theme parties

New Birthday Balls

/ Jodi / 25 Comments

I have to admit.  I love a good theme.
Party that is.

birhtdaygiphy

Birthday, holiday, any ole’ special occasion.

You would think I’ve had my fix raising my two sons, celebrating birthdays, creating Halloween costumes, being homeroom mom every elementary school year.

But nooooo – my boys are in their twenties, hubby in his fifties, and I’m still “theme”ing it up when I can.  They always harass me about it, but “I’ll betcha a nickel,” (as Pap used to say) they would be disappointed if I didn’t….

So when Marty said all he’d like for his birthday this year is some new RED felt for a beautiful gently-used pool table Nick helped him find on Craig’s list for the “man cave,” I couldn’t resist going with it.

The kids came over one evening while Marty was at a meeting and did an amazing job re-felting the table from an ordinary green to an extraordinary burgundy red.  (and saving me $300+ labor to boot!)

pool table red felt

Going with the theme, the boys bought Marty some beautiful new balls (which we had fun with all evening) 🙂 and some other pool table accessories.

pool balls

Of course I made a pool ball cake…

pool balls cake 1

…which consisted of RED velvet cupcakes (they don’t make red felt cake mix) decorated as stripes and solids (even if not the exact colors and numbers to match as was pointed out to me – and THEY give ME a hard time about my themes!?!) with white Necco wafers I numbered with black icing.

And you don’t want to know how many rolls of those things I had to go through to get 15 whites – that were NOT broken!?! 🙂 I now have a pint jar full of all the other colors if anybody has any creative ideas for using these little disks of hard sugar that pretty much taste like nothing.  (C’mon Jill – I know you’ve got something in you!!)

And by the way – no need to purchase all the different colors of sugar.  Did you know you can simply add a couple drops of food coloring to a scoop of sugar in a jar, shake, and Voila! – colored sugar!

pool balls cake

And, of course,  I had to make a little card to go along with the theme too.

pool table cake

I got lucky and won ONE game of pool….

and ZERO games of “Smart Ass” – but we sure had a lot of fun.

Happy Birthday Merv!

Cheers & Hugs & Lots of Love,
Gert

Birthdays are for the Birds

/ Jodi / 21 Comments

child birthday card punch art birds on wire

Birthdays were so much fun when we were kids – right?

And even more when my boys were young and we could do (what they eventually came to dread….)

THEME parties!

I recall parties themed with pirates and magic shows, and Barney the purple dinosaur………

jake 5 cake jake 5 pirates 2 jake 5 pirates

Oh the days….  (I can’t believe these were over 20 years ago now!)

Nick 3Nick 3 2

So I was excited to see The Paper Players Challenge #209 this week be a child’s birthday card.  Gave me a chance to be silly and fun.

pp209

Leanne Pugliese, of The Paper Players Design Team, is celebrating her granddaughter, Cassidy’s, 4th Birthday this week (Happy Birthday Cassidy!), so she chose a Clean and Simple (CAS) Child’s Birthday Card for #PP209 Challenge.

child birthday card punch art birds on wire
My card is a “punch art” card.  I’ve seen some amazingly creative critters created out of punched out shapes.  They range from puppies and turtles and hippos, lions, elephants, and monkeys to caterprillars and lambs and bears and birds – silly birds, angry birds, real birds.  There are some awesomely talented artists and designers out there!

I saw little birds similar to these somewhere at some point and thought they would make a fun child’s birthday card – especially for a “wee one.”  My “birds” are cut out using SU framelit circles and the bird builder punch for the wing and nose.  I sponged them with some pumpkin pie ink, glitzed their feathers a bit with #WinkofStella, cut out party hats from SU DSP, added some Crystal Effects to their beaks, and popped on a candy dot for the eye.  The background is done with a cloud embossing folder, the “telephone wire” is made from baker’s twine, and the Happy Birthday sentiment is from the Bloom with Hope stamp set.

I can’t wait to share this card with a wee one on their birthday.  As for me – no more birthdays please…  Birthdays are for the birds!

Cheers & Hugs,

Jodi