Month: November 2012

I decided to host a little Halloween party for Kate’s playgroup, largely because I saw these mummy milk boxes on Pinterest and decided that I *had* to make them.  (And really, how could I resist?)

Here’s our table all ready for our guests.  The menu included mummy hot dogs, fruit, crackers, spinach dip and veggies.

Oh, and cupcakes!  My friend started an awesome bakery and she made these adorable cupcakes for us.

They’re 100% organic and egg and nut free.  (We have some food allergies to work around.)  Now, I’ve gotten egg free cupcakes before and they were kind of gross.  These however were divine!  She makes gorgeous cakes too.

They were perfect with our milk boxes.

The table cloth, plates, bowls and napkins were all from Target.  I <3 Target.

I thought about planning elaborate games for the kids to do, but mostly they wanted to run around outside.  Works for me!  We had a blast and it was great to see all of our friends in their costumes.

 

Kate eats a decent variety of foods considering she’s a preschooler, but veggies are still a bit of a sticking point.  Enter the mini cookie cutters.  Kate loves to use the cookie cutters and cucumbers are the perfect firmness for her.

First, peel and slice your cucumbers.  I slice them maybe 1/4 of an inch thick?  Maybe a touch thinner?  Too thin and they don’t hold their shape well.

Then I give Kate a stack of slices and she punches out the pumpkins with the mini cookie cutter.

It’s nice because it took her a bit to punch all the way through which kept her occupied while I got everything else ready for the party.

And the veggie eating?  Well, Kate is more likely to eat cucumbers when they’re fun shapes, but even more than that I make her eat the leftover bits before she can punch out a new pumpkin.  Not in a militant way (at all, we avoid battles over food at our house) but she can’t punch out a new pumpin until she’s eaten the scraps from the last one.  Sometimes that means that she only punches out one pumpkin and that’s ok.  I’ll punch the rest (for her lunch or whatever) and put the scraps on salads.  But today we were punching a whole cucumber for our little party and she ate all of the scraps!  Honestly, I was amazed that she ate all of that.  I even gave her a pass after she’d eaten about half of them and told her that she could just keep punching if she wasn’t hungry, but she assured me that she wanted to eat more.  🙂

And here’s our veggie tray.  It was nice to be able to “cook” with Kate, but have her working on something independently so I could get everything else ready.

Here’s a fun little page I made with the new Echo Park line, some twine and some washi tape.

I’m always perplexed with what to do with twine. I love the look of it, but how to attach it… This time I literally wrapped it around the paper and then secured the ends with some tape on the back. Easy peasy.

Then I just tied on a few strips to give it some dimension. This is a super simple page, but I like it. It took me less than an hour to finish while Kate was at preschool.

I’ve had these acrylic hearts for ages and I recently unearthed them while cleaning my desk.

I peeled the back off and used it to trace the shapes onto some patterned paper.

Then I cut the heart out and ran it through my zyron machine.  You need to make sure that you run it through the machine wrong side up so that the adhesive is on the front of the heart.

I like to burnish the paper before removing the backing.  It helps the adhesive to stick.  I also inked the edges before running them through the machine.

I set the acrylic heart on top of the paper and hope to get them perfectly lined up.  Usually I do ok.  🙂

I used the acrylic hearts as embellishments on this page and I think it turned out quite cute.  🙂

The letters are from October Afternoon and the papers are all Echo Park.