Thursday, May 12, 2011

S'more Birthday Party

My oldest daughter turned 15 this year! 15! I can't believe she is that old.  Where did the time go?  It seems like just the other day when she was a cute little toddler in pig tails, standing on her makeshift stage (her little tea table) singing to us.  I miss those days and that adorable little version of her, but I am also enjoying this stage of her life.  It is so much fun to always have a buddy to go shopping with and she is such a help to me in so many ways. I am so proud of her and grateful that she is a part of my life. 

Anyway--we did a fun party for her birthday this year.  She originally wanted a bon-fire in the back yard, but we scaled it down and did a  little camp fire and a fun buffet table with different items to build s'mores (I didn't know there were so many different options for marshmallows!) and hot chocolate. 



I set up this table outside, under our deck.  Our theater room in the basement has an outside entrance that opens up to this area.  It was perfect for the party because although you can't tell from the pictures, it was freezing  and super windy outside.  They all eventually ended up in the theater room watching movies.


This banner was super quick and easy to make.  I just cut the letters and the scalloped circles on my cricut , and the triangles were cut from a piece of burlap I already had. I used a tape runner to attach the circles and the letters to the burlap.  I cut the triangles just a little longer than the size I wanted them to be so I could fold the top over a piece of twine.   I just used hot glue on the very top edge of the triangle and folded it down about a 1/4 - 1/2 of an inch.  I was careful not to use too much glue, because I needed to create a sort of pocket to thread the twine through. After threading the twine through, I centered it over the table and stapled the ends of the twine in place. 




 We had a few different options for s'mores. 


Peanut Butter S'mores were reese cups, graham crackers and marshmallows.

Caramel S'mores with Rolo's. 


and just the traditional s'mores.


A few different kinds of marshmallows were on the table as well.

These marshmallows were huge!


Caramel marshmallows


Coconut marshmallows.



And more marshmallows for the hot chocolate.



You can't have s'mores without a fire.

This is my husband, who may or may not have singed his hair while starting the fire! LOL!
(Don't worry, the baby was safe inside the house with me while he was playing with matches!)


 A few of the kids braving the cold!


This party was quite in-expensive, and it was really quick and easy to get it all pulled together.  Besides the banner, the only other thing I made was the little signs for the baskets on the table.  I simply cut the size I wanted from a paper sack, crumpled up the pieces, laid the pieces flat and inked the edges and the front with scrapbooking ink, wrote the message with a black sharpie and clipped them to the baskets with tiny clothes pins I found at Wal-Mart.   And that's it, just a couple of simple little projects like that added so much to the party!

Thanks for visiting.  Come back soon!

Wednesday, May 11, 2011

Busy Life!

Wow, it's been a while since I've posted anything!  I have been crazy busy with..... just life I guess. Since I last posted, we have been spending a lot of time doing this:


And this:




and filming new episodes of Style Made Simple! 


 
I had one of the craziest weeks I've ever had last week.  Between baseball, the show, cake orders, teacher appreciation week, my computer crashing as well as my edible ink printer, setting up a backdrop and decorations for a wedding and getting Mother's Day gifts made and delivered, it was chaos! I survived, but I wasn't able to get anything posted!  The worst thing was my computer crashing, and the timing couldn't have been worse.  I had to get a new computer and they are still working on my old one.  The tech guy at the computer store is trying to extract anything he can from my hard drive.  Actually, the latest update I got (yesterday) was that they could probably save almost everything!  Whew, relief!  I can't tell you how many hundreds of pictures are on that hard drive that I haven't backed up anywhere!  I guess that was a good lesson on backing up my computer, or at least my pictures! 

Anyway, back to my blog!  Over the next couple of days, I will be doing a couple of posts showing some of the things from Style Made Simple and my daughter's S'mores birthday party. Keep checking back!