This Sunday we have to go to a birthday party which means I don’t have to cook dinner! Hooray! It is birthday party pizza for us!
My Once A Month Meals are going great and this weekend I plan on making some more for the freezer. However this week I feel like I have an issue because I don’t like to have the same type of meat two nights in a row. I have a freezer chicken and a freezer pork planned as well as a pork roast….So Wed was hard to determine.
The meal I figured for last night (Sun) got discarded and I made tortellini with meat sauce, so I didn’t want to make spaghetti, or another Italian dish….and I don’t really want to make tortellini again, but it is what I came up with. Maybe I will change my mind in the next couple days though….maybe I will make Korean Beef for us and something else for the kids…
This year my running club and I will be participating in the Hood to Coast Relay Race as a fundraising team. We will be raising money for Providence Cancer Center to help #FINISHCANCER. Click on the picture below (or here) to donate today.
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When Sid turned two we had an Evel Knievel themed birthday party for him. This seemed perfect for our little daredevil. Admittedly when discussing this theme with Ian he was a little concerned. It took me a while to figure out why, and then I explained to him that Evel is a person’s name and that he was not evil, and when I say ‘daredevil’ I also don’t mean someone who is bad. I just love how kid brains process things.
Originally I wanted to make Sid an Evel Knievel suit. And when I say ‘I wanted to make’, I really mean I wanted my mom to make him one (see picture).
But it was so hot and we had lots of water activities at his party that he wouldn’t really be wearing it…..so I scratched that idea.
I also thought of just making him a shirt that looks like the top of Evel’s suite. Think tuxedo shirt….
But I still wasn’t sold on that idea. Then I found an image somewhere on Google that I thought would be great for his shirt and a whole new idea was formed.
I wanted to customize Sid’s shirt so I took the image traced and altered it. (As I do with everything I make.)
It is convenient that Sid’s name only has three letters and fit under the motorcycle in place of the engine. I used two colors of flocked HTV (HTV=Heat Transfer Vinyl), it’s the kinda fuzzy stuff. I personally think it holds up better than regular HTV by the way.
It was a little difficult to get a picture of him in his shirt on his birthday (left) but he still wears this shirt all the time (he’s three and a half now).
I went ahead and used the same image for his party favors. I simply replaced Sid with Ride, as I felt people wouldn’t want to take home bags that say “Sid” on them. For the bags I used the printable HTV for light colors (there is a difference between the one for light fabric and the one for dark fabric, I explain it in this post) and had my Cameo cut around the outside of the image, and the larger pieces inside.
Inside the bag is a matching tattoo and sticker also made with my Silhouette Cameo.
Turns out that this Silhouette Challenge theme was all about Fabrics! So I just knew this project would fit in perfectly. Now since using HTV is only one option with working with your Silhouette and fabrics these wonderful ladies have come up with some other amazing ideas for you. My Silhouette Challenge buddies and I are all sharing projects on our blogs today, so peruse the projects below for a wealth of Silhouette inspiration!
Because really if you are going to be working with HTV you really want a heat press and right now you have a chance to win one!
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This year my running club and I will be participating in the Hood to Coast Relay Race as a fundraising team. We will be raising money for Providence Cancer Center to help #FINISHCANCER. Click on the picture below (or here) to donate today.
As some of may have noticed I love to make party decorations.
This is great, as both my kids are young and have many more birthday for me to decorate.
Ian’s birthday is in March and I make him start deciding on a theme in December and verify it in January. This might seem difficult for a 4 (soon to be 5!) year old boy…..But Ian is different. Basically when he decides something, that’s it. He picks his Halloween costumes out 3 months in advance and doesn’t change his mind. So I know that if he decides he wants a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle party for his 5th birthday, that’s the party he is going to get.
I loved TMNT growing up and I love that Ian does too. Now they are different and I am not entirely sold on them yet, but it’s the thought right?
I couldn’t wait to share all the projects I made for Ian’s birthday and this months Silhouette Challenge “Party” fit so perfectly. I already shared how I made his pretty awesome invitations so I am not going to go into that again.
Here are the decorations from the party we had in March, I know….March was moths ago, don’t judge. (I will warn you, this post is heavy with pictures)
I actually had plans to make rosettes with all the turtles, but only got Mikey done. I was really please how the turtle head turned out after tracing and cutting with my Silhouette Cameo.
For Ian’s Superhero Party I made a city-scape backdrop for the food table, which of course I didn’t keep. Since I had to make a new one, I used my Silhouette and cut a stencil out of contact paper. It made painting the building super easy.
