Mother's Day Tea

The kids and I LOVE Tea Parties!!  We have tea parties usually about once a month. Our typical tea party is juice and cinnamon rolls.  Well this time we planned a "Fancy Tea Party" for Nani (my mom).  We collected a tea set and some mismatched tea cups/plates,  created some cute projects like tissue paper flowers (Martha Stewart) for napkin rings,  made a table runner out of old book pages (Lisa Storms),  designed and painted a special cake stand and then we planned a fun menu.  The best part was making the Merks Coffee Cake that my mom has always made since I was little.  To top the cake off we made this cute banner. 

Here are some of the details:

My mom's recipe...she never puts the icing on.  Yummy!!

This adorable rose ball was found at Home Goods.  It was $20.00 which I think is a great deal, just not such a great deal that we could buy more than one.  So we made tissue paper poms to go with the rose ball.  This isn't a terrific pic, but it really did look pretty.

Wow was this "Fancy Tea Party" ever fun!!!  I think Gavin and Emma had a ton of fun planning and preparing for this special day, but once the day got here the fun they had was sharing everything with Nani and Papa.  Of course play time was also cherished.

What a little lady!!  Gavin and Emma had milk with straws that flavored their milk as they drank it.  That was something new to them.

Sweetness

Gavin's fav= sugar cookies

My mom was surprised.  :)

I love you Mom!!  Happy Mother's Day to the best mom in the whole world.  I can only hope that I can be 1/2 the mom you are.

The Little (Big) Details of Lily's Rainbow Party

So many little details added up to the big picture of Lily's 1st birthday party.  Oh what wonderful fun it was.  I will be scrapping her party, the actual "fun" everyone had and I will post those pages later.

Here are SOME of the cute projects we did. Gavin and Emma were involved every step of the way. :)

Food:

Drink Table (with monthly banner above it)

I was going to make the fruit into "Rainbow Skewers" but figured that wouldn't be very safe!!  :)

The CAKE before being cut.

Ta Da!!!!!!  The big surprise in the middle of the cake.  Quite the hit!!!

Yummy cake pops!!  Inside: chocolate frosting and chocolate cake

Dessert table...this was so much fun!!  Gavin and Emma sorted ALL the candy into color groups. Perfect helpers.

Decorations:

Scallop punches sewn together. (It was during this project that my sewing machine decided to croak.)

A rainbow of sippy cups all labeled with kiddos names.  They each got to take their cup home as one of the favors.

Lily's Mantle

Center Pieces

Full view of dessert table (but from this view you can't see two of the pom poms.)

Another view of some of the decorations.  I forgot to take pictures of the food but you can kinda see here that YES we did serve more than just dessert. :) 

"Welcome"

THE hat. This was another 3am project.  :)

These are SO fun to make!!!  I followed Martha Stewart's directions. 

I made this wreath using different tutorials all over the web.  The flowers were a first for me so I tried about 3 different ways. 

eighteen 25 is the blog where I find all my 16x20 subway art.  LOVE that blog.

Is she really one??  I painted this at about 3am...don't laugh!!

I sewed this pennant banner on my mom's machine.   Thanks mom!!!

I found most of these ideas on Pinterest.  I LOVE Pinterest.  If you want to find a direct link (I am still learning how to post links directly on my blog) please go to my Pinterest board "Lily's Rainbow Party".

Delicious Doughnuts

Okay...this you HAVE to try!!!  Thanks to littlebitfunky.com we made the yummiest and easiest doughnuts last week!! 

1 can Grands Buttermilk biscuits
oil
melted butter
cinn/sugar for coating

Warm about 1/2" oil in pan on medium heat
Cut out the center of each biscuit (use center for doughnut hole)
Place in oil and brown on each side
Set on paper towel to cool
Dip in melted butter
Then dip in cinnamon sugar mixture.
EAT! EAT! EAT!!!!!!!

I Am Addicted to Pinterest!!!

I LOVE LOVE LOVE Pinterest and all the wonderful project ideas I find. This project however is THE WORST PROJECT EVER!! LOL!!!  Yes, it was literally HORRIBLE!!  For me anyway.  After many failed attempts at trying to make this work I decided to read some comments about this project and I guess I am not the only one to have a hard time.  If anyone out there knows the trick to make it work please let me know.

These were supposed to be yarn balloons.  Ummmm...8 bottles of glue, lots of yarn, and major amounts of newspaper GLUED to my concrete later....they did not turn out.  Each balloon took about an hour between cutting the yarn, prepping the glue and then wrapping the gluey/sticky yarn around the balloon.  Half the time the yarn just fell off.  Then once dry and we popped the balloon, the yarn stuck to the balloon and collapsed inward with the balloon.  Too bad.  We really wanted these for our Rainbow Party. 

Here is what they looked like after many attempts at trying to get the yarn to stick to the balloon (Doesn't look to bad here does it?  I actually was holding out hope at this point.):

Well.....the next day we carefully popped the balloon inside the yarn and here is what they looked like:

So here was our major FLOP of a project.  Next I will be posting about some awesome projects we have done lately.  (Even though this didn't work out, we learned from it and that is what still made it a valuable project.)  Everything we try to do won't always work out and sometimes we need to know when to throw in the towel!!  LOL!!