Pinterest | I Tri and Craft

September 18, 2013
by Dawn Marie Leave a comment

A Birthday Beach Bonanza

When Ian was born during spring break, which is in March, I was sad he couldn’t ever have a pool party at my mom’s house. Well unless everyone has wet suits.

Then Sid was due in mid-Sept. and I thought for sure he would be early and was excited cause we could have a pool party/BBQ for his first birthday.

I was wrong and he wasn’t early, but right on time, he was born on his namesake’s birthday. So when his first birthday was approaching I decided to have his party on the first Saturday after the Labor Day holiday. In hopes that the weather would still be nice that early in Sept.

I decided on a beach theme; melding a luau, surfer and underwater theme.

As usual I spent a lot of time on Pinterest finding inspiration. I can’t believe how creative people are with food!

I got one of my hubby’s old surfboards down and sat Baby Sid on it for some pictures for his invitations.

The picture for Sid’s invitation

For the decorations I used five digital scrapbook kits from Just So Scrappy.

Aloha
Bubbling Over
Lil Red
Summer Fun
Under the Sea

I of course had to make a “Happy Birthday Baby Sid” banner for the gazebo on my mom’s deck. I also made some triangle and circle bunting banners.

“Happy Birthday Sid”

Bunting

I also made an “I am 1” banner for Sid’s high chair.

Highchair bunting and The Birthday Boy

I saw these Jelly Fish made out of paper lanterns and thought they would be perfect for hanging in the gazebo.

Jelly Fish

My mom collects mugs, and has a wall of mugs in her dinning room. Yes a WALL of mugs, which holds the ones she doesn’t want used that often. Cause there are more in her kitchen. This is only a problem when I am trying to take pictures of our food table and/or cake.

This time I decided to make a back drop to hide the mugs. I made the “Surf’s Up” banner and glued it to cardboard taping the crape paper behind it along with some circles taped to ribbon and the blue “Happy Birthday” garland.

Backdrop and Cake

Let’s talk about THIS cake. Not only was it adorable, with the little fondant boy to match the invitations, but it was DELICIOUS!!! My Auntie made the cake, she does all our cakes. It was vanilla with an orange cream filling. Yes it tasted like a dreamsicle ice cream bar. And yes it was dreamlike and I probably could have eaten the whole cake. By. My. Self.

The Cake table

The Cake!

We made some fun beach themed food. My mom hand dipped the Bugles in white chocolate to make sweet/salty shark teeth. I bought the white powdered sugar doughnuts and pipped on frosting to make life preservers. Using frosting we turned Nutter Butter Cookies into flip-flops. The oyster pearls are Sixlets and Bubble Gum that I bought at the craft store in the wedding section.

Shark Teeth, Life Preservers, Flip Flop Cookies, Oyster Pearls

My nieces decorated Jello cups with Teddy Graham, Swedish Fish and Gummy Life Savers. My sister and nieces then made a beach scene on a platter for more fun edible decorations. Brown Sugar was used for all the beaches and sand.

Food Table

We also had Sour Punch Straws as pool noodles, Sour Gummy worms as fish bait and Goldfish Crackers as the catch of the day.

Food Table

Of course I had to have food tag tents, how else would people know what they are eating? My sister came up with some witty little names for the dishes.

Food Tags

The menu included

Puffer Fish Pizza Puffs; Three Cheese or Pepperoni
Driftwood Deli Meat Dip
Under the Seafood Dip
Chicken Curry Sand-Crab-wiches
Egg Salad Sand-Crab-wiches
Garlic Dip
High Tide Veggies and Ranch

Sand-crab-wiches

We made a Surf’s Up Strawberry Punch and a Sparkling Beach Berry Lemonade and also offered soda, juice and water to drink.

Beverages

I made the little thank you tags for the guest gifts.

“Thanks a beach”

I bought the items for the guest gifts from Oriental Trading Company.

Mini beach bucket with shovel, rake and scoop
Mini beach ball
Bubbles
Shark tooth necklace
Shark Tattoos
Slide Puzzle with tropical sea creatures

Guest Gifts

I made this sign to hang on the front of my mom’s house.

Beach Access Sign

I also made this photo collage of pictures from Baby Sid’s first year.

A year of photos collage

Baby Sid woke up from his nap right before the party and came down to see the house decorated. He was so excited! I wish I had my camera at hand, but I didn’t know his whole face would light up! He was wonderful and such a little trooper with all the excitement and people.

The weather was great so the kids got to swim and use the slip ‘n slide.

As always I couldn’t have pulled it off with out the help of my mom, sister and the rest of my family.

Happy Party Planning

June 16, 2013
by Dawn Marie Leave a comment

Happy Father’s Day to one and all, but two most of all

I would first like to wish a Happy Father’s day to my Dad.

Because, let’s face it, he is half the reason I am here.

I really wanted to post a picture of us, preferably from when I was little, but I don’t have my hard drive hooked up right now. So hopefully I will have some time to later.

But I wanted to take a moment to tell you I love you.

“Dad, I love you”

I would now like to wish my husband a happy father’s day. You have given me these two wonderful boys that have made you a father and me a mother. For that, there are no words to express how thankful I am.

There is no greater sound then when I hear you and Ian laughing at whatever game you are playing.

Ian & Dad just chillin’

I don’t really see the point of buying my husband something for father’s day. It would be different if the kids wanted to get him something, but they are too young still. I do however love the homemade gifts they give.

Typically the kids make something in school, but my boys are not in school yet, so I had to help them.

I saw this Hand Print art on Pinterest.

Left: Pinterest picture
Right: Our attempt

Have I ever told you how much I love hand print art?

Well, I will tell you now.

“I LOVE hand print art, more than chocolate covered peanut butter.”

Since Ian went on his first fishing trip with his dad recently, I thought it would be perfect. Plus I could add Baby Sid’s hand print as another fish.

Turns out, I should really think these things through before I begin.

Since Ian was ready to paint, I didn’t want him to change his mind, and I quickly painted his hand and put it to canvas.

Ian & Baby Sid’s hands

I had let Ian pick out the color of the fish. Again, should have thought that trough first.

fished product

Since the water was blue, we should have done a contrasting color. And yes, I should have painted the water first, which was the major problem with this picture.

My mom helped me with Baby Sid’s hand print, but I should have waited until he was asleep. Cause his is the one on top and it looks bigger than Ian’s.

I think they looked more like birds then fish.

Ian was very happy with the picture, but the perfectionist in me couldn’t quite enjoy it.

Ian really like making his hand prints, so while I was trying to finish the painting he was making more hand prints.

I decided to use these hand prints and make something else.

Of course I found the quote on Pinterest.

Even though the painting didn’t turn out the way I saw it in my mind, Ian gave it to Dad anyway. Ian was very proud of the picture and really liked it. It just won’t be going up on the walls of the living room.

Happy Father’s Day

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 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

I Tri and Craft

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

Tag Archives: Pinterest

A Birthday Beach Bonanza

Happy Father’s Day to one and all, but two most of all

Little Fox Baby Shower

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

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.)

The science behind it.

But does it work?

Directions

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

Share this:

(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.)

The science behind it.

But does it work?

Directions

Share this: