Feliz Dia dos Pais

Happy Father's Day!

Nope, I'm not just a few months late; we celebrate Father's Day in Brazil on the second Sunday of August. It's nice though, because I get to see all the inspiration blogs and DIY crafts in May/June and then actually have time to whip something up in time for August. (read: procrastinate until the week day before)

I knew I wanted to do something special for David this year, as it is his first Father's Day with four kids! While he is by no means a lazy dad, having twins means he has had to be even more hands-on with all our kids; from bottle feeding and burping to bedtime routines and bath times, he really is an amazing dad and a great help to me.

So I got to work on a unique gift that would celebrate our newly increased family.

I used four small canvases that I had lying around, and after painting them, I waited for the perfect moments to catch one little hand print from each of our four kids. Folks, it was not easy! First of all Lucas' hand was almost too big to fit on the canvas. His we did in one take though. Elena smeared her first hand print and then decided to paint on some of the other canvases, so I did a repaint of two of them and we tried again.

Lisa and Leila's hand prints were taken while they were sleeping, oh so carefully so as not to disturb them. But it was still hard to keep their hands open. Maybe I should have done their feet?

 I then arranged the four canvases in a square and used my hot glue gun and some strong tape to hold them together with some twigs. I figured it was a nice "manly" look. :) I also added some labels on the back so we can remember whose hand is whose (mainly for the twins.)

 Getting it all wrapped up and ready to give.

Lucas was so excited to give this gift to his daddy, and did so well keeping it a secret when I had showed him the gift almost a week in advance. (Shhh, don't tell anyone, but I finished it on the Saturday before Father's Day and got all three girls' handprints that day!)

As soon as I told David to sit up and look proper before he opened his gift, he guessed it would be something I had made and had to blog about. It will find a nice place in his office, and I'm glad we have this reminder of just how small our kids hands are right now. It's definitely not pinterest perfect, but it works.

Happy Father's Day!

DIY - Hospital Name Plaque

Well, it's been a while since I've had a "crafty" post - and of course this one is also related to the twins. It's just a little baby crazy around here.

In Brazil it is customary to have a personalized name plaque at the hospital when your baby is born. You walk down the halls of the maternity ward and are greeted by all sorts of simple (and not-so-simple) name signs adorning all the doors of the recovery rooms. When Elena was born, my sister-in-law made me a cute little sign to hang on the door.

Some examples of the signs you'd see in the hospital

A few weeks ago it hit me that I needed to get going on a name plaque for the girls! I didn't really look around for inspiration, I just wanted to use what we had around the house. (My hubby gets worried when I say things like, "I've got a new project!" He was happy that this one only cost me $10)

Here's what I started with:

The decorative wooden sign was one that I had bought a few years ago, and I'm not quite sure why as we aren't really big wine drinkers in our family. So it could definitely be turned into something more useful. The other things were collected from various baby showers and I bought a few little extra things. 

1. First I used my handsaw to cut the scrap piece of wood to the right length to create a shelf at the bottom of the sign.

2. A few small nails to secure the bottom piece,

3. All nailed in across the length of the board.

4. Painted white with a few coats with my helper, Lucas. (He also added some other designs when I wasn't looking). 

5. Lined up some green scrapbook paper to wrap around the bottom. 

6 - 8. Glued the top, bottom and back and smoothing the paper around the edges.

9. Ran a piece of masking tape along the back to secure the paper. Notice Lucas had also added some designs to the back of the wood. 

 10. Designed a background for the sign highlighting the girls names.

11. Printed.

12. Cut it out. The paper didn't quite reach the whole length of the wood so I cut two slices off the ends and added a band of ribbon in the middle.

13. The sign ready with the background and green scrapbook paper.

 The last thing to do was to  arrange the flowers and prams and glue them down with my hot-glue gun. There's a small hook so we can hang this on the hospital door and when we come home it will find a place in their corner of our room until they get their own. I like that it can hang on the wall as well as rest on a shelf.

Ok girls, we're ready for you now! 

First World (Decorating) Problems

Last week when I was getting my Christmas decorations up, I faced a truly serious (first world) problem. My string of lights was too long for the shelf I was decorating! What was I to do? Double the string? Let them hang off the edge? I didn't want to just waste the lights, so I decided to create a little light jar that could contain some of the lights and give a little extra something to the shelf.

