Rainbow Themed Birthday Party

Another birthday has come and gone. My sister gave me the idea for a rainbow themed party. She called it Somewhere Over the Rainbow, like in Wizard of Oz. I ended up just going with rainbow everything!

Rainbow colored cupcakes were far easier to make than the many rainbow cake recipes I came across. I used Family Fun's recipe.

I used glass dishes to make the colored cake mix. The coffee didn't go with the recipe, however I'd highly recommend it for a beverage to accompany you while making these cupcakes. It will ensure that you stay awake while adding the batter.

 My daughter gave me the idea to roll the edges is springkles too. They were pretty when finished.

  

I ordered everything I could find in rainbow on Oriental Trading. The bandanas were a huge hit. The sunglasses and suckers were fun too! I also ordere rainbow crayons that the kids had fun drawing with.

The birthday girl is on the right. They had a ton of fun!

I bough the rainbow colored licorice at a local store. Not pictured are the many rainbow balloons that were hung up over the island.

 The birthday girl recieved a new bike for her birthday! It was a big surprise and now that she has been without training wheels for sometime, it was time to upgrade to a big girl bike. She won't be riding barefoot or without a helmet though. :)

The rainbow party was a success thanks to my sister's inspiration.

Father's Day Root Beer Sampler

This Father's Day the kids and I did something different for their dad (my hubby). Thanks to Gluesticks blogger Brandy for this great idea of doing a root beer sampler.

 

We went to a local market, Worden's Market, and found a variety of root beers. I also found the generic brand, IBC, from WalMart. It was harder than I thought to find different flavors of root beer, so I put some cream soda varieties in the crate too. Speaking of the crate, I use a 50% off coupon at JoAnn's and walked out with each crate costing only $2.50. This was a great buy! I was pretty proud of my cost savings there, since the root beer didn't come in packs . 

 The pages in the crates are the break down of what each root beer tastes like according to reviews. I liked this idea from Gluesticks and created it based on the flavors that we'd purchased.Thanks for the inspiration!

The kids can't wait to give their gifts to their dad. What fun this will be!

Teacher Appreciation 2011

Teacher Appreciation Week is this week and I am having so much fun creating gifts for my kids' teachers.

Most of these ideas were inspired from A Bushel and A Peck. Check them out at her blog. My goal was to give their teacher's something everyday, but not something so large that became a huge cost for our family.

DAY 1

First up was these glass mason jars filled with pencils. I used my Cricut to cut out the teacher's name and stick on the jar. This was on vinyl...my new favorite thing to cut out with my Cricut. My kids handed them to their teacher at the end of Monday's school day.  

The tags are compliments of the same blog! Thanks a Bushel and a Peck.

Hayden and Natalie had a great time cutting out the tags. They insisted that some left over chocolates should go in the jar too.

DAY 2

Swedish fish with the cute tag for day 2. So easy and a truly sweet treat!

DAY 3

A bottle of water with two juice powders attached. Really fun to gift. I've done this type of gift before and it was a big hit!

DAY 4

Who doesn't love rootbeer? I'm a school teacher myself and would love these cute ideas and fun treats.

DAY 5

Personalized Hand Sanitizer is by far my favorite gift. I plan to do this one over and over again. Not sure who will be getting this gift yet, but love it! I typed up my own saying, which I borrowed from Room Mom 101. Thans for the idea! I printed it first on white paper, then photo copied it onto the clear transparency paper. Then I cut it to fit inside the bottle and I was done!

 So the only other item that is left is for one of the teachers and then my daughter's piano teacher, which would be the glass container filled with chocolate candys. The poem I'm pretty sure I found online, but can't recall where. 

One other thing...I was inspired to pass the joy of teacher appreciation to the music teacher at our school. Thanks again Room Mom 101! So my students and I decorated her door on Monday! It turned out very cute and she was seriously surprised. :)

 

If you can't read this, it says, "You make our hearts sing!"

Valentine's Crayons

For Valentine's day my kids made crayon hearts to give to their classmates.  We took our old crayons and removed the outside paper from them. Then broke them into pieces and put them into the plastic mold.

 

After breaking the crayons into the mold, I baked them on a metal pan at 250 degrees for about 20 minutes. As soon as they looked entirely melted I pulled them out of the oven and let them cool. Once cooled, they popped right out super easily.

The next step involved gluing the hearts to a piece of card stock paper that said, "You color my world!". I used the hot glue gun, which seemed to do the trick nicely. The kids enjoyed the process and the Valentine's were a big hit. This inspiration came from Family Fun! 

Lego Birthday Party

This years birthday party for my son was a Lego theme! My son loves Legos!

We dumped all his Legos on the table and had a pile of his creation books available for kids to build whatever they wanted. It was a great table decoration and the kids played for hours.

 

Homemade chocolate cupcakes with Lego pieces as the topping was an easy dessert.

I found lots of inspiration for this type of theme. I got the invitations and coloring books from Cleo Livin' Life blog site. Check them out here. 

