The snow and flakes came from my Christmas decorations. 

This table is China. My mother in law picked up some place mats from the Chinese restraunt the night before. I also used a take-home box to stablize a photo of the Chinese flag. My husband's dragon figurines made a centerpiece. 

This table represents Africa. We had some Zebra trimmed plastic table clothes left over from a sweet 16 birthday, we cut the edge off and used it as a runner. the middle is a baby blanket in a leopard print with the pink ruffle edges folded under and some toys from my friend's daughters toy collection. 

a close up of the "Mexico" section of the table

Ireland before all the drinks

America before the food

Throughout the decor I used photos of different flags. My friend purchased some continent bullitan board stuff from The Learning Palace, a specialty toy/education store in town. She got placemat sized maps of each continent that we used on the tables. 

I failed to get a picture of South America. We hung vines and toy snakes and monkeys in a corner of the shop set up with a TV playing Rio for the kids to watch. 

Overall, the decorations did not cost much time, or effort to make. Using what we had worked very well, supplementing with a couple trips to the Dollar Tree and The Learning Palace was all it took.