Safari Party!

Silas has been 4 since October, so I guess its time to share a little of the details from the fun Safari Party that we had.

So far we've done dinosaurs and race cars and if you know Silas an animal type of theme was our next go to.  This was probably the easiest party I have put together for him.  I didn't do a ton of diy for this one but still added some personal touches to make it special.  It really doesn't take hours and hours to pull together a fun party for your kids.  Just a little planning ahead and you are golden.

When we decided on a (loosely) based safari theme I knew I wanted to find some cute safari hats and a little prop for taking photos (the jeep cutout).  I searched all around for these hats and kept coming up short.  Most were just too pricey for as many as I wanted to buy.  I ended up finding a great price online with Party Cheap. They had several great things for our theme so I also picked up the inflatable animals and leaf streamer from there.  

After ordering a few of the key elements we then used all sorts of things from around the house to put this whole thing together.  Plastic animal figurines (which Silas moved locations of the whole time), I reused the large faux leaves I got for his dino party a few years back (from the dollar tree), one of my antique lanterns and several items we have picked up from other countries we have visited.  It was such a fun, easy and simple party.

Initially I was going to try and find a fun animal or jungle type fabric print and make a table cloth.   The time got away from me and I almost used a plastic one until I finally got creative and decided to use the awesome hammock we got on our last trip to Panama.  It was fun and different and I loved it. Sometimes it just takes looking around your house for a minute to find a new use for an item you really like.

So now for the one part that I did diy - the water color canvas.  

Usually I do some sort of banner but I wanted to try something different this year.  I had some extra canvases, some paint, so why not?  It took hardly anytime but added a personal touch to the whole thing.

Its been 3 months and I still can't believe my little boy is 4.  I really don't like to think about him getting much older.  I'm just enjoying every moment the best I can.  Every sweet hug, funny thing he says, prayers prayed, painting project and each little birthday.

A Tween Pirate Birthday Party

Happy Valentine's day to all you lovely people.  I hope its a sweet day for you!  This is totally not a Valentine's related post - it does however have to do with people whom I love very much though, so that counts right?  If you want to check out some Valentine's inspiration you can head over to the party we hosted last weekend - here.  We also had another awesome party that happened last weekend and that was the Birthday of my sweet niece, Mya who turned 11!  She is all in that tween stage where she loves One Direction, Monster High and iphones but still loves to play and be a kid.  So what to do for a tween girls birthday party?  Have a Pirate Slumber Party of course!

So all props go out to my awesome sister who worked hard on all of these awesome piraty party ideas.  I was there to help set up, give support and snap some photos.  So let me share some of the fun things we did that night.  First up, the photo session.  My sister gathered a bunch of pirate gear and they all dressed up to take some shots in front of a little backdrop.

 We just used scrap fabric and felt to make little flags for the backdrop - Its all hot glue and no sewing involved.  The flags were glued to a string of twine and hung in front of a white tablecloth - it just added a little bit of fun.

As you can imagine with a group of ten and eleven year olds, this got silly fast.  They had so much fun with it!

My sister put a lot of thought into the activities for the party.  Here's a list of fun Pirate Party Games:

1. A Scavenger Hunt - She pre-made a bunch of fun clues and hid them around the house, all leading to the next clue which finally lead them to some "buried" treasure (which was their party favors).  It was a little treasure chest full of little things like tattoos, beads and candy.  She turned it up a notch and did the whole thing in the dark so the girls each got a mini flashlight to go through the hunt together.  They loved it!

2.  Next we had to do tattoos, what Pirate is a Pirate without one?

3. We played walk the plank - which was a board propped up on two stools - they played relays where they had to do different tasks, like walking balloons to the bucket and things like that.

4. We played sword toss - which is just like ring toss.

5.  They also played who could keep their balloon in the air the longest - classic game but I think that was their favorite.  I mean who doesn't like a good balloon in the air competition?

6. Finally to start getting them settled and ready for the slumber part of the party they all got a little crafty and made treasure maps.  My sister had pre-made the paper by burning the edges to make it look like an old map - so cute.

Along with the games and photo session she also had some fun little themed snacks - I loved these!

How cute are those little Island cupcakes?  The sand is just crushed graham crackers.

She also made little jello boats with blueberry jello and orange slices and diyed the little flags.  You can find this idea and the print-out and instructions for the little flags at the Makes and Takes blog.  These were so, so cute.

So here is a source list of some of the items purchased - most of which came from Oriental Trading Company:

Bandanas, Swords & Eyepatches, Tattoos, Gold Coins, Goodie Bags, Treasure chests

All of the beads and the white & red striped straws were from the dollar tree!

We pulled out some of our scarves for head gear and found the biggest earrings we could for the dress up - we all got into the pirate spirit, even us adults.

