Happy Birthday Little G!!

 

Little G’s first birthday party was several weeks ago now, but it is certainly worth mentioning, even at this late date. What a success! This is the first time I’ve thrown a party without my stepmom’s help, and it turned out great. We had a lot of help from two of the Aunties, which was much appreciated! We decided to do an Under the Sea Pool Party because Little G just loves swimming and watching sea creatures, plus the in-laws have the perfect party room at their condo, which is right by the pool. We had way too much food, but other than that it turned out great. Below are some pictures of the party, and instructions for my DIY favors.

Supplies

• 16 glass baby food jars, empty, washed, and label and sticky stuff removed
• I used Goo Gone and a paper towel to get the sticky stuff off, then washed again
• Blue acrylic paint
• Acrylic gloss paint
• 2 Paintbrushes
• 1 or 2 bowls
• Newspaper
• Water
• Silver fine glitter
• Sequins or confetti (themed to match your party theme if possible)
• Hot glue gun & glue sticks

Directions

       

Lay out newspaper on a hard flat surface. I used an old magazine and our kitchen counter since I didn’t have newspaper or a table to use. Lay the baby food jar tops, opening down, on the newspaper. Then you will want to paint the tops, making sure to paint the whole surface but get as little on the rim as possible, because it will stick to your newspaper. You can either mix the paints, or use blue first, let it dry, and then paint the gloss paint over it. I have tried both, and they give the same results. Once they are dry, do a second layer, and maybe a third, so you can’t see through the paint to the writing on the jars.

 

Then fill the jars all the way to the rim with water. Depending on what color glitter and confetti you are using, you might want to add food coloring too, but mine were multi-colored, so I left the water as-is. Then fill with as much glitter and confetti as you like. I put quite a bit, since I wasn’t coloring the water and wanted it to be fun & festive. Then carefully hot glue the inside rim of the top, or the outside rim of the jar, and quickly twist the lid on the jar tightly, before the hot glue dries. Once dried it is sealed. You still want to keep an eye on little ones, as it is still possible to unseal the lid with enough determination. I’m sure Little G could do it, if left to his own devices for long enough! And there you have it, easy DIY party favors! Comment and tell me what DIY party favors you have made for your children’s parties, I am always looking for suggestions for next year!!

Love you to ‘pieces’, Daddy!

Someday I will get in the habit of posting weekly, or maybe even more often than that! What a novel idea.

What a whirlwind the past few months have been. I found out I am losing my job, but in order to convince us to stay until they officially close us down, they are offering a pretty decent bonus, but we only collect if we stay until they close us down. If we leave, even a day before they close, we get nothing. It’s definitely clever on their part, but also kind of stinks for us. The good thing is that we will get a 60 day notice before they close us (or eliminate that specific position) so we will have time to look for another job. I love my job, and I love my company, but I don’t want to go through this situation again, so I am planning on staying in my field of finance, but leaving the worker’s comp industry. Maybe I will go work for a school, so I can have time off to spend with little G. Who knows. It will be interesting to see what God has in store for me in the future. I have a few ideas of what I would like to pursue, but only He knows what will be. As my grandma always said, “We’re not in charge, and it’s a good thing we’re not!”. Gosh I miss her…

Anyways, the purpose of this post was to share with you what we did for our Father’s Day craft. I had ordered my husband the football jersey that he had been bugging me to get him FOR MONTHS, and it was supposed to arrive the Thursday before Father’s Day. I had it shipped to work so that Mr. Nosey wouldn’t see what it was. If he’d seen the package from NFL.com, he would’ve known right away what it was. I was working from home that Friday so we could leave right after work to go out of town to visit my family for the weekend, so I was anxious for it to arrive on Thursday. But it didn’t. Sure enough, it arrived on Friday, to work, while I was at home. Of course. For those of you that don’t know, I do not live close to work, at all. So it’s not like I could just drive on over real quick and pick it up. One of my coworkers was nice enough to offer to bring it to me, but she didn’t get out of work until 5pm, and we were leaving before 4pm. So I by husband that he would not have his present to open on his first Father’s Day. To top it off, I’d bought him a really sweet card, and hidden it in the room, again so Mr. Nosey wouldn’t see it, but about 30 minutes into our road trip, I realized it was still hidden in the bedroom!! To this he said, “Great, the best first Father’s Day ever!”. Mind you, he was joking around, but I’m sure he was disappointed, and I don’t blame him. I was in big trouble and I needed to figure something out quick! Like most young families, we are on a pretty tight budget, so the jersey was just about all I could spend money on. I hadn’t gotten him a separate gift or card from little G, so I knew doing a DIY gift would be the easiest and least expensive way to go. Little sis is pretty crafty, so I knew she would be up for helping me out. We looked on pinterest (LOVE pinterest!!) and found a few cute ideas involving kids and pictures, so we took aspects from a few different pins and made it our own. Here are the links for the original ideas that we looked at:

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/227150374930085250/

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/227150374930085247/

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/227150374928962033/

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/227150374930344381/

http://www.pinterest.com/pin/227150374930344382/

You can also peruse my Father’s Day board for other ideas at http://www.pinterest.com/sunbubbles127/fathers-day/

For our craft, we decided to make a picture frame, with puzzle pieces around it, with a picture of little G holding up a sign that says “I love Daddy” with Scrabble letters.

Supplies:

Wooden Frame – unfinished

Blue Acrylic Paint

Acrylic Gloss Paint

Paint brushes

Small Puzzle

Hot Glue Gun & Sticks

Scrabble Letters

Painters Tape

Chalkboard Hanging Sign

One cranky Little G

What we did:

First I painted the frame because I wanted to give it time to dry. I painted it blue. Then realized the acrylic gloss paint was supposed to be mixed with the blue paint. It said I could also use it as a finishing coat though, so that’s what I did. Oops! Once it dried, little sister hot glued the puzzle pieces to the frame. She is the artiste so I left her arrange them for me. We used a lion puzzle, because we thought the colors would make the blue pop more, which they did, and because Little G’s room is Lion King themed. Little sister then taped the scrabble letters to the chalkboard sign, because it had to be perfect and centered just right. She’s a little bit OCD. Maybe a lot…Then came the fun part, taking pictures. Within about 2 seconds of handing Little G the sign, he started peeling off the letters and immediately put them in his mouth. Choking hazard, anyone?? We took them away, he got mad, we stuck them back on, gave him the sign back, and would repeat, while little sister was trying to snap as many pictures as possible at the same time. We went back and forth like this over and over again. We tried different locations in her apartment, tried standing, sitting, squatting, etc. She used the rapid fire feature to just keep taking pictures to try to get at least one good one. Oh, I forgot to mention, she has a very needy Jack Russell too. The whole time, all he wanted to do was play ball, so in between shooting pictures, she would have to grab the ball and throw it as far as she could across the room to try to buy us a little time. Oh to be a fly on that wall that day…We finally had to lock him up in the bedroom because it just wasn’t working. We got a few decent pictures of him smiling, but we (she) decided this one was the best. I have to say, I am really happy with how it turned out, and hubby loved it! I decided to write “I love you to ‘pieces’” in the card, instead of on the frame, because I like the way the frame looks with the puzzle going the whole way around it.

 

Until next time…xoxo