Lyla's Moana Birthday Party

I'm proud of myself for actually writing a post without letting three months pass by ;).  Right now I'm working on planning Ana's 1st birthday party.  I can't believe that she turns one in less than a month! Since I've got birthdays on my mind I thought I would write a post on the Moana party that we had for Lyla's 3rd birthday.  One thing that I have definitely loved about being a mom is planning and throwing birthday parties.  It is so much fun! And this year was especially fun because this was the first year that Lyla was able to pick her own theme.  She loves the movie Moana-she wants to watch it all the time.  I don't mind because I love the movie and especially love the music. 

I created this invite in my Pixelmator software.  I bought this Moana clipart from here. It came with that cute background on the invite too.  You'll see this clipart used again later on.

I'm going to start with the games because that was the first thing that we did at the party.  The main game was an Moana obstacle course that I created.

1st the kids slid down the slide.

Next the kids had to crawl or weave through the seaweed tunnel.  I made this obstacle by sticking bamboo skewers in the ground an then slipping the pool noodles over them to create an arch.  Then I added green streamers for the seaweed.

Next they had to jump on the trampoline.  I used to jump on this little trampoline when I was a little girl.  It belonged to my grandmother and I love that Lyla gets to jump on it too!  The 4th obstacle was to crab walk or crawl from the trampoline to the patio.  I figured that most toddlers wouldn't be able to crab walk yet. 

The next obstacle was to "paddle your boat."  I drew a line on the concrete with sidewalk chalk and the kids had to follow the line while holding the "paddle."  We used Lyla's toy shovel for the paddle.  If I would of had more time I would of made a paddle out of some sort of handle and cardboard.

I was originally going to have coconut bowling be a separate activity but we had a couple of pins that were permanently deflated so I decided to incorporate it as an obstacle instead.  This blow up bowling set was a present from Lyla's Aunt for her 2nd birthday.  I found these sea decorations at the dollar store and just taped them to the pins.  I sent my husband out the day of the party to find this coconut.  I called this obstacle "breaking the sea wall." 

Finally the kids had to carry the heart of Te Fiti to Te Fiti.  I had some little stones and I taped some heart of Te Fiti's that I had printed and cut out on card stock to them.  I just found the clip art by doing a google search and it was free.  Then I put them on spoons and the kids had to carry them to the Te Fiti backdrop that I made.

I originally drew out Te Fiti in my dining room with it taped to the wall.  I used painters tape to give my self a line to reference for where to put the facial features.  Unfortunately it ended up ripping the tablecloth which was just a cheap dollar store one when I took it off.  I didn't want to draw the face again to I just put the other tablecloth I had bought behind it.  I drew hear face on with a green sharpie.  The heart is just a bigger version of the one I made for the obstacle course.  I used dollar store grass stuff and a garland from Oriental Trading Company to create her hair.  I bought some leis from Party City for guests to wear while taking pictures. 

The only other activity I had was the water table.  You can read more about how I made this in this post.  This was a big hit at both her 2nd birthday party and this one.  Little sister loved it to and got soaking wet!

Inside I had a happy birthday banner that was a free printable from Catch My Party and you can find them here.  I also used the little tented cards to label the food and the You're Welcome sign which I taped to the front door.  I made the leaf garland with my Silhouette Portrait.  I found the tropical leaves in the design store and cut them out on different shades of green card stock.  Then I punch holes in each leaf and strung them onto some bakers twine.  I hung them up with some push pins in the ceiling.  I wish I had taken a better picture of it and I had plenty of opportunities since it was up for a month after the party!  I decorated with some leis on the table and these cute Kakamora pirates that I made using coconut cups from Oriental Trading Company, craft acrylic paint, and mod podge.  Here's the tutorial that I used to make these. 

I didn't do a good job of taking pictures of the food but I served sandwich meat and cheese and crab salad with Kings Hawaiian hoagie buns (and the regular size Kings Hawaiian rolls for the little ones).  I had a veggie tray with ranch dip and made a little island in the dip with half a red potato with a carrot stuck in it for the trunk of a palm tree and a green pepper cut for the palm leaves.  You can see it in the picture above (it was the only picture I got!).  We also had chips and pineapple.

I made a this lime sherbet punch and called it Heart of Te Fiti punch.

Of course the crowning glory of it all was the cake!  I was so pleased with how it turned out.  You can find a bunch of examples of similar cakes to this on Pinterest.  For the cake I used this recipe for chocolate cake and this recipe for mock chocolate mousse filling.  The filling was so good!  I made three layers of the cake.  I used this buttercream recipe.  I crumb coated the cake with white frosting after filling and stacking the layers.  Then I used a spatula with the blue frosting to give it the wavy texture.  I used a piping bag with a grass decorating tip for the grass.  I bought the little flowers at Joann Fabric.  The bamboo is made with Pepperidge Farm Pirouette Cookies.  I found the Moana set with canoe at Target.  I can't believe I made this cake!

Finally the favor bags contained one of the Kakamora coconut cups with a bamboo straw, a bag with shark, octopus, and fish gummies, and Moana temporary tattoos.  I made the bag toppers with my Silhouette Portrait and the same clip art as the invite.  The font is a free Moana font.  The tattoos were made using my Silhouette Portrait and the special tattoo paper that they make.  I used this clipart and I especially liked the Maui ones that look like his tattoos.

Lyla has been a big fan of tattoos lately so she loved these. I seriously loved planning and throwing this party.  I hope this post gives you some inspiration! 

Play Pom Pom letters

So it's been awhile...I'm not sure how that happened.  I guess I've been more into completing projects lately than blogging about them.  Plus I've had some big changes in my life as I'm transitioning from teaching full time to staying at home with my girls and starting my piano studio back up again.  But my intent behind starting this blog was to share my ideas to pay back for all of the great ideas that I get from other blogs.  So here I am again to finally blog about a couple of projects that I completed way back in May.

After I finished my makeover of my sewing room I figure that I better start on the family/play room since I would want the girls down there playing sometimes while I'm sewing.  I decided to paint the room the same color as the living room upstairs: Behr Silver Drop.  So I've been terrible about taking before pictures in this house but I have a few pretty awful ones for you.

The original wall color wasn't terrible but it wasn't my favorite either.  I also painted the trim because I prefer white trim to this dark stuff.  The rock wall is something that we want to remove of course but it will be quite sometime before that is high on the priority list to do.  So we live with it for now...

The lighting down here is terrible because it is a basement.  The wall color actually reads much lighter in person.  We were able to get the book ledges put up from Lyla's bedroom at our old house.  This also meant that I was finally able to finish unpacking all the boxes from our move since the only boxes left were the books from Lyla's room!

In this photo you can see the true color of the walls a little better.  The media console from our living room from our last house lives down here now and you can also read more about those stenciled storage boxes here.  We decided to put the benches from our porch at our last house on either side of the media console.  They are awesome for concealed toy storage in this room.  They also make great extra seating for reading books etc.

I decided to re-cover them with a black and cream ticking stripe fabric to make the bench a little more neutral since I wanted to go pretty colorful in the decor.  As you can see I am kind of picking random and fun pillows to go on the benches.  I don't quite have enough to fill both benches right now because I just buy them as I find one that stands out to me at a store.

For the decor I wanted to go with a fun kids theme and I wanted the colors to be rainbow.  You can see that I was taking these pictures while Lyla was watching her favorite show, Vampirina.  I can't wait to get started on her Halloween costume this year because she wants to be Vampirina and I have the perfect sewing patterns to make it happen!

I found some shadow boxes at Michaels online that came in a variety of colors.  I popped out the glass of each shadow box and moved the back to the fronts of the shadowbox so that I could pin the girl's artwork to them as a changeable gallery.  I found the crayon print and Picasso quote print on Etsy and just stuck them in my favorite white Target frames.  I made the rainbow ABC print myself on my Pixelmator software using the clipping mask tool.  The Jane Austen quote art is from our porch in our last house.

Now finally I will get to the tutorial part of this post: that Play pom pom sign.  I found lots of inspiration for this on Etsy and Pinterest but I knew that I could make my own.  I bought the largest paper mache letters at Hobby Lobby and found these wool felt pom poms at Oriental Trading.  I started by cutting off the fronts of each letter with an exacto knife and then I pushed that piece into the letter so that it was about halfway in.  Sorry I forgot to take a picture of this step.  I wanted the pom pom texture to be coming out of the letter.

Then I spray painted the letters white.

Then I glued in the pom poms with a hot glue gun, easy peasy!

The hardest part was actually hanging it on the wall.  I was going to use those command picture hanger strips but the wall was too bumpy and I couldn't get them to stick properly to stay up.  I ended up just nailing them to the wall.

I have a bonus project with this post because I also finished a little gallery wall above the piano in our living room as well.

The funny thing is that I actually just changed this up on Saturday so I'll share that with you at the end of this post.

This clock was a gift from my parents and this little music art piece next to it was from our porch at our old house.

I made this Sound of Music print with my Pixelmator software for my student teacher a few years ago. I of course printed an extra one for myself. It sat behind my desk in my classroom.  This is actually sitting on the piano now since I switched things around.

I bought this little piano player print on Etsy.

Finally, I saw piece of art like this in Hobby Lobby and decided I could make my own.  I found the framed wood piece at Hobby Lobby and used my Silhouette Portrait to cut the words and piano keys on vinyl.  I free handed the lines with a sharpie and I totally should of sketched them out first because a couple of them are pretty rough but I'm embracing the imperfections.

Here is what the wall looks like now.  I didn't edit this photo at all so it isn't the best.  My favorite fabric store in town is closing which is super sad.  They are selling everything in their story including the sample projects for kits that they sold.  I am not a quilter so when I saw this little sample for sale I was excited!  The background has subtle music notes quilted in.  It is so amazing and cute!  I'm not entirely satisfied with the layout of the thing in the gallery now, I'm thinking that I might swap the music plaque and the clock to balance it out better.  What do you think?

So I have so many posts that I can write next: my daughter's Moana 3rd birthday, tons of sewing projects, a little Ikea hack kids table, a dress up closet that I made out of a Target bookshelf from my classroom, and I am currently working on an update to our little mudroom.  And I totally forgot to take before pictures!  Hopefully it won't be as long this time before I post again!