Butterfly Garden Baby Shower

My good friend is having her baby in a couple of months, and I decided to help throw her a Butterfly Garden themed shower to go with her nursery.

Here is a picture baby Ava's bedding. Lots of lavender and deep purples, blues, and greens. Her shower is going to be a mixture of these colors with the addition of some pink. Pictures to come :)

Spray Painted and Distressed Frames

Thrift store frames spray painted and distressed. It's my new obsession! My entire hallway wall is covered in black frames that were once blue, gold, silver, red... and now they hold my sweet little Claire's photos. I love being thrifty and creative. Just simply spray paint the frames, and then use some sandpaper to distress the edges as little or as much as you like.

Here are just a few:

My Harry Potter Party

Above is the invitation that I made, brought to you by "The Owl Post".


I have wanted to do a Harry Potter Party for a while now, and finally decided to do one for my 25th Birthday. I shared my party with my niece, who turned eight, because she is also a lover of Hogwarts. Below you will find recipes, pictures, and links to the amazing blogs that helped me put this party together.

First let's talk about decorations! I scoured through my grandmother's basement, and let me tell ya... I felt like I had struck gold. There were so many unique glass bottles, books, and decorations that really made this party come to life. So, before you go spend money on supplies, remember to look through what you already have on hand! Thrift stores are a great place to find old glass bottle, costumes, and owl decorations too.

Decoration pictures:

These old pictures were among the many treasures I stumbled across...

Above is the potions table with printable potion labels. I also printed out the signs from this amazing blog: click here I got many of my ideas, recipes, and printouts from this website! It made party planning much easier!





A picture of the enchanted magical car! (This too was found laying in a box in the basement!!)










Now, let's talk about the food! There are so many tasty treats that make a Harry Potter party special, such as cauldron cakes, butter beer, chocolate frogs, cockroach clusters, wands, professor Mcgonagall cupcakes, Bertie Botts every flavor beans, Herbology bites, and treacle tarts. I chose a few of these, and it was more than enough to feed my party of 10-15 people! Here are pictures of what I made.

First Year Fingers:
2 packages of crescent rolls, and one package of little smokies. Cut each square of dough in half, and roll up little smokies inside. Bake normal temperature and time as indicated on crescent roll package.

Butter Beer recipe found here
I also served mine out of a punch bowl, and quadrupled the recipe (just like sweet and simple), and found that we had TONS of this stuff left over. Everyone tried it, and drank a little, but it was so richly sweet, that it was hard to consume an entire glass. I hated to throw the entire batch away, so I put it into mason jars, and stuck them in the fridge. The next day I decided to taste it and see what it was like cold...and it was AMAZING! Still, there is WAY too much left over to drink, and would make me sick if I tried! I would definitely recommend the cold butter beer version over the room temp. Or, another idea is to make it the day before, and put into the fridge. Then, the next day it will be as easy as pouring it from the jars! (This would have saved so much time)

Herbology Bites:
2 packages mini baguettes (they come in a pack of 2 at walmart) one cucumber peeled and sliced into coins, one packet hidden valley ranch, and two 8 oz cream cheese.
You should have 4 mini baguettes all together.
Start by cutting into little coins of bread. Set your oven to broil. Place each bread coin onto a baking sheet, and drizzle a little olive oil over entire batch. Sprinkle black pepper over batch, and now it's ready for the oven. Place under the broiler until crispy (this will NOT take long, so don't walk away from the oven. Seriously, stand by the oven the entire time checking on them...you don't want them to burn.) It took about 1 minute or so, before I decided to take them out. No need to flip and do the other side, because you don't want them to be too dried out. Take them out and let them cool.

Topping: mix cream cheese, and ranch packet together in a bowl. Peel cucumber, and cut into coins slices.

Just about an hour or so before the party starts, smear the topping onto each baguette coin, and top with a cucumber slice. The cucumber tastes SO good on top. It just gives it a little refreshing crunch. YUM these were SO good.