Here's what I used:

- A tall, straight vase (about 20cm tall and 8cm wide)

- A plastic tube that was holding some ornaments (20cm by 5cm)

- A bunch of straight white twigs

- Some little white snowflakes

- Silver/Turquoise ribbon

 I needed the inner tube to keep the lights contained, and the first thing I did was to do a test to make sure my little led lights wouldn't melt the plastic of the tube.

Once I had the inner tube in, I just dropped the white twigs around it, spacing them somewhat evenly. Then I added a few snowflakes here and there, and wrapped my ribbon around the middle. 

When I set it up on the shelf, I put a bunch of lights in the inner tube and topped it off with a pine cone to hide the wires coming out of the top. Now even with the lights off it looks cute. 

There you go! A simple project to deal with those pesky first world decorating problems. :) 

12 Step Sheep - Tutorial

So, last week I shared about the sheep themed baby shower I helped to put on for my sweet sister-in-law. I'm back with the tutorial of the cuddly, cute sheep I made for the table centerpieces and decoration.

Here we go!

What you need: (for one sheep)

Head:
- small styrofoam ball (about 1" diameter) painted light brown. I already had a bunch painted brown from a previous project.
- two short pieces of pink pipe cleaners (about 1.5" long) to make the ears
- small piece of cotton
- two eyes
- permanent marker
- glue gun

1. Fold your pink pipe cleaners into ear shapes and stick them into the head. There is a small seam around the ball and I used that to help get the ears in roughly a straight line.
2. Use your glue gun and stick a small piece of cotton in between the ears.
3. Use your sharpie to make a mouth and to mark where the eyes go.
4. Use your glue gun to stick the eyes on.

And the head is ready to go!

For the body you need: 

- a slightly larger styrofoam ball (about 2" diameter)
- 4 pieces of brown pipe cleaner (each about 2.5-3" in length)
- a toothpick to connect the head and body
- two squares of cotton (about 4"x4" - doesn't have to be perfect - regular cotton balls would work too, just need a little more fiddling to cover the body)
- white glue (Elmers)
- paint brush to apply the glue. (you could also use your glue gun, but I found the white glue easier to work with and just as secure)

 5. Bend your pipe cleaners into legs and stick into the body. Again I used the seam of the ball to help orient the legs. Basically if you were to connect the legs you would make a square with the seam of the ball running through the middle.
6. Get your head, body and toothpick ready
7. Stick the toothpick at least halfway into the body, at about a 45 degree angle.
8. Attach head.

 9. Get your cotton and glue ready, and glue around the neck of the sheep.
10. Wrap your first square around the neck like a cape.
11. Then glue down the back of the cape.
12. Glue the second piece of cotton starting from the bottom and wrapping it around the legs and gluing upward. There's quite a bit of give to the cotton so it stretches quite easily. If you think about the square you created with the legs, the second piece of cotton gets attached like a diamond, with each corner going through one side of the square.

There you go. A sheep in 12 easy steps!

At the shower I attached the sheep to a small box to place on the tables. You could also make a really charming mobile with these. Everyone commented on how cute they were, and by the end I didn't have any to bring home with me.

Linking up with: Tutorial Tuesday, Show Me What Ya Got, TOO Cute Tuesday, Terrific Tuesdays, Handmade Tuesdays, Crafty Tuesday and Take-A-Look Tuesday

Another Pompom Party

I was absolutely delighted when my sister-in-law's sister asked me to decorate for my sister-in-law's Baby Shower. It was planned for three weeks after Elena's party and my new-found love of pompoms meant they were sure to make another appearance. I was even able to re-use some of the pompoms from Elena's party (score!)

We were going for a sheep theme for the party. Here in Brazil it is very common to find out the gender of your baby almost as early as possible and come right out with the name as well. So we were planning a Sheep Shower for little Lara - due in November. A little over two years ago I did another shower for Lara's older sister, Sophia, a bear-themed shower with pink and brown as the main colors. So this time I stuck with pink, grey, white and silver. Seemed to also fit better with the sheep theme. 

The shower was held in their church's foyer/meeting room. I knew we would have a lot of tables and chairs and began to think about center pieces. A crazy idea came to me as I was cleaning up some other decorating stuff. I started dreaming about sheep made from styrofoam balls, cotton and pipe cleaners. 

But let's see how the prep and party went down.

