Rowen is One~ Cake Smash and Topper

My sweet baby boy turns ONE today! It is said so much but seriously our babies grow up so quickly. It just seems like yesterday I was sitting in my rocker watching him sleep under the lights of the Christmas Tree. 

I soaked up any chance he would sleep in my lap because I knew how fast that stage would come and go.

I never wanted to have one of my babies have their birthday in the same month as Christmas but I have learned to just embrace it. 

One awesome idea I got from a friend is to have a special "Birthday Tree" for your December baby. That way they can have something special just for them. You have it decorated with their own special ornaments and on their birthday you put their presents under their tree. 

 I also themed Rowen's cake smash pictures around Christmas. I had a cute 5 inch cake made in red and green and then I made this fun Christmas tree topper for his cake. These toppers are so fun and easy to make. 

 I made a number 1 for Garren's first birthday and Cake Smash photo shoot. 

All you need is card stock paper. 

Cut it to the shape you want it. Either you can do a number or a shape of something to go with your theme. I then used my colored pencils to draw a one in the christmas tree.

  I hot glued two popsicle sticks in between the paper. 

Then, I sealed the whole thing with Mod Podge. I used sparkle Mod Podge to give it a glittery finish. Using Mod Podge also helps to seal the paper so it can be easily wiped up if you want to save the topper.

   

Rowen loved his cake!

Here's a little 30 second video of the Cake Smash that my husband put together. 

Enjoy the cuteness!

DIY Sweet Shop Party Ideas~Part 2

I am not sponsored by Mod Podge but I should be! LOL
I LOVE all of their products and I use something of theirs in almost every project I do. Because of this Sweet Shop party I got to use Collage Clay for the first time. It really was the decretive touch that made a lot of these sweet shop treats look so realistic. I talked about it a little in part one of this blog post since I used it on the cinnamon rolls.
It was the finishing touch to this first project I am going to tell you about.
I have to say the strawberry creme pie was one of my favorite projects and it was also one of the most played with during the party.
 First step to making it was the fun for the whole family. I needed a pie tin and box so I went to Sams Club and bought a pumpkin pie. I like the pies from Sams Club or Costco because they are larger than normal pies. Once I FORCED my family to eat the pie, I cleaned the tin and then rubbed it with cooking oil. Fill the tin 3/4th of the way with spray foam insulation. 

 It will expand so you want to make sure you leave some room.

 After the spray foam insulation is dry you should be able to scrape it out of the pie tin. The cooking oil should have helped it not to stick.
I squirted two different colors of pink acrylic paint to the top of the pie and then Kiki painted the top of it.

 After Kiki finished painting the top and it dried, I used a knife and cut the circle into 8 pie pieces.

I hot glued tan felt to the bottom of each piece of pie to make it look like it had crust.

Now here comes the finishing touch of Mod Podge Collage Clay. I used the star tip for this process.

I added a line of icing all around the edge of the pie. I also lined the bottom of the pie tin with a piece of purple paper that had the sweet shop logo on it. I did this because I couldn't clean up the bottom well enough after filling it with spray foam insulation. I used regular Mod Podge to glue and seal the paper down. In the picture below, I just added the Mod Podge so you can see it isn't dry yet.

Lastly, I wanted to add a finishing touch to the top of each piece of pie. We ended up using real after dinner mints but you can use any trinket, bead, or jewel you have laying around the house. 

I simply squirted a little Collage Clay like icing and the put three mints in it.

I painted the box and added the sweet shop logo to it.

   

You can tell why this was one of the favorite treats to play with. The girls loved opening the box and serving out pieces of pie with a spatula.

Moving onto how I made the cupcakes, I had this next project ready along with the pie tin for the strawberry creme pie. The reason for this is because once you open and start using a can of spray foam insulation, you will have to throw it away after about 30 minutes because the foam drys in the straw.

I filled 2 muffin tins with cupcake liners and put a small rock in the bottom of each liner. Then I sprayed the insulation foam over each rock. Like the pie tin I filled the each cupcake liner about 3/4th of the way full. Remember it with expand just like it would when you bake a cupcake.

I will tell you, the rock is very important because if you don't add them, the cupcakes with be top heavy.

   

With 24 Cupcakes we split them up into 3 groups of 8 and made 3 different kinds of cupcakes. Pictured below on the left, we left some as the color of the insulation foam so they were vanilla cupcakes and we used pink Collage Clay and topped it with a pom pom ball. We painted some pink like the color of the strawberry creme pie and topped it with white Collage Clay and a jewel. Then for chocolate cupcakes we painted the foam brown and after it was dry we painted regular Mod Podge over it to give it a little shine. Then topped it off with white Collage Clay and a red pom pom for a cherry! 

The muffin tins we used to display the cupcakes came from the dollar store!

   

The next little project was to make little clipboards for the kids to be able to take orders. I wanted them to be small enough to fit the pocket in the front of the apron. 

I cut four rectangle piece from the lid of a box.

Then Kiki and I ripped up pieces of colorful paper and Mod Podged them to fully cover each piece of cardboard.

   

Here they are drying after I painted a coat of regular Mod Podge over top of them.

I found some cute magnetic clips from the dollar section at Target.

I simply clipped some lined paper to each piece of cardboard and there you have it! 

Cute little mini clipboards for taking orders!

I wanted to show you how perfect the size clipboard is for the apron pocket, pictured below. 

Here is an action shot from Kiki's party where she was taking her friends order.

   

The next thing I did was decorate the walls to make it look more like a sweet shop instead of a beige basement. I created this fun menu and used hearts instead of actual money amounts. This leaves it up to their imagination for buying and selling. I also wanted it to look like there was candy on the wall so I made a fake shelf and colored candy jars that I found as free printables online. I just searched "candy jars coloring page".

I stapled a pink Dollar Store table cloth to the wall. Then I made an awning out of stripped wrapping paper. I stapled the menu and candy shelf on the wall.

I still felt like I needed more decoration to the room so I made another fake shelf with lollipops in vases for the wall on the other side of the menu. I added another table cloth to the wall which happened to match the Sweet Shop awning fabric that Kiki picked out. It was priced under a dollar from Walmart. I must tell you, I love cheap table cloths! It is the best way to change the color in a room instantly and for just a few bucks! 

Then we added white christmas lights around the top of the room.

I wanted to make sure the kids had lots of fake treats to play with but also REAL treats to eat! We stocked the shop with lollipops. The cute pink vase was from the Dollar Store!

I made this cute display for real cookies and candy out of two cake plates from the Dollar Store and a glass candlestick hot glued in the middle.

We had our register filled with fake money, paper and coins, from the Dollar Store.

I found little purses 3 for a dollar at the Dollar Store and I puffy Painted every girls name to the front of them. We added money from the register to each girls purse so they would have some to buy things with in the sweet shop. Putting the names on the purses was such a good idea because I told the girls when they bought real candy that if they didn't want to eat it all to keep it in their purse and they could take it home with them! These purses with a little candy in them were their party favors.

Inside the shop we stocked it up with Dollar Store plastic bowls and plates which I Mod Podged the logo to. There was also spatulas, forks, spoons, and napkins all also from the Dollar Store!

Kiki's jelly bean machine was a fun touch to the shop. 

There was enough treats to go around. I can't even believe there was candy still left over after the party was done!

This post is part 2 of the DIY Sweet Shop Party Ideas, click HERE to see part 1.

DIY Sweet Shop Party Ideas~Part 1

 Every year my daughter Kiki has BIG plans for her birthday parties! The past two years I have made things out of cardboard in our basement. For her 5th birthday I made a Princess Castle and for her 6th  birthday I made a HUGE Cave! She LOVES candy so this year she decided she wanted a sweet shop in the basement. I had ideas to make her a sweet shop out of cardboard kind of like what was made over at Fighting Against What Is. If you want to see the blog post about their party just click the photo below.

Once I really started thinking about it I realized I wanted something that would be more permanent. The idea behind this would be that we could keep the small stand together after the party was over and the kids can use it for a stand when they want to sell things on the street, like Lemonade.

I took a look on Craigslist and found this small TV stand. I ripped the cardboard backing off of it and let Kiki paint it white with paint we already had. We also spray painted the shelves pink. 

    

After we got it all painted we took it downstairs to start placing everything the way we wanted. I wanted to make it a larger store so we also used this 6 square shelf that we already had. I thought it would be fun to have the kitchen behind the counter so the kids can pretend to bake along with selling their treats.

  

 The next step was to add the awning onto both the TV stand and shelf. We use PVC because it's so cheap and easy to work with. I can't give you exact amounts of how much PVC to buy because you will have to make your awning to fit whatever shelf you are using. For the PVC fittings you will need 4 elbows, 2 Wye connectors, and 2 Tee connectors. After you have fitted your awning, spray paint it whatever color you desire. Then just simply screw the PVC into your shelf after the paint drys.

      

 The next step in creating the Sweet Shop was coming up with a logo. I found this Sweet Shop design online and just printed it out the size I desired and painted with puffy paint over top of it. I added "Kiki's" above the word sweet on each print out and there you have it! A simple way to have your logo all over the shop. 

   

 First place I added the logo was on the front of the awning fabric. Kiki chose this pretty pink fabric at the craft store and I cut it to fit each shelf. I folded over one side and added a line of No Sew glue to make a loop that the PVC could fit through. Then I used the No Sew to glue the paper logo to the fabric and sealed it over top with sparkle Mod Podge.

 Here is a picture of both awnings together.

  I filled the front of the TV stand with fun little jars from the Dollar store and Michael's craft store. The jars all cost around a dollar each. You can also see in the photo below, all of the fun treats we made each on their own shelf. I will go into detail on how I made most of them. 

   

First treat we started making took the most time but turned out so cute and well worth it!

First step in making the felt doughnuts is getting the felt. I made a dozen doughnuts 4 chocolate, 4 vanilla, and 4 strawberry. You only need one piece of felt per icing color. For the actual doughnuts it took me 8 piece of tan felt. You can see below that I made a template for the doughnut circle and then for the icing. I traced them on the felt and cut them all out.

Next step I did was to tack the icing down to one piece of the felt doughnut circles. I used different colors of embroidery floss to represent sprinkles on the icing. 

   

 The next step would be to sew or hand stitch the outer circle edge of the doughnut circles together. You make sure you have the icing facing in touching the other plain doughnut circle. Once the whole circle edge is sewn you flip it around to now show the icing. I don't have pictures of this step because I am fortunate to have an awesome mother in law who sewed these up for me!!! Then I stuffed them and as shown below, I hand stitched the middle circle shut.

   

 The finished product turned out so awesome!

 For the party, we displayed the doughnuts on platters from the Dollar Store that I simply hot glued a glass candlestick to. 

Next thing I made was the felt cinnamon rolls. These were so easy to make! I just bought dark and light brown felt. I cut long 1 inch strips. I rolled two strips together and then when I got to the end I used hot glue to make the end pieces stick down. You can keep adding more felt until your desired cinnamon roll size.

To make them look more like cinnamon rolls I pushed up a little in the center from the bottom.

 They fit perfectly in an old strawberry container. The only thing is I had to cover up the label.

 I used sparkle Mod Podge to glue and seal the sweet shop logo over the strawberry label.

 The finishing touch on the cinnamon rolls is the icing! To do this I used white Mod Podge Collage Clay!