Cockroach Clusters:


These were a hit! Ingredients contain: 1 large packet of semi sweets, and 1 packet of slivered almonds. Start with melting your entire bag of semi sweets on the stove. Toast your almonds in a skillet on low heat. You know they're done when you start to smell them. Take them off, and pour them into the melted chocolate. Stir together, and scoop the mixture with a spoon onto wax paper. Let them cool, and you could even keep these in the freezer until the party. They thaw out really fast, and taste so good.

Professor McGonagall Cupcakes:


I used a cream cheese frosting, and a box of chocolate-vanilla marbled cupcakes. The cream cheese consisted of room temp butter (about 2 tbsp), one 8 oz packet of cream cheese, a splash of milk, and lots of powdered sugar. Start with blending butter and milk together, add cream cheese, and then add powdered sugar until you have the consistency you want (I like it fluffy, which contains about an entire bag of powdered sugar).
The topping, or should I say, the witches hat: Its as easy as this... grab some waffle cones, and dip them in melted semi sweets.

Snitch Truffles: one package of Rollos and a fancy food label :)




Bertie Botts Every Flavor Beans: Jelly beans



Ollivander's Original Wands: Take pretzel sticks and dip the ends in melted chocolate (again I used semi sweets). Sprinkle with colorful sprinkles, and place on wax paper to dry.






Now, comes the fun stuff... the costumes!! I had everyone dress up like their favorite Harry Potter character. We had a photo booth, that consisted of a black sheet, wands, Azkaban sign, and other props.

Here are the costume decorations that I made:

Little Dobby: (Yes, I DID dress up my daughter like Dobby the House Elf!!!) I took an old brown pillow case, cut a place for her arms, and tied it with twine. Then I dressed her in all black, because it was winter, and stuck her hair in pigtails to represent Dobby's elf ears. Here is a picture:




Mad Eye Moody's eye patch: I cut out a round piece of cardboard big enough to fit over your eye. Glues a big eye ball (found at Hobby Lobby) to the center, and attached it with twine. Here is a picture of the end result...



Azkaban Prison Sign: this was used for the guests to hold up, while I took their pictures in front of a black sheet/table cloth on the wall. This was cardboard, painted brown, and glued on pieces of paper with the symbols/numbers to represent the prison sign in the series.



Ollivander's Wands: These were made from plain white paper, hot glue, and paint. Here is the link with tutorial that I used (from the blogger your life uncommon), and they turned out amazing. I even made my nieces pink with sparkles, and she loved it! I liked how both of my brothers showed up with sticks they found in their yard to use as wands too. We are a family that loves to have a good time...and a good laugh, for that matter! :)

Marshmallow Monday

I decided to dig out a box, some cooking utensils, cookie sheets, mixing bowls, and marshmallows. Then, I just placed them all down in front of Claire, and let her go to work. It was a great way to occupy 30 minutes of her time! AND THAT is a success!

T- Shirt Scarves

My new favorite thing! Here is the video I used!! I love it!

Click here for video

Pine Cones and Acorns

I was asked to help decorate for a fall themed party this past October, and after mauling it over... I decided to go search for some FREE decorations from Mother Nature herself. I gathered pine cones and acorns, and preserved them, painted them, and made wreaths and other decorations out of them. Here is what I did:

Pine cones:
Gather them, and lay them onto a cookie sheet lined with foil. Bake in a 200 degree oven for about 30 minutes until all sap has ran out. The sap forms on the edges or the pine cone and gives it a chrystal look. Paint or decorate however you want (great for Christmas wreaths and other decorations).

Acorns:
do the same thing as the pine cones, but first soak them in vinegar water to sterilize and get all little buggies and wormies out. :)

the wreath I made from the pine cones:

spray painted decorative plates

Here are my plates that I made for the kitchen

Spray Paint, black acrylic paint, 3 decorative plates at 50 cents a piece (from thrift store), and plate holders from Hobby Lobby

First, I spray painted the plates the color Burgundy, and then I let them dry for...oh, a half an hour or so. Next I wiped some black acrylic paint onto the edges and a little in the middle, and then immediately wiped it off with a clean rag. It gives the plates an antique look that I love, and stays in the creases of the plate. Here is the finished look: