Wednesday 29 May 2013

Dentist Cocktail Celebration and Gift

My friend recently qualified as a Dentist (Woop woop!) so we had a cocktail evening on Saturday to celebrate.   I made cran-raspberry fizz (recipe on this post) which is non-alcoholic as one of my friends was not drinking but still wanted to partake in the celebrations.  Me and Susan however added my most favourite drink Malibu.  Coconut rum just goes with everything!  And it was such a sunny day on Saturday all three of us were sunburnt and ready to be refreshed.





Susan also brought Funkin mixers and these worked brilliantly with our malibu and also some pear and elderflower juice I had lying around.  Very sweet and very delicious!  Our favourite combination was pear and elderflower strawberry woo woo Malibu - not easy to say after one of these:) But all of the combinations of Funkin we tried were really good I would definitely buy these again.

I of course had to make a little gift for Susan for passing all of her exams and as felt is my favourite I went with a felt tooth decoration.  Saw lots of these ideas on pinterest and have a couple of ideas pinned on this board



Really meant for a small child whose teeth is falling out but equally appropriate for a newly qualified Dentist - including a pound in the little tooth pocket!

The celebration went very well and was much less grown up than the last get together I posted about here - we reminisced about the old days when we used to go out and find boys to like before we had kids and fiances :)  It was a lot of fun and a lot of laughs.  We definitely intend to replicate this again sometime soon :)



Wednesday 15 May 2013

Superhero Party: Crafts and Games

So last post I showed you the Superhero Food from Finlay's party.   Now I will show you the crafts and games 

Firstly the invite.  I made this using libre office - I don't have microsoft office which I really am considering but libre office was fine for what I needed this time - more time consuming because it doesn't flow as well as microsoft office and it can be fiddly but I was happy with the way the invite turned out.  







For the backdrop I bought two large sheets of black card and marked out a city outline in pencil 


I then cut it out and stuck yellow tiny windows randomly over the buildings.  Very simple but perfect hero table backdrop



 The hero labels I also created using Libre Office by inserting an "explosion" and some fontwork in hero colours and hero exclamations!!!  I cut them out of card and stuck them onto cocktail sticks to label all my hero related foods, drinks and desserts.


The hero lollies I spent many a night hand cutting tiny capes and masks out for in green, blue and red to match the tongue painter lollies I got from ebay.

 For the water bottles I again used Libre Office to print out Finlay's top 5 heroes - Green Lantern, Batman, Captain America, Superman and Spiderman

I hand cut out a green mask for the Green Lantern Punch.





I used chalk on a black plastic tablecloth to mark out some buildings for a photo prop - this was hardly used and didn't work very well but worth a shot!













I created a superhero banner - didn't actually make it onto the desserts table but it did hang over the real food. I used the Superman cartridge for the Cricut to cut out "Finlay, 9" out of an old superman comic I got from ebay and stuck them onto the red and yellow diamond shapes I cri-cut out of card. I drew round the letters in black pen to make them stand out better.







My mum had this game lying around her house I decided to hero-fy it a bit for the party  - painted it black and added a mask 




I made a sign in the same theme as my invites and desserts table and named it Catwoman Catch:)  Much more hero-ish!


 I set up a beanbag throw area with another hero sign and points explosion signs






 Enemy bowling - the hero enemies were "bowled" over by the superheroes
Guess how many sweets in the jar - hero coloured sweets - use your x-ray vision!
Like last year's Mario party I painted some heroes to play pin the...I cut out pants, masks, badges and belts for the kids to make their own superheroes when blindfolded

 For the next game I painted a box white and cut out hero emblem shapes and painted them correspondingly


I made some superhero beanbags

 Blue rectangle, red diamond shape, yellow diamond shape and a red S all cut of felt - I love felt (see Finlay's quiet book made totally out of felt and some hero felting too!)

 A little bag of rice
 All sewn together
And a few friends :) 


Some other games were "Pass the Kryptonite" - four  green glo-sticks passed round and whoever was left holding the Krypto was out




There was also a hero race - teams had to hop to a box to find a mask and hop to a further box to find a wristband (glo-stick bracelet) then hop back.  The team who was first dressed in the mask and glowing wrist band were the winners.

I also made Eliza's outfit for the party - she does have a Superman tutu outfit but because Finlay was going as Batman and so was I Eliza needed a new tutu outfit and t-shirt combo.  Black tulle tied in little knots onto yellow satin ribbon.  Lots of tutorials online for this.  It literally took me 5 minutes to make this - before school one morning last week and trust me I do not get up early!  The best tip I read when learning to make tutus was to wrap tulle round a piece of cardboard the same length as you want your tutu to be, wrap it round and round then cut one side all the way through so you are left with lots of the same length of tulle pieces which are double the length you want your tutu to be.  then knot each piece of tulle onto ribbon - easiest to tie the ribbon round a chair or anything you have handy - Eliza's doll pram was handy :) while knotting the tulle on.  I left the ribbon long so it could be tied to show the yellow for Eliza's Batman outfit.  I bought a cheap black t-shirt, cut out a felt batman emblem and fabric glued it on.  Some black leggings and she was good to go.

 She loved being batman like her brother and she looked so cute!!!

 Her cousin went as Batman too :) They are adorable together!


Looking cool Batman :)


Batgirls

I already showed you my Cricut party bags


 I filled some cellophane bags with hero coloured skittles and a print out hero emblem for each party bag



I ordered pin badges from ebay to match the bags


And filled each party bag with speech bubble post its, hero candy sticks, a caped lolly, villain tattoos, hero stickers and a colour themed mini cupcake box (which had a chocolate or vanilla mini cake inside) and a WHAM! chewy sweet.




I was very busy in the two weeks before the party because I decided to make every party bag a finger puppet


Here is the pile of heroes finally ready 24 hours before the party!  I got some last minute help from my sister to finish the little Supermen in time! 


34 of the little devils! 


Finlay's favourites - Superman, Spiderman, Captain America, Batman and Green Lantern 


A handful of puppets :) 








Inside the party bag:) A nice little hero selection.

And that's it!  Lots of planning, effort and crafting madness and I made it to the end of Finlay's party :) He had a fantastic time and all his friends seemed to enjoy it too.  Lots of great costumes to be seen including some home maders.

Me and my sister thought we should look the part too and I thought about making tops for us but Tesco did these hero vests with attached capes and we couldn't resist :)



Check out the hero food from this party.  Not sure what Eliza's theme will be in July but I need at least a week's break before I get my head around another party!  That one was immense!  Too many superheroes in one room I think!  But well worth it!

I love parties!!!!!!

Lots more pins on my Superhero board on pinterest for great ideas I didn't use

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