I just used white duck tape for the road lines on the black table cloth. The sewer grate and decorations on the colored circles hanging down were made with the Print and Cut feature.
I had this grand idea for the food labels, instead of using the table tents, like I normally do. I would make them like large cupcake toppers and just stick them in the food.
This is where planning ahead is important. I already had my menu planned, so it was easy to print and cut the food labels prior to the party.
My idea mostly worked, but a few things needed giant marshmallows as stands.
I was really happy how my pennant banner turned out. I used the sketch pens to draw the face before cutting out the triangle and then used the Print and Cut feature for the masks.
For Ian’s “Happy Birthday” Banner I wanted to use the same face as I did for the giant rosette. I ended up adding the black outer layer to give it more dimension. I just had to trace the image in three parts.
The pieces that had letter on them did not get the black outline, or white eyes. I didn’t want to take away from the letters.
Since there are four turtles I wanted to have all of them up there, so I made a turtle shell to go in between happy & birthday.
Because the number of letters in my banner is odd, I didn’t have a symmetrical color pattern. Don’t look too closely.
The turtles all started with some toxic ooze so we needed a warning sign. Using a wood sign, scrapbook paper, and distressing ink I made a sign for the vinyl letters and danger symbols.
I was going to use vinyl for the green ooze, but decided to try some paint. After painting on the drips, I just went ahead and let the paint drip down the sign. It was one of those “umm…why didn’t I do this earlier? because it is so much easier” moments.
It gets hung on the front of my mom’s house (Party Local), which is where I hang all my party signs.
When Ian decided to have a TMNT party I was at Target and they had these buckets in the dollar spot. I decided not to wait till the month of his party to buy them. So glad I did, cause they were gone the next time I went. We filled them with stickers, candy, TMNT fruit snacks, little pens, and Toxic Ooze (of course).
With my Silhouette I made “Thanks for shell-abrating” tags for the buckets.
The stickers for the ooze were made with Silhouette’s clear sticker paper. I had the kids all help make the ooze and fill the cups.
I bought this cute little pizza box design from the Silhouette store and used the Print and Cut feature to cut them out. I put all the stickers for their buckets in the pizza boxes.
We also made masks & turtle shells for all the kids to wear and take home.
The windows on the box buildings were cut using my Silhouette. I was trying to decided between a stencil and paper, and the paper was easier.
My wonderful aunt who makes our birthday cakes was sick, so we went with cupcake for this party. I didn’t have time to make all the cupcake wrappers but there was about a dozen that had them.
I had been collecting the mini-pizza boxes to use at the party and we put some of the cupcakes in them.
For the top cupcake I made a big topper with Ian’s favorite turtle. I also used some plastic TMNT cups that I bought as center pieces. I cut out designs and inserted them in the cups with florist foam. Unfortunately I don’t have a great picture of them.
Want to Check Out More Silhouette Projects?
My Silhouette Challenge buddies and I are all sharing projects on our blogs today, so peruse the projects below for a wealth of Silhouette inspiration!
I know that in the world of blogging numbers are important.
You want stats to be high. You want clicks to be high. You want strangers to follow you.
Especially if you are blogging to make an income (however small) those things matter. You want the number of people who follow you to be high, because it shows that people want to see what you have to say. It shows the companies, where your potential income might come from, that you will be able to get their product information out there.
I still feel great every time I get a new follower, and it makes me a little sad when I lose one.
Every once in a while I will get a notification from Instagram that I have a new follower. Every time I click on that person’s profile.
Yesterday this is what I saw:
I blocked this user from my account
Now, maybe I am judging. Maybe I’m jumping to conclusions. Maybe I’m just turning into a ‘old lady’. But nothing about that profile seems legit to me. I didn’t click on the link, I was afraid to. To me this looks like an ad for porn. I don’t know if that profile is real, but I don’t want to know. Pictures like that don’t belong in my life.
I put up pictures of my crafts, my life and my family. I am OK with normal people following me and seeing those pictures, even if they are strangers. I am not OK with profiles like that having access to my pictures.
So I blocked it.
I blocked it by clicking on the square with an arrow in the top right corner. It gives me the option to block user, or report inappropriate.
This is not the first time I have blocked a profile like that. Once I had to report an ‘inappropriate’ profile so it could be removed. This also won’t be the last time I block one. But it reminds me again how scary the internet can be. It takes time to go through all the profiles that might like my pictures, or follow me, but I do it. And so should you. I know it brings my numbers down, but it is worth it.
I Tri and Craft 