All in Crafts
My best friend Emily did a Paw Patrol themed birthday party for Lydia’s 3rd birthday. She really wanted to make some sort of invitation like she did in years’ past, but a lot like me, we keep saying that we are going to take the “easy” way out and buy premade ones. Well while that may be easy, it isn’t always as cute or as cheap. So with Pinterest’s help, we came up with a design, I used the Silhouette Cameo to cut it, and she assembled it!
At Melody’s Snow White birthday party, I wanted something to hang on our back door during the party. None of my smaller door hangers really fit the theme, so I decided to make something myself.
For Melody’s Snow White Birthday Party, I wanted to add inexpensive but themed decor throughout. I had the idea for her to paint a Snow White canvas painting. I had some big canvases, but I opted to use one of the smaller ones because it would be easier to paint, and it would allow for an easier placement at the party.
For Mother’s Day this year, I decided to make both my mom and Brad’s mom homemade pictures frames. I bought a pack of wooden frames from Michael’s, and we used paint and brushes we already had at home!
So I knew back in December when I was considering doing a Snow White Birthday party for Melody that if I did, she would wear her Snow White dress from Halloween. It would be perfect and adorable. We even took the dress to Disney World in February to take some pictures of her to use around the party for decor.
The week of Melody’s Snow White Birthday, I started reconsidering party favors. I already magical kisses favors, but as the party neared I realized we would have quite a few kids. So I decided I wanted to do something small for the kids specifically but wasn’t sure what.
I went back and forth a lot on what kind of party favor to do at Melody’s Snow White birthday party. I really wanted something that went with the theme, but I also didn’t want to take ideas that made more sense for future birthday parties (princess wands, crowns, etc.). I came across an idea on Pinterest that referenced Magical Kisses, and I opted to go with that.
So let it be known (and I am almost certain every mom agrees), May is the worst month of the year! In addition to the normal end of school year craziness, there is Melody’s birthday, our anniversary, Mother’s Day, and the list goes on. So to add to this I had to come up with end of year gifts for her two preschool teachers, her three dance teachers, and I wanted to send something to all of the teachers at her preschool (there are only 9). I didn’t go as crafty as I did for Christmas (preschool and dance), but I did make a few homemade gifts to go along with the gift cards I bought!
A few years ago, my best friend Emily gave me an adorable Happy Everything serving dish. I adore serving dishes (my husband despises them!). Well last year I was lucky and found the perfect attachment for her “You are my Sunshine” themed party. Well I didn’t have much luck finding a good apple or princess attachment for Melody’s Snow White party. So I decided to make my own!
So this year, I had to make two stroller tags back to back. I guess I didn’t have to, but you never know the condition the stroller tag will be in when you get home, so I did two. One for the trip we took in February with Brad, and one for the trip in March with my mom. Check them both out below!
As you can probably tell from my other blog posts, we have become the family that wears matching shirts, ha! Ever since I got a Silhouette Cameo, we have taken full advantage of this. We have made shirts for Disney, conventions, just because. Well we debated what kind of shirts to do for our trip in February to Disney. We ended up going a different route than the shirts we’ve done in the past. We opted to make shirts of our favorite ride in Epcot, Living with the Land.
So here is part three to my Silhouette Cameo projects (here you can find parts one and two). I have made lots of things for Melody for school, finally decided to add some vinyl to some clothes I have had for a while, made some Disney shirts, and some Christmas bags! {I have made a lot more with my machine, but I try not to duplicate things. So if I have spoken about it in a previous post, I did not include it} Check it all out below.
Since this is Melody’s first year of preschool, it is also the first year I have to do teacher gifts. I went back and forth with a lot of options I found on Pinterest, but I ultimately decided to do something similar to the dance teacher gifts. Instead of mason jars, I opted for mason jar cups. Since it was a cup, I decided to do their first initial instead of something Christmas related. Lastly, I include a gift card to a local bakery.
This is Melody’s first year in dance. And since Christmas is during the dance year, I wanted to do a small gift for her teachers. She has one teacher and two assistants. For Christmas, I decided to get them all the same gift. One of the assistants is a boy, so I had to keep that in mind when deciding on a gift to give. I also wanted something that representing dance in some way. This made things really difficult. But I fell back to a super easy gift of chocolate. Chocolate works for all genders and most people like it. So I knew I wanted to do something like that. I had found some cute ideas with mason jars that made the jar look like a reindeer. Well that was a bit too much work for me. So instead, I played off the idea of mason jars, and I decided to decorate them with vinyl using my Silhouette Cameo. See how I did it below (oh, and this could easily be done without a Silhouette!).
I have been trying to do more crafts with Melody on the days we are at home and not involved in preschool or dance. One of the Christmas crafts I wanted to do was a felt tree. I liked this idea because she could move the ornaments around all season if she wanted since no glue is involved. She had a lot of fun making it and was super proud of the results!
I made Melody another Halloween happy this year. I only did 3 things this year, and they were things I would do even if I didn’t consider them “happys“. First I bought her a cute pair of Halloween themed pajamas. I bought a 3T so that they would also fit next year (although I am not biased to holidays throughout the year…meaning she wears Halloween pajamas even at Easter). I also bought her a new book called Never Touch a Spider. She loves this series of book because of all the things to touch. However, this book is kind of weird compared to the others, but she doesn’t know the difference! Lastly I bought her a small pumpkin to paint from the Target dollar section. I plan on her painting this week since it is Fall Break for dance and school.
For Mother’s Day this year, I made this for my mom as a gift from Melody. I used my Silhouette Cameo, but this would be something you could do by hand if you wanted. You may have some trouble cutting the intricate detail of #1 Nana, but you could always handwrite this.
The theme for Melody's second birthday was "You are my Sunshine". In case of rain or the kids didn't want to go outside during the party to play, I wanted something for the kids to do inside besides just play with Melody's toys and destroy the house, ha! I decided to make a coloring sheet for the kids.
For Melody's second birthday, the theme was "You are my Sunshine". Even before we had to move to the party to Emily's house, I had planned for the party to be primarily inside with only a few things outside. I wanted to find some sort of decor to add throughout the party that would play up the theme but also be fairly inexpensive. I decided to make centerpieces/vases to fulfill this!
For Mother's Day, I wanted to do a small craft for our moms from Melody. At the time we were living in a hotel, so my options were fairly limited. I did have my Silhouette Cameo at the hotel since I was prepping for Melody's birthday party. So I decided to use it.
