She’s Crafty | I Tri and Craft

April 18, 2013
by Dawn Marie 16 Comments

Little Fox Baby Shower

I have a second cousin who is about to have her first baby. She grew up in Hawaii and her parents are still there, but her and her husband live here in the Pacific Northwest now.

Since she has a plethora of family here, we decided to give her a baby shower. Some of my aunts, my sister, my mom and another cousin gave the shower. We all participated in the food, but I was tasked with making most of the decorations.

Baby Mama and Baby Daddy started calling the baby Little Fox. So we decided to have a shower with a fox theme. At first my sister and I thought about doing a Fox and the Hound theme, since Baby Mama and Baby Daddy are also dog parents.

The timing of the shower was really close to that of Ian’s birthday party, so I didn’t get a chance to get into The Fox and the Hound theme. So we just focused on a Little Fox & forest theme.

For the decorations I mostly used two kits Camp Out by Crazy4Monograms and Woodland Animals by Pixel Paper Prints.

I of course started a Pinterest board for the shower.

My sister thought these cupcake in a box guest gifts were so great that we decided to give cookies in a box as gifts. We used this recipe, omitting the nuts, for our gifts. We also really like these fox treat holders. Neither of us own a Silhouette (yet…) so I had to make them in photo shop and just cut them out. My sister bought some lollipops and I made little circles to glue on them.

Of course it wouldn’t be a party with out personalized M&M’s! Which is what we put in the treat bags.

My sister really like this pop-corn-tree, she made the cones to hang from some branches.

My sister also made these wonderful acorn cookies from chocolate chips, Hershey Kisses and mini Nutter Butter cookies. She also made the stump for decoration on the plate (I really had to point that part out).

We always make food labels, and I really like how this post used pine cones to hold them.

I made this “Welcome Baby Jack” banner

And of course we made some pinwheels, after they turned out so great for Ian’s birthday party.

My aunt made this wonderful cake. It was as delicious as it was adorable!

We played gift Bingo, Guess How Many?, and Is the Price Right? games.

With Gift Bingo the guests get Bingo cards with gifts on them,which they cross out as Baby Mama opens it.

For the “Guess How Many” game, we bought a baby bottle and filled it with candy, the guests then need to guess how many candies are in it. I made these cards for them to write their guess on.

For the “Is the Price Right?” game, we bought some baby necessities for Baby Mama and had her guess what the prices were. The guests then decided if she guessed ‘too high,’ ‘too low,’ or ‘just right.’ I made some cards for this game too.

We were able to Skype with her parents in Hawaii, which was great since they couldn’t be there. That way they were able to watch her open the gifts.

I think it turned out to be a great shower.

Happy Party Planning

Thgis post was featured on Mygrafico Party Blog! Check it out!

April 17, 2013
by Dawn Marie 1 Comment

A Superhero Birthday Party

Here is the long-awaited post about Ian’s 3rd birthday party.

I let him pick out his theme and this year he wanted Superheros. So I quickly started pinning ideas to my Pinterest Board.

I kept checking with him to make sure he didn’t change his mind about the theme. Every time I asked him what kind of party he wanted he would throw his fists in the air and shout “SUPERHERO BIRFDAY PARTY!”

I originally thought about taking some pictures of him in his superhero costumes and making a comic book for his invitation. Due to my limited time and his unwillingness to pose for pictures, I decided to make a newspaper cover as his invitation.

I used pictures I had previously taken of him. The hardest part was thinking of what to write!

I wanted the kids attending the party to decorate their own capes. This was a battle between my mom and I, she didn’t want a bunch of kids gluing stuff while in her house. I had originally thought of iron-on but then someone would have to man the iron. In the end we decided it was the best option.

I also decided to go with inexpensive so we used all felt for the capes, masks and decorations.

I think we ended up with 24 capes (big enough for a 7-year old), 24 masks and all the shapes for about $40. Which is less than two-bucks a cape! The most expensive thing was the binding web. We made the capes too large and trimmed them to fit each child. She used this pattern for the portion around the neck.

I printed out the shapes and my mom cut them all out, and the webbing to fit. She went a little overboard, but it allowed for each kid to have as much on their capes as they wanted.

This is one little girl’s cape

This kids placed the shapes and then a friend of mine, or my mom, ironed them on.

When making decorations for a party I usually find a digital scrapbook kit I like and use it. I could not find one for superheros. There were some available, but none that I liked. So I just used pictures that I found on Google. I tried to only use ones from Marvel or DC, but I can’t really say for sure where I got all of them.

