Pinkalicious!

Abby turned 4 this month and decided on on a Pinkalicious theme for her party. If you haven't seen the book, you should really check it out. It is very cute.

We decorated with a combo of handmade and store bought. I sewed the circle and cupcake garland/streamers. And I made the tissue paper balls using this tutorial from Happy Together. I plan to hang them both in Abby's room now that the party is over.







We made wands like the one's Pinkalicious carries. I used giant pink pixie sticks (super discounted on Valentine's clearance) for the stick. Then I bought a couple of sheets of gold craft foam and used my cookie cutter from last year's wand cookie favors as a stencil for the wand toppers. It was great because I just pushed it into the foam until it left an outline and then just cut around it. Saved lots of tracing time. We decorated the wands with ribbon, stickers and glitter glue that I already had on hand. Best inexpensive craft ever!




I usually pride myself on my birthday cupcakes, but really ran out of time this year. I used a couple of different vanilla cupcake recipes from the Cake Mix Doctor book with homemade buttercream frosting. I dyed everything pink, of course. Got the cherries on top, but didn't have time to do the dark pink piping. And Abby wanted to help decorate them (and it is HER party, after all) so she and her friend, Mia, were on sprinkle duty. So even though they were not true to the book, I still think they were adorable. And tasty!



The rest of the food consisted of various green foods, of course. Seriously, go read the book if you don't know what I'm talking about.




Favors consisted of goodie bags full of Pinkaliciousness! My Aunt Carolyn had a ball putting these bags together (Thanks Aunt Carolyn!) and I added my personal touch of these little personalized candy notes. I sent my husband this link and asked him if he thought he could recreate them. Well, it looks like the answer was yes!


All in all, I was very happy with how everything turned out. And more importantly, Abby was too!

Valentine Treats

I don't normally work on the weekends. But some weekends (like Valentine weekend) people want a day off. And since Ryan and I didn't have any specific plans anyway I agreed to work on Sunday. So I'm bummed that I'll be working on Valentine's Day, but happy that it means that a coworker can go on one last little trip with her husband before their first baby is born.

And I've decided to celebrate the day anyway by bringing in some treats for those of us in the office on Sunday. So I put together this little little treat station that should have something for everyone: Brownies! Don't care for chocolate? Have a sugar cookie! Already had sugar overload this weekend? Take some vanilla sugar home and use it when you sugar craving returns!

And I'm hoping to have time to make a little bag of vegetables for my coworker on a diet. I'm thinking of cutting little hearts out of zucchini. Anyone have a better suggestion?


Can you tell that Abby was in charge of decorating the sugar cookies?:


Once the icing on the sugar cookies dries we'll package them up and be ready to hand them out!

The Sienna Dress

A couple of weeks ago I made Abby a Valentine dress using the Sienna pattern purchased from Lil Blue Boo. I've never really made clothing before and was very worried about sewing knits because I've heard that they can be a hassle. But all that worry was mostly for nothing because this went together pretty quickly and easily. I used her tip of spray starching the fabric before sewing and I really think that helped.

I used two old tshirts that I had in my closet. Sadly, I cut the arms out wrong at first (not quite sure what happened there) and didn't have enough fabric to do them again so I had to cut them down to fix it. That's why the arms are short. And I spent a lot of time trying to work around a lot of the wording on the shirts (they were those free ones you get when you do charity walks and had a lot of lame advertising on them). But then when I was pinning it together to sew it up I realized that i could just turn the pieces inside out so the writing was on the inside of the shirt, leaving me a blank canvas to embellish as I pleased. Umm, yeah, I feel totally lame that it took me so long to realize that, but I'm really glad that I did. Much better finished product.

I was going for a bit of a skater punk valentine look. So I appliqued the broken heart on the front. Then I freezer paper stenciled the hearts on the pink strip. I'm really happy with the way the dress came out. And more importantly, Abby likes it too. (I have since made a second dress using the same pattern that she so far refuses to wear).

Was going to wait to do this post until I had some better pictures, but it doesn't look like that is going to happen anytime soon and I want this up before Valentine's Day (not that she won't be wearing it all year 'round). So here it is! I did it and I am proud!

Vanilla Sugar Valentines

Back at Christmas time I made some vanilla sugar to be used in some sort of as yet unspecified gifty way. Well, I never got around to it, so the vanilla sugar became my new Valentines! I am really happy with the way they turned out. The paper came from the dollar section at Target, all ready to go - I didn't even need to cut it! I already had the little bags. Easy peasy!

Now I'm sort of realizing that I never really made any plans on who to give them to. I've got about a dozen of them, so if I happen to see you between now and Valentine's Day you just may be in for a little Valentine's Day treat.

Rag Letters

I totally fell in love when I saw this Rag Letters tutorial from Jessica at Happy Together. I knew it would make great gifts. But I also knew that I would get bored before I finished the entire alphabet. So I settled on names, which felt perfect because I looooove personalized presents.

So I've done some for birthday presents and some for Christmas presents. And I love that it works equally well as a gift for boys. I try to include something handmade with every present I give, but I often come up short with boy ideas, you know?

I also love this project because it is a great way to use up scraps. And Abby was able to help me quite a bit (which is good because I was making them for HER friends). She helped me pick out fabric and find the right letters and by the time we were done she knew how to spell some of her friends names. Educational AND crafty? I'm sold.