Alice in Wonderland Birthday!!!

We joined up this weekend for a Mad Hatter tea party! :) I apologize, I was slow taking pics and running around like a chicken with my head cut off since you see Bobo tearing up the food table already, and me neglecting Little Miss's guests doing their craft in the kitchen (to which I didn't take a single picture of!) Anyway, we had a great time and it was nice to have a small party for a change!

Now, you are BOUND to notice the AMAZING cake and cupcakes we chose for this party... while I WISH I could say I had such incredible talent, alas, I have to give credit to Lisa over at Create it with Cake! She also did Bobo's cake 2 months ago for his birthday too.

In addition, the ADORABLE custom Alice dress was made by Polly at Apron Envy!!

Now, I did make the paper flowers....LOL like this even compares with Lisa's cakes (you can see her assembling in my kitchen in the picture below) or Polly's mad sewing skills :) And I designed the tags on the tea cups that were inspired by a fantastic designer I found online. The idea was not my own.... just wanted to point that out :) I forgot to take any close ups, but you can see some a few posts down when I talked about the Wonderland Jar Cookies.

Happy Birthday, beautiful princess!!! :) I love you so much and can't believe I have blessed with 5 fantastic years with you! I can't wait for a lifetime of more memories :) :)

Here are also some pictures from her 5 year portrait session I did this weekend!

This little girl is OBVIOUSLY the daughter of a photographer... she climbs up to this little spot, poses herself and says, ok Mommy, this is a great spot with my Alice dress :)

Wonderland Jar Cookies

More and more projects for our wonderland party. I haven't done this many crafts in quite some time. I have made large hanging flowers (stemmed from large pom pons) small flower on pipe cleaner stems, I have designed lots of danging charms inspired by this wonderful blog and now comes our "Wonderland Cookies"

I got the idea and the recipe here and took it in a different direction to fit Little Miss's party theme. All of these blogs are so wonderful and I have gotten so many fab ideas. As usual, I'm already thinking of ideas for next years parties before this one is even over! Depending on how my pregnancy and moving situation is going, I hope to host a Halloween party too :)

Anyway, to the pictures... I think these turned out to be super cute. We also made a batch and they are YUMM-O! Also I appologize in advance for the crazy white balance in all of these pictures. My under cab lighting cast a yellow look in the images I will turn them off next time ;)

Ok, here is what I started with. I decided to go with a regular bag of m&ms and seperate them myself since buying them presorted cost about 4-5x as much. I decided to do a two color combo of the colors in each jar omitting brown.











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DIY Cupcake Stand Tutorial!

So, I am totally stuck in Wonderland as I prepare Little Miss's Very Merry Un-Birthday Tea Party for her 5th birthday. I've been having a ton of fun trying new crafts and projects to put a handmade twist without breaking the bank.

I decided that cupcake stands would be a fabulous touch for our snacks and treats for the party! Like I said I was keeping cost in mind when doing this project and am happy to report that since I used most things from around the house, I only spent about $7 for all three stands (for the spray paint) and have most of the cans left!

I will also admit that this was a trial and error process, but with the help of DH we figured it out. I am sure there are several other ways to achieve the same end, some of which may make more sense, but this worked for us!

On to the tutorial....

Supplies you will need....

Wood (about a 1/2 sheet)
Closet Dowel
tape measure
jigsaw
miter saw
bowls (to trace circles)
hot glue gun
screwdriver
screws
primer
spray paint (your choice of colors)
Ribbon (your choice)


Step 1: Start by giving your DH a big kiss on the cheek and bribe him into helping you cut and assemble your project. If you are hand with power tools, you can skip this step.

Step 2: Measure dowels to your preferred height (I used 5 inches) this is personal preference but make sure it is tall enough to clear whatever you will be putting on the stand....no one wants a smooshed cupcake! Cut one for a two layer stand, two for a three layer stand etc.



Step 3: Trace different sized bowls on to your choice of wood to give you a template to go by for each level of your stand. We used plywood because we had some left over from DH fitting the windows for hurricane season (woo hoo South Texas) if I were to do this project again I would fork out the extra money for better wood, but this works for our $7 project!



Step 4 (not pictured): Use a miter saw to cut the wooden dowels, tell your DH to be patient as he teaches you to use it.

Step 5: Get DH to cut the circles with a jigsaw. Please note that my husband is extremely daring, and sometimes reckless. I don't recommend using patio chairs to balance the wood, or putting your hand in front of the blade!







Step 6 (not pictured): Primer and Spray Paint your stands in the color of your choice.

Step 7: Screw the bottom layers of your stand together. Do this by measuring to find the center of each piece.




Step 8: Hot glue the top layer of the stand to the top dowel (you can screw this in but we used glue to avoid an unsightly screw in the top.



Step 9: Hot glue ribbon around the edge of each layer of your stand. Again I used ribbon I had at home and may have chosen something else but I wanted to make this a cheap DIY project.



Step 10: Glue ribbon around each dowel.

Step 11: Give your DH another big kiss and thank him for his help with your project!



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