Birthday Week: Place Setting How-To

I LOVE birthdays.  I love planning my kids' birthdays. As you well know, I'm a budget-er and I like to do things cheap...er...frugally.  For the past couple of months I've been on Pinterest (LOVE this) getting ideas for a Hello Kitty birthday party for Rosebud.  

After looking around and getting some ideas, I also came up with some of my own.  We have these really pretty glass dinner plates that I bought last Easter time.  I love doing things seasonally around here, and justified the cost (they were from Kroger, so they were not anything super expensive) by deciding that they'd get used also for Rosebud's birthday parties!   I wanted to do something Hello Kitty theme for the table, while still using the glass plates. I decided to make place setting cards for each guest to put UNDER the plates.  Here's what I came up with.  

 First I took scrap paper and played with her face shape.  I kinda guessed a few times and then once I liked it, cut it out.

 I then traced it onto white cardstock.  I love scrapbooking (have ZERO time for it) and have several file folders that each hold a different color of paper that has been previously used, but has some leftover.  That is what I used for this project.  After cutting out her head, I used a Sharpie to outline and add features.

 I had watched a couple of tutorials I found via Pinterest and saw how other people made her bow.  It is asymmetrical and pretty easy to sketch out.  Again, I made a template and used it to make several colors of bows.

 After cutting it out, I used the Sharpie to add more detail.

 Last I glued on the bow and some whisters (more cardstock scraps).  This is how it looks under the glass plate.  This is the table cloth I'll be using that day too.  I'll add each guests' name to the ear and wah-la!  Placecards!  They also double as making our plates fit the theme.  

Here they are all finished.   I like how the colors in the cloth go with the bows.  I made some Keropi frog ones too for our male guests.  He was just the same head as Hello Kitty with the ears rounded off completely.  I then added two round circles for eyes and, of course, used the Sharpie for his features.

I have a few more DIY things up my sleeve that I'll share later!

Random Picture Challenge

I saw this on It's Twinsanity today and thought it looked fun...then when I saw it again on 4 Love of Family I decided to investigate. Turns out this post is open to anyone, as long as they link back to 4 Little Men and Girly Twins. I can do that! This is my tenth folder of my picture folders, fifth from the end, as directed. I looked at my picture files under "My Computer" and found the picture...when I went into Blogger and went to open it, the files were arranged differently, and I got this picture. Interesting!

This picture brings back memories! Every year we take a family picture to put in a little Creative Memories scrapbook I update each fall. It is our Thanksgiving album and we put in the picture and write what we are most thankful for that year. This is one of the pictures, but not the one we chose because Meechie (RIP), Chester, and yours truly are not looking at the camera. We are sitting on our front porch, and apparently it had been raining. We had been married for 1 year 2 1/2 months at this point. No kids yet...but a year from then we had Snug, and 3 years from then Baby J. And yes, for those of you who are not my IRL (in real life) friends, my Lucy dog only has 3 legs...you are not seeing things.

BTW, never posted it yesterday, but Crystal, you win on the EYE SPY contest...the eight items are as follows:

1. Wooden Block set-generic
2. Carter's block set
3. Bob the Builder Scoop truck
4. Baby Einstein "Dogs" book
5. Small dinosaur from ????
6. Red die
7. Wooden airplane from Target dollar spot
8. Inside (can't think of library term) of Kevin Henke's "Kittens First Full Moon"

Deb, you were close...but it was indeed Scoop. We own Scoop and Rolly...and I wish I had more...they are favorites here. I priced them on E-Bay and they are pricey...we got these ones with some hand-me-downs. Crystal, I will contact you personally!

What A Weekend!

I had a great weekend because I got to scrap for 2 days straight. I used to be a Creative Memories consultant and have lots of great stuff, but no time to do it! My friend April has several scrapbooking weekends a year and I got to go. #1 and the boys stayed at the hotel where we were for the night so I got to feed Baby J and see them. Snug got to take a bath in a real tub which is always a treat. #1 got to watch Ohio State lose to Penn State (fake sob).
I do need to take less pictures though. I filled an entire album with just 7 months of Snug last year. That was 84pages with about 6 pictures on each page. Yikes. I had bought these cute denim coversets for Snug before I quit being a consultant and planned on them lasting until like 1st grade. HA. I"ll be lucky if they last until he is 3. I haven't started Baby J's books yet, but I am caught up in Snug's book to where Baby J was born so hopefully I can start doing almost duplicate pages and get done faster.
Also this weekend we got to see my Aunt K and Uncle R! They were in Ohio for a wedding and we got to eat lunch with them on Sunday. They took us to Don Pablos-Yummy! Always nice to see family. I don't have any pictures because I didn't have my camera.
Anyway, if you feel scrappy get your pictures organized and get working! Also a great option is digital scrapping (you actually save money over buying albums, pages, protectors, adhesive, photo processing, stickers, and paper) http://www.creativememories.com/
*$1000.75 until DEBT FREE...