What party is complete with out party hats?

I used Photoshop to make these and bought the string at the fabric store. It is elastic thread.

I wanted a night-time city scape behind the food table, I got the idea from this post and this one.

Of course Ian needed to help.

I just used a cardboard box and some poster paint.

I wanted some hanging decorations and saw this post that used pinwheels. I usually make decorations for the table dishes but decided to use the circles for the pinwheels.

I was so pleased with them that we used the same concept for a baby shower.

My Aunt made this wonderful cake! Ian was so excited about it.

I saw these suckers all over Pinterest, this post has a printable template, but I just made my own.

I printed them on card-stock and used a hotglue gun to glue the masks on.

I really like the idea this mom had about adapting the game “pin the tail on…” I photo-shoped a picture of Ian on a comic book city and had a poster printed. I did cut out little masks, but we never got a chance to play.

I used this posts idea about making a banner with the Superman logo that says “Happy Birthday”

(please excuse my mom’s gold mini-blinds…)

I loved the boxes in this post, so I decided to make my own. I was just going to make a few for decorations, but of course my mom said they had to be filled with candy, which meant I had to make 40 of them! They all had to be cut out, folded and glued together!

I made three different styles. They are my new favorite thing to make.

The gift bags we just got at Party City, we added a few things that we found along the way, plus a bottle of bubbles!

I made the food labels using the same circles on the pinwheels and on the party hats.

This Avengers Scene I downloaded from Spoonful.com. They had a number of printables that I didn’t get a chance to use. They had some great masks, like the Hulk and Ironman, but I didn’t get them made.

The other thing I wanted to do but didn’t get a chance to, was to turn my mom’s front porch screen into a red telephone both door. I just ran out of time.

The Birthday Boy had a great time.

Happy Party Planning

April 4, 2013
by Dawn Marie Leave a comment

Pinterest Thursday April 4th

On the first ~~Tuesday~~ Thursday of every month I will post about something I found on Pinterest that I actually did! Sometimes it will be about a craft project, sometimes about food and sometimes about a ‘miracle’ cleaning product.

This months Pinterest Project is a cleaning solution.

(Pinterest has switched to Javascript for embedding pins. Wordpress doesn’t support Javascript so I can’t embed the orig pin. I am still trying to figure out a way around this problem. So you won’t see my pin, but I do have links to the blog post and my own images.)

I HATE cleaning my tub.

I don’t mind cleaning, I just hate cleaning the tub.

The bending over, it’s back-breaking, the scrubbing….

So I was pleased to see a pin that claimed to be “The Best Shower/Tub Cleaner” with out scrubbing.

Plus it only has two ingredients; dish soap and vinegar. This post says to use Blue Dawn Dish Soap, which coincidentally, is the kind I have. It is my favorite dish soap. Some pins/posts about this mixture say it has to be blue Dawn, I can not attest to that, as I have not tried any other combo.

The science behind it.

Blue Dawn contains surfactants as cleaning agents; including sodium lauryl sulfate (or sodium dodecyl sulfate), sodium laureth sulfate, and lauramine oxide (lauryldimethylamine oxide).

A surfactant is used to remove oils from the surface of something, like your dishes or tub. It contains two parts, the hydrophobic tail and the hydrophilic head. The hydrophobic tails want to hide from the water, so the molecule orients itself by pointing the tails inward forming a sphere, with the hydrophilic heads outwards. This orientation allows for the oil soluble tails to trap oils and wash them away with water.

Vinegar is made with acetic acid and water making it a moderately strong acid. As a cleaning solution it is great at dislodging dirt and grim that is basic.

And by basic, I don’t mean simple, but basic in acidity. Dirt, grim, hard water, mineral build up, soaps and detergents are usually basic. So chemically vinegar works great on these alkaline stains.

As you could guess the combination of the surfactants in Blue Dawn and the acidity of vinegar should take care of any type of grim lingering in your tub or shower.

But does it work?

OK, don’t judge me.

Here is my tub before. For the record, the green stuff is bath tub paints, which if not washed off immediately, is a little difficult to clean. You should have seen it when we moved in, it was much worse.

Directions

use a 1:1.2 ration of Blue Dawn to vinegar.

Heat the vinegar, do not boil, just heat it enough to enable the soap to dissolve into the vinegar.

Pour hot vinegar into spray bottle and then add the dish soap.

Shake it like a Polaroid picture to mix. Careful not to shake too hard, it could suds up.

