Horton Party

For a final wrap up of T's birthday party, I thought I'd share how I fit the theme together.  From my last two posts, you probably realize that we created T's party theme around her favorite movie, Horton Hears a Who.  If you haven't seen this animated film of the Dr. Seuss classic brought to life, you need to.  If you watch it about 50-60 times, you might start catching up with us!  Every time we watch it though, I pick up on something new and I crack up laughing.  Vlad gets me every time (the vulture, not the bunny who makes cookies), "Hear come the water slides!".  Hmm, maybe its because his accent reminds me of my mentor...  Anyways, I wanted to plan T's party around this movie without actually making it too cutesy, a touch of sophistication you might say.  OK, maybe not.  Anyways, here are the decor, craft, and food details to show how I brought this movie into our house.

Maybe I'm a romantic, but I still love a paper invite.  They set the tone for any event.  I think traditional mail is a thoughtful way to go.  Really, who doesn't like a nice little envelope amidst the bills and junk mail, all vying for your hard earned cash?!  Anyways, I designed this invitation and hand delivered them to T's friends that were invited.  For efficiency, we FB invited our adult friends at the suggestion of my B.

If you haven't yet, check out this post about the cake we had made for the party!  In addition, I tried my hand at making clover-like cake pops.  If you squint and turn your head sideways, you can see them in the picture above.  I dipped the sticks in green dye left over from our Easter egg dyeing extravaganza, made double chocolate cake pops, dipped in pink melting chocolate and sprinkled pink sugar crystals to give them some texture.  My well thought out plan was harder to execute than I expected, but cake pops are very forgiving in that they always taste delicious!  So, while they may not be as pretty as I had hoped, they tasted great!

For the decor, I embraced the clover idea and made pink and orange poms following this tutorial.  I should say that int he past, I haven't had much luck trying to make these.  The paper rips, it doesn't fluff, etc.  This time, the how-to instructions finally clicked.  In the past, I had been twisting the middle of the folded tissue which made it impossible to separate and fluff.  Duh!  So, after this epiphany, I spent many evening hours (when I wasn't nursing!) folding and fluffing poms of all different sizes.  The larger ones I hung in the windows or from the ceiling fan over the dining room table.  I twisted green pipe cleaners onto the smaller ones and placed them in vases.

For the craft/favor, I had the kids decorate flower pots and plant clover seeds. I purchased these pots from Oriental Trading, along with foam flowers and pipe cleaners.  From Amazon, I got red clover seeds.  I thought this was a great activity for the kids, especially with Earth Day just around the corner!

So, that's it!  Food, decor, and crafts to bring the Horton movie into our home for T's birthday.  I know she had a blast since she burst out crying when her friends left!  So, to round out our afternoon, we watched... you guessed it... Horton!

Halloween decor

Earlier this week, I gave some hints as to what I've been crafting on lately.  I had a surge of energy last night and this morning and got a ton done!  Actually, the surge of energy was more the fear of guests coming over tonight with my house a mess and no decorations up!  Haha! Nothing like a little motivation, huh?

Anyways, here are some of my decorations and beauties!

These are my standard, store bought decorations that I put up each year.  I got both of those Halloween cats for a total of $15 on Halloween day a bunch of years ago, marked down from $45 each!  Sweet!

This is what I've been working on:

My Halloween rag wreath!  Simply tied strips of black netting and orange and yellow fabric around an old grapevine wreath I had.  Love it!  I put it up with 3M Command Strips.  I hope it holds!

Milk jug ghosts!  I may make a few more of these, time (and milk consumption) permitting.  Lesson learned, use Sharpies, not T's washable markers!  The have white Christmas lights in the back of them so they light up at night - so cool! 

 

My piece-de-resistance!  I am in love with this!  Let's take a closer look, shall we?

I spray painted this awesome branch I found and an old clay pot with black glossy spray paint.  I found the paint in my basement from the previous owner and the pot and branch were free, total score!  Once dried, I inserted the branch into potting soil and wrapped black netting and sparkly orange tulle around the base.  I tied strips of orange fabric around some of the branches and the pot to add some color.  The s'mores guys were previously purchased.  I made mummies out of crepe paper and T.P. rolls.  I cut up paper towel rolls and wrapped felt around them, attached a handle and drew faces on them with a Sharpie.  The Frankensteins and Ghosts were totally inspired by this blogger, Kiki creates.  I love how it came out!  I hope my cats don't equally love it!  They tend to knock things over!

To top off my Halloween decoration morning, after I took our dog out one last time before work, I deposited his, um, "stuff" in our trash can only to be followed by a whole mess of scratching.  Upon closer inspection, there was a rat in our can!  Not just a rat mind you.  They get big around here, like R.O.U.S. big!  (Rodents of unusual size!)

It must not have liked me peeking at it cause it let out this unearthly shriek!  So of course I screamed, then our dog started howling.  Lovely.  Still grossed out!