Here are my sheep center pieces for all the tables - yup, I made almost 20 little sheep. I'm always looking for ways to reduce stress by prepping ahead of time, so it was fun to make these little guys without feeling rushed. At the party the sheep sat on little boxes with Lara's name on them (good thing it's only a four-letter name), on top of a pink heart-patterned square (actually cellophane gift bags that I cut into squares). The tables themselves were covered in a sheet of silver paper. 

The day before the shower I headed down to our local farmer's market and picked up some beautiful pink and white flowers. I made three arrangements and packed them up ready to go. Another simple prep idea for color, class and charm. I also made about 60 favors for the guests. On the left a simple envelope filled with marshmallows, wrapped in silver ribbon and secured with a hand-cut label. The label says, "We thank you for your presence here - Baby Shower for Lara" and the date. Yes, hand-cut labels - my hands were definitely sore after cutting out 60 tiny little labels. On the right I made little bags, tied them up with ribbon and added the label to the front. 

At the church we set up a crib to collect all the presents. I used four of the center pieces to spell out Lara's name on the edge, and used some pompoms to decorate. I made tons of big white pompoms and several smaller pink and silver ones. Notice how the big ones have rounded edges while the smaller ones have pointed edges. I think it's a nice contrast. 

Of course the main attraction is the cake/sweets table. I set up a few room dividers, covered them in a white tablecloth and attached a pompom arrangement. 

Some close-ups of the table. We served the main cake, a pineapple cake and cupcakes. Along with some little sweets (you can see in the top right corner arranged under the cake).

I did also have some large white pompoms hanging up with pink and grey ribbons underneath, but somehow forgot to get a picture of it. Every time, I take tons of photos, sure that I've got a shot of everything, and always feel like I should have taken more.  

Hope you enjoyed a little peek into the party. Come back next week for the full tutorial on those cute little sheep! 

Tutorial - Mini-muffin Flowers

Last week I showed you how to make super cute gumdrop favors for your flower-themed party. Today is the last of the tutorials from that party - a mini muffin flower. This was also one of the first things I saw when I was starting to plan this party.

What you need: (For one flower)

- Bamboo skewer

- Green straw

- regular sized muffin cup (I used a thick yellow one)

- mini-muffin/cupcake decorated with icing (I made vanilla with bright pink butter cream icing)

For the display

- Flower pot

- half of a styrofoam ball or florist's foam

- green tissue paper/easter grass

Step 1: Fold your large muffin cup in half and cut to create a six petal shape.

I used a template for the first few and then gave up and did most just by eyeing it. This is a step you  can do a few days before the party.

Step 2: Create your stems by taking the bamboo skewer and placing it inside the green straw. Make sure you have a bit of the bamboo skewer sticking out the top. This makes it easier to insert into the muffin.

 Step 3: Make your muffins and ice. I used a simple butter cream icing that hardened nicely, so I wasn't worried about the icing dripping off. Wait until the icing has dried before sticking them though, just to be sure.

We baked the cupcakes on Friday night and iced them on Saturday morning. Little Sunshine was starting to get sick, so I had to do a lot of this prep work with her on my hip. :)

Step 4: Glue your mini-muffin to the larger muffin cup and then stick the bamboo skewer into the bottom.

Step 5: Arrange in your flower pot. I made about 15 flowers and split them into two flower pots. Make sure people know they are edible - we had a lot left over because they didn't know they could eat them. :)

They really added a nice touch to the sweets table and it didn't take too long to put it together. The rest of the cupcakes we displayed on the table.

Hope you enjoyed this series of Flower related party tutorials. Come back next week to see how I made sheep centerpieces for a baby shower.

You can see more of this party here.

Linking up with: Tutorial Tuesday, Show Me What Ya Got, TOO Cute Tuesday, Terrific Tuesdays, Handmade Tuesdays, Crafty Tuesday and Take-A-Look Tuesday

Tutorial - Gumdrop Favor

This is the thing that first got me thinking about a flower themed party for my little girl. So cute, and would make such a great favor. As a die-hard control freak detail oriented person, I love things that can be made in advance, warding off some of the last minute pressure when preparing a party. Given that the gumdrops are wrapped in cellophane I was able to make them a few days before the party. Didn't want to go too much earlier and end up with stale candy.

So, here we go!

What you need (for one flower)

- 6" (15cm) square of cellophane

- 7 gumdrops, 6 of one color for the petals and 1 contrasting color for the center

- bamboo skewer for the stem

- green curly ribbon

- paper/printer to make tags

- hole punch

Step 1: I started by creating my tags in the shape of a leaf. I used a brush I had in Photoshop to create a JPEG which I then printed out 9 to a page through Preview. I printed the basic leaf shape onto green paper that I had left over from my no-sew banner. 

