As I said in a previous post, when I began planning the kids birthday party, I scoured the internet for ideas. The first thing I looked for was ideas for the invitations. There are definitely a lot out there and the majority use the Acceptance Letter Harry received in the first book, informing him that he had been accepted to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. But I knew I wanted to do something a little different and incorporate the Hogwarts Coat of Arms.

So, naturally I turned to my Stampin’ Up stash of goodies and had the kids help me pick out the perfect colours to represent each of the four Houses. They picked Cherry Cobbler for Gryffindor, Garden Green for Slytherin, Daffodil Delight for Hufflepuff and Pacific Point for Ravenclaw.

The next hurdle was creating the shield itself – really wish the Big Shot had a die for this one! I downloaded a shield from the internet and shrunk it to the size I needed for the card and made a template. I then cut out, by hand, each colour that makes up the shield.

Then I used the Big Shot and the Top Note Bigz Die for the inside of the card and the Stripes Embossing Folder to emboss the background for the shield.  This is what everything looks like before it was assembled.

Once I had all the pieces of the shield cut out, I reassembled them into a shield, using adhesive onto an Early Espresso sheet of cardstock.

I then cut out each shield, leaving a little outline of the Espresso as a shadow. I attached everything to a Cherry Cobbler base, representing Gryffindor (my kids favourite house), and cut the You’re Invited ribbon free hand.  You can’t tell from this picture, but I sponged the Crumb Cake layer and the You’re Invited ribbon, with my Crumb Cake Stampin’ Pad, to give it more of an aged look.

It was a lot of work but I love the result and so do my kids. Just one problem. They informed me, after the invites were all done of course, that I reversed the order of the Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff Houses on the Coat of Arms! Oh well, I think they still look great.

The details:

Card Stock: Cherry Cobbler, Garden Green, Pacific Point, Daffodil Delight, Very Vanilla, Crumb Cake, Early Espresso

Ink: Crumb Cake and Early Espresso

Stamp Sets: Inviting, Broad Street Alphabet

Tools: Big Shot, Top Note Bigz Die, Stripes Embossing Folder

My nephew T is now a six year old. Six!!! I’m having a hard time wrapping my head around that since my daughter’s six birthday is not far behind.

Anyway, this year he decided he wanted Lego Ninjago to be the theme of his party. Now if you know my sister at all, you know that she loves to buy paper goods, particularly those found in a party store. So just imagine how she felt when she discovered you could not buy Lego Ninjago themed party goods. The horror!

What do you do when you can’t buy what you want? You make it. We scoured the Internet for ideas, although there weren’t many and managed to come up with some ideas that made the birthday boy very happy.

It was my job to create the birthday banner and cake. First I found a good template of a Ninjago Mini figure and used the head for the banner. This is what I came up with:

For the cake we decided to do a cake / cupcake tower combo.  T’s favourite Ninjago character is Kai, so I based the cake portion on him and my husband created a Japanese Torii to go on top.  The cupcakes were simple with the faces of Kai, Jay and Cole. I was very happy with the way the icing colours turned out, especially the black!

My sister also got crafty and created some Ninjago balloons using yellow balloons, tissue paper and photocopies of their eyes. Awesome aren’t they!

Last but not least, she also created some themed cups and loot bags.

The kids had a great time, the birthday boy was extremely happy and maybe, just maybe I may have cured my sister’s addiction to party good stores. Well a girl can dream can’t she.

My daughter is a huge Strawberry Shortcake fan, so it was no surprise when she requested this as the theme for her last birthday party.  Only problem is, unless you live in the United States, it is very hard to find party supplies with Strawberry Shortcake on them.

Instead I decided to make my own Strawberry Shortcake inspired decorations and I am super happy with the way they turned out.

Invitation

Pom Poms before

I went with a pink, lime green and white colour scheme and wanted to do something other than balloons and streamers.  My little girl is no longer a baby, this was her fifth birthday, so I thought it was time to do something a little more grown up. I absolutely love the look of these pom poms and they were super easy to make too.

Birthday Banner before

And what’s a party without a birthday banner. I even managed to find some images of Strawberry Shortcake online, to include on the banner. Love how this turned out.

Pom Poms and Birthday Banner after

Sign welcoming guests to the party

The details of the invitation had been about inviting everyone to the Berry Cafe, so had to have a sign.

Pin the stem on the Strawberry

There were eight kids at the party, all cousins (ages 8 months to 7 years), so I came up with a couple of activities to keep them entertained, including Pinning the Stem on the Strawberry.  Had the husband cut out a large strawberry from poster board and then just cut stems out of construction paper. Was a huge hit with the kids.

Loot bag stuff

We also had them do a colouring craft. I found flower pots at Michael’s that had a colouring page insert, so they had a great being creative and then had a nice keepsake to take home with them. I also included a pack of flower seeds, along with a book and colouring book in the loot bags. I, for one, am tired of the dollar store crap my kids bring home from parties, so I wanted to make sure the kids took something home that was actually useful.

Cake and candy

And no birthday is complete without cake. Again I used the same colours and designed the cake to represent new Strawberry Shortcake’s dress, with pink polka dots on the bottom and the diamond / strawberry pattern on top. My daughter loved it which is what it was all about.

It was a great party and I loved how everything came together and put a big smile on my daughter’s face.  Now if only I could deal with the fact that she is now 5!!!!