 

You can see the coloring books in this picture. They turned out pretty cool and were easy to assemble with my sewing machine. 

Overall the party was fun and it turned out to be an easy theme to pull off. 

Some other good ideas included: 

Wrapping juice boxes to look like Legos.

Game ideas from Homemaking Fun blog.

I'm so glad my son liked the Lego idea in the first place! 

Be Mine Valentine Buckle

My friend, Brandy, over at Urban Cowgirl Creations has an amazing talent. She makes these fabulous belt buckles, personalized bracelets, and cowgirl rings. My husband, being the sweetie that he is, was sneaky and contacted her to buy me my very own belt buckle for Christmas. I'd been keeping m eye on them for some time and had a heck of a time picking out the perfect one. He also got our daughter one of her bracelets, which she adores. It was such a surprise and man do I love surprises! You have to check out her Etsy Shop! I may just break down and get this new Valentines buckle. It is going to become my new accessory that I swap out like purses. :) Isn't this one cute?

Ellis Family Recap 2010

Family Wordle

Last year I created a wordle and loved how easy it was to express all the highlights of the year without the usual long letter that I end up writing. I decided that for 2010 I would do the same thing. So here is the recap of the Ellis Family in 2010. To create your own Wordle click this link. Happy Holidays!

Movie Themed Birthday Party

A Cinema Sign

My daughter celebrated her 5th birthday in September! I threw her a movie themed birthday. I borrowed a large projector screen and projector, which we connected to our own surround sound DVD player. The featured movie was the newest Tinkerbell Movie.

 We set up the basement with maroon curtains borrowed from my mom's house. This helped with the theme and darkened the room.

 I set up a table with rope lights for the kids to purchase candy, popcorn, drinks, and bags of licorice with chocolate covered raisins.

 Each item they purchased had a price in tickets. The ticket price was written in both number form and visually displayed with the tickets themselves. This helped for the really little kids that couldn't read the price. 

 The popcorn bags were just paper lunch sacks cut with pinking shears, my mom's idea. Then I found these popcorn coasters in the 50 cent Michaels store bin. I glued them on the bags ahead of time.

 When the guests arrived, their movie ticket and the tickets they used to buy the food and drink items were in an envelope. The envelopes were in alphabetical order for my kids to hand out to the guests at the Will Call counter.

 Once it was time to start the movie showing, I had the kids purchase their movie snacks and line up in the stairwell until the ticket taker was ready. My friend, Nicole, loaned me the dark black curtains at the bottom of the stairs so that the kids couldn't see the theater until it was time. They entered through the curtain, handed off their movie ticket and then found a seat in the theater.

 I purchased large posters of different movies. I had Staples print these for me in black and white. They were quite large and only cost me $1.99 each poster. The picture frame on the left was purchased at Micheals. I created scrapbook like letters of my daughter's name and slid them into the frame.

 The kids had such a great time. My favorite part was when the kids continually said, "this is the best party I've ever been too". That was icing on the cake. My son now wants to know what movie we will be showing for his party. I haven't told him that I don't throw the same party twice. We might have to use Family Fun's movie night as a drive-in them for him.

Back To School...already

With back to school coming before we know it, the kids and I decided to get started and get organized.
To start the school year off right, we put together little gift baskets for the teachers. I found most all the items at Target in their dollar isle. Some items I did get at Staples. Little things, like stamps, sticky notes, highlighters, etc, will be a great gift to kick start the school year. I know I'd love something this thoughtful from one of my students. The kids are thrilled to show and share their enthusiasm through these gifts. They still think we should add some candy of some kind too. So sweet!

We've been gradually gathering school supply items as we find them on sale. As we bought the items we needed somewhere to keep track of them until school starts. So, I photocopies their school supply lists so that we'd have one to take to the store with us and stapled the other to a paper grocery sack. As we buy the items we check them off and add them to their individual bags. This is working out great and the kids feel so organized and are beginning to get excited for school. Now for the sales: Staples has huge savings. I signed up to get their weekly ads, which come via email a day or two prior to when they hit the Sunday newspaper shelves. This is awesome, because then I know what penny sales will be available on Sunday morning. One week, the kids got packs of 8 pencils for a penny a pack and packs of 4 glue sticks for a penny. They each were able to get two of each, which went into their paper sacks. Now the new penny sale deal at Staples usually have to be bought with other items that total $5, but so far I just look for other supplies that are a great buy to reach to that price.

You can see inside the bag that we've started to collect our supplies. I think it would be neat to add the price next to the item to see how great a shopper I am when all the supplies are purchased. I might start competing with myself year after year to get a better deal.

FYI: As a teacher, Staples will allow 25 items to be purchased. This is a great way for teachers to stock up their classrooms with supplies for pennies, literally. I always keep certain things on hand and then when a student asks for something, I don't think twice to hand over something that may have cost so little. I love great deals!