Step 2: Cut out the leaves. After the first one I realized the shape was just a little too complicated for easy cutting so I simplified the shape a bit. After cutting out, I punched a hole in the leaf. 

 Step 3: Lay out your cellophane and arrange your gumdrops in the shape of the flower in the middle of the cellophane. Then stick the bamboo skewer into the center gumdrop. Don't worry about your placement of the outer gumdrops. It doesn't have to be perfect at this stage.

 Step 4: Pick up the cellophane and bunch it around the bamboo skewer. I found it easiest to pick up opposite sides (not corners) to keep the gumdrops from falling out and then pick up the other two sides. You can then turn it right side up and push the gumdrops into the right position if they've shifted at all. Then tie a ribbon around the bamboo skewer and cellophane. I wrapped it around once and then tied it to keep the cellophane nice and tight.

 Step 5: Thread the ribbon through the leaf tag and tie a bow. Voilá!

 Step 6: Arrange in a flower pot with a half sphere of styrofoam (or use florists foam).

There you go! See more of the party here.

Linking up with Tutorial Tuesday, Show Me What Ya Got, TOO Cute Tuesday, Terrific Tuesdays, Handmade Tuesdays, Crafty Tuesday and Take-A-Look Tuesday

Tutorial - Colorful Cupcake Stand

It all started with a set of plastic bowls. It was a great deal at the superstore - and while the bowls didn't last very long, I was left with several matching lids that were screaming to be used somehow...

When we decided on a flower theme for my little sunshine's party, I knew we were going to incorporate green into the decor. Pink, Green and Yellow were the colors we used throughout the party. And since I had these green lids, all it took was three little flower pots and we had a cute, colorful cupcake stand.

Here we go!

What you need:
- Three matching lids of varying size. (You could also use plates, this is just what I had around)
Mine were 9.5"(25cm), 7.5"(19cm) and 5.5"(14cm)
- Three flower pots (same size) - height: 3"(8cm) width: (at top) 4"(10cm)
- Hot glue gun

You can see I used three different colors for my flower pots, allowing me to incorporate pink and yellow with the green lids.

1. Set it up - Figure out what order you want the pots (if they are different colors). I decided to go with yellow at the top, light pink in the middle and the dark pink at the bottom. (Also, plug in your hot glue gun so it's ready to go.)

2. Mark - You can see from my lids that it was pretty easy to see where the middle of each one was, but if you are using something without a clearly marked center make sure to mark where the flower pot will go. When you're using hot glue it's best to only have to stick it down once.

3. Get Gluing - I started with the top and worked my way down, first gluing the yellow pot to the bottom of the top tier of the cupcake stand then to the top of the second tier - making sure it was in the middle. This way when I turned it upside down to glue the pink pot it was steady and also reinforced the glue a little bit. Then I glued the pink pot to the bottom of the second tier, and to the top of the first tier. And so on and so forth...

4. Ready to go! The good thing about the hot glue gun is that if you get it totally off center it's pretty easy to clean off and try again. Also, after the party I was able to take it apart very easily (that also means it's not a suitable toy for your kids before the party!)

All set up at the party! In the end we didn't use it for the cupcakes, but for a Brazilian treat called Brigadeiro. The top tier will definitely only hold mini cupcakes, but the bottom two tiers would hold regular cupcakes.

See more of this party here.

Linking up with Tutorial Tuesday, Show Me What Ya Got, TOO Cute Tuesday, Terrific Tuesdays, Handmade Tuesdays, Crafty Tuesday and Take-A-Look Tuesday

Color Match

As I mentioned yesterday, my kids had the day off school for a national holiday.

The kids were playing and I was enjoying my coffee and browsing blogs, when I came upon this great idea for a color matching activity that is super easy to set up and sure to be a hit with the kids.

While I love doing complicated, messy and time-consuming projects, for my kids I've learned to stick to the ones that are easy, clean and simple. They just don't have the attention span for me to spend more than five minutes setting up an activity that will maybe last five minutes.

So this one was great for us. I grabbed two sheets of paper, my colored pens and drew different colored dots all over the paper. I also made sure to check I was using the same colors as the stickers I had on hand, and only drew enough dots to cover all the stickers on the sheet.