It was such a fun and special night for Mya!  I'm not sure how much slumbering actually occurred but there was plenty of pirating.  I'm so glad I got to be a little part of the event!  Happy Birthday Mya!

So what was your favorite themed party growing up?  Or, maybe your favorite party that you have had for your kids?  Share with me!

PS - I have a couple of other party theme ideas here - dinosaur birthday party, sweet sixteen party

Thanks for joining me today!  Hope you have a lovely Valentine's day!

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More Party Details

So this is the last day of all things dinosaur party related, I promise.  I have a few more diy party details to share.  You really can do so much with a small budget when you are doing it all yourself and doing it yourself adds meaning and that personal touch that makes a gathering like this special.  It just takes a little bit of time an planning.  All of the things I did I started weeks in advance and just slowly worked on projects here and there.  These projects are super easy and I either used supplies I already hand on hand or bought at the dollar store or the Target dollar section (one of my favorite spots to grab a good deal).  So here we go!

First easy project are these mini chalkboards. 

 I started with dollar store picture frames, separated out the frames and glass and primed both pieces first.

After they were primed the frames received a couple of coats of spray paint and the glass received a couple of coats of chalkboard spray paint.  That was it, simple, easy and cheap.  I used spray paint that I already had on hand (I may be a little bit of a spray paint hoarder I have realized).  These could be cute for any occasion and any color.  

Next up is a little washi tape letter.

I found a cardboard letter in the Target dollar section a few months back.  You can get these at a lot of different craft stores as well.  Then I simply covered it using my washi tape (from Target).  

Washi tape is all the rage right now and it really is easy to use to create something fun.  You can see with my letter that I didn't take a lot of time making it perfect.  It's just haphazardly put on but I kind of liked it that way.  You can washi tape a lot of different things and it comes in all sorts of colors and patterns.  Here's a project I did a while back using washi tape.  Love this stuff.

Another easy project is creating a paper banner.

I just dove into my stash of paper and scrap paper embellishments to make a little banner.  I then wrote my letters with a marker - You could use a stencil, use vinyl letters - whatever you heart desires.  

My time was limited so free hand writing is what I went with.  Use a hole punch and a little twine and your banner is good to go.

Final easy project are the drink labels I made for the little plastic milk bottles.

For this project I used my paper punch that I recently bought on sale for $6 at AC Moore, pretty paper, some letter stamps and dollar store stickers.

Really easy and really cute.  This was a quick project and I love how they all looked together when it was all finished.  Once again, you could do so many variations of this with any theme you can dream of.

I had fun sharing all of our party details with you.  Next week we move on and I have more to share on what's happening outdoors, the status of our backyard shed and another craft project so come back to check it all out! 

I'm off to a retreat this weekend with the ladies from our church!  Hope everyone has a fantastic weekend!!

PS - Here is the original dinosaur party post and my post on how to make a painted burlap table cloth.

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Kids Party Ideas - DIY Dinosaur Burlap Tablecloth

Today I have a little dinosaur party project to share with you.  This project actually cost me nothing to make, just because I already had all of the supplies on hand but really wouldn't cost very much at all if you needed to purchase a few of the materials.  I had so much fun making this!  It's simple and easy and so cute.  It only took me a couple of hours one night to complete so if you have a lot going on this is not that a very time consuming project.

Materials needed for the project:

- Burlap cut to fit your size table

- Craft paint in your choice of colors

- Skinny tip craft paint brush & a fatter craft paint brush

- Dinosaur Stencils (you can see how I did mine below)

- Scrap Paper

- Fine tip Permanent Marker (Lighter colors work best)

So I started out by cutting my burlap to the size I wanted and then ironed my burlap on a medium-low heat setting (the steam was the best so if you had a steamer you could use that as well).

Next, I needed a few dinosaur stencils and I knew the perfect place to find a few dinosaurs - in one of Silas' dino books.  So I found a few easy shapes and traced them onto a piece of white paper and cut them out so I could then trace the pattern onto my burlap.

I decided on the placement and chose which colors I wanted to use.

Then I placed a little stack of scrap paper under each dinosaur template and traced around them with a fine tip permanent marker.  Make sure you leave the paper underneath while you paint so you won't get any bleed through on your table.  Also, the paper helps allow you to fill in a lot of the spaces in the burlap itself.  Some of the paper stuck to the back of my burlap when I was finished but I didn't mind because you couldn't tell when it was on the table.

Next I just used my skinny tipped craft paint brush to trace around the outline of the dinos and then used the fatter brush to fill it all in.  I did two coats of paint just to get a good coverage.

And then I had this!  I loved it.

It was ready for our little snack table set up.  

I love the look of burlap and you could do this with any shape, monogram, design that you wanted.  I actually have and idea of what I want to do with the tablecloth now that the party is over so hopefully I will be able to reuse it.

Thanks so much for burlap painting with us today!  Anyone else have any party planning diying going on?  Share with us!!