Then spray to your heart’s content.

Just remember that which goes on, must come off.

Let it sit. For as long as you can stand it.

But remember it smells like vinegar, lots and lots of vinegar. If you have a bathroom fan, use it!

Other sites say do not use water, just wipe off with a dry cloth.

That did nothing for me.

I had sprayed it on a dry shower/tub and I had to scrub, which was exactly what I did not want to do.

I had one of those green scouring pads. I used it with water and lo and behold, my tub came clean!

Now, I will admit, it was not as miraculous as I had hoped. But it still worked great, and each time I use it to clean the tub it works better and better.

You don’t have to confine it to the tub/shower. You can also use it on the sink, you just want to make sure you can rinse whatever you clean really well.

Happy Pinning

March 5, 2013
by Dawn Marie Leave a comment

Pinterest Tuesday March 5

On the first Tuesday of every month I will post about something I found on Pinterest that I actually did! Sometimes it will be about a craft project, sometimes about food and sometimes about a ‘miracle’ cleaning product.

Holy CRAP! When did it become March? Yes, yes I know, five days ago, right?

Before I joined Pinterest I found this post about making homemade laundry soap. I went back to it after finding similar post all over Pinterest, so I could try it out.

Source: beingcreativetokeepmysanity.blogspot.com via Dawn Marie on Pinterest

Last spring I made this soap but didn’t make a record of it because, well at the time I wasn’t aware I would be sharing these things with you. So I waited until I need to make more and this time I took some pictures.

Here is what you will need:

3 bars Fels-naptha soap
1-2 containers oxyclean or store brand oxyclean 3-4 lbs
1 box Borax 4 lb 12 oz box (2.15 kg or 76 oz)
1 box Arm & Hammer Baking Soda 4 lb (1.81 kg)
1 box Arm & Hammer Super Washing Soda 55 oz (3 lb 7 oz)
1 bottle Downy Unstopables 13.2 oz (375 g)

The original post didn’t use the scent booster but I didn’t really like the scent of the Fels-Naptha soap. You can also use Purex Crystals or Gain Scent Booster, or leave it out. There is also some debate about which bar soap to use. It doesn’t really matter as long as it is a laundry soap. It would not be good to use bath soap as the ingredients are different.

Directions:

Add all the ingredients, excluding the bar soap, in a clean 5 gallon bucket. It would be ideal if it had a lid, but I just lined mine with a garbage bag, which I can close for storage. You want to do this part in a well ventilated area, or outside, because you don’t want to inhale the fine dust particles.

Place one bar of soap in a microwave safe dish and microwave on high for 2-3 minutes.

You want to make sure there are no smooth surfaces, that the whole bar looks like this:

Let the whole bar cool to room temperature, this might take a little while. Once it is cooled it breaks apart in to a powder. If you find hot spots just let it cool a little longer.

If there are still smooth surfaces on the bar or it is not cool, it will not crumble into a powder. It will break into small pieces, just not a powder. You can see some of the bigger pieces in my picture. The larger pieces don’t always dissolve completely in cold water.

Alternatively you can grate the soap or run it through the grating blade on your food processor (not a chopper or blender). That is too much work for me!

Add the soap to the rest of the ingredients and mix well. It is advisable to do the mixing in a well ventilated area as well.

I store smaller amounts in one of the oxyclean containers for easy use.

Use 1-2 table spoons per load, if using a front-loading washing machine add to the drum not the detergent basket. Or just follow your washer’s instructions on using a powdered detergent.

Now the smell of microwaved soap might not appeal to you. My husband was not happy about it and neither was I. Afterwards I microwaved a bowl of baking soda with water and vinegar. I would run it for a few minutes to heat up the liquid and then let it sit. I did this three or four times adding more liquid as needed. I then wiped out my microwave and left the door open to air it out.

This batch will last 9-12 months depending on how much you use. I probably use more than I should, but my husband works in construction and I have two boys….

Happy Pinning

I Tri and Craft

thoughts from a mother of boys, a marathoner, a triathlete, a crafter, a wife, and a scientist

Category Archives: She’s Crafty

Little Fox Baby Shower

Thgis post was featured on Mygrafico Party Blog! Check it out!

A Superhero Birthday Party

Pinterest Thursday April 4th

(Pinterest has switched to Javascript for embedding pins. Wordpress doesn’t support Javascript so I can’t embed the orig pin. I am still trying to figure out a way around this problem. So you won’t see my pin, but I do have links to the blog post and my own images.)