This was a big hit with Lucas (3.5 years old). He got it right away and happily matched up all the blue, green and yellow stickers first. (such a boy - he totally ignored the pink stars)

Not sure exactly what expression this is, but I told him to smile! 

Now Elena (2) started off pretty well (with a pink star of course) - but as the stickers were a little hard for her to grab off the paper, and she didn't want any help, she was pretty quickly disenchanted with the whole thing.

Concentrating really hard on getting the sticker exactly on the dot.

While the kids were plugging away at their colors, I remembered another blog post about busy bags. Basically they are ziploc bags filled with different activities that can be used in all sorts of situations, when you require something quiet to keep the kids entertained. And I realized this activity would be a perfect busy bag filler. Using a smaller piece of paper (that would fit into a small ziploc) I drew all the colored dots that would match up with a smaller sticker sheet. I cut one sheet of stars into two to make two sets of the activity.

Clip the stickers onto the sheets (I used a thick cardstock paper) with a colorful title, slip into the ziplocs, into momma's purse, and we're ready for church tomorrow! (Well, at least five minutes of it.)

Tutorial - No Sew Banner

Love the look of those cute patterned stitched pennant banners but don't have a sewing machine at home? With your computer, printer and colored paper, you're only a few steps away from your own completely customizable cute banner.

Here we go...

What you need:
- Computer with Pages or Photoshop. (Not sure what comparable program is for a windows PC - all Mac girl here)
- Color printer (and ink)
- Colored paper (US Letter or A4)
- Ruler
- Box cutter or scissors (box cutter is much neater, easier and straighter, but scissors would work too.)
- Hole Punch
- Cutting surface (I use my glass table top)
- Twine or ribbon

1. Create your template in Pages or Photoshop. I used Pages because it's a simple template to design. I created a triangle (7 inches along the top side), copied it and flipped it upside down so the two triangles create a diamond shape on the page.

2. Consider the colors of your party as well as the paper you have. The colors we were using were yellow, green and pink. I had picked up an assorted pack of colored paper which had green, yellow, pink and blue. I decided to print a color on color pattern to give it a little extra kick. I used patterns that I have created in Photoshop (exported as JPEG) but you could also just search on google for different colored patterns to use as the image fill. In the photo below you can see that I filled the shape (Triangle) with the image as a Tile, put a border on in the same color as the pattern (shown here is the pink), and also modified the opacity a little so the pattern wasn't too strong.

 3. Do a test run on your printer on a white sheet of paper to see if any part of the triangles get cut off by the printer margins. If you find that the triangles are too big, you can adjust the size of the document you print (try %95 instead of %100).

Then set up your printer to make as many copies as you need. Below are my printed sheets all ready to be cut out.

4. Cut, cut, and cut some more until all your flags are done. Use your ruler to get a nice straight edge on all the flags.

5. Phew! It was a lot of cutting, but I finally had all my piles of flags. I also printed out a few sheets that had no pattern, just the outline of the triangle.

6. Use one of your flags (maybe one that had a bad cut or mistake) as a template for where you want the holes punched. This ensures that all your flags have the holes in the same spot. Use your template and hole punch and punch two holes at the top of each flag. I could do about 6 flags at a time with my hole punch. Just make sure they are all lined up with the template and facing the right way.

7. Once all your flags have the holes punched it's time to get your twine and start stringing them together. You could also use a thin ribbon for this part. Since I was keeping my flags very close together I decided to just use the twine.

String the flags together by threading the twine (or ribbon) in through the front, across the back, and out the other side. I didn't keep the same pattern throughout the whole banner, just mixed it up a bit between colors, patterned flags and solid color flags. I needed 9 flags to cover a 6 foot span.

 9. Finished! Tie up your banner, letting it swag a bit. We added tissue paper pompoms to both sides of the banner to finish off the ends.

 Closeup. Banner and Pompom with coordinating ribbons hung together with the pompom.

One of the best things about this project is you can do it well in advance of your event, and it really makes a big statement in terms of decor.

Once your event is over, you can separate the flags for use in another banner, or keep as is.

Hope you enjoyed our first tutorial. There will be more to come!

Check out more of this banner in action here.

Linking up with Tutorial Tuesday, Show Me What Ya Got, TOO Cute Tuesday, Terrific Tuesdays, Handmade Tuesdays, and Take-A-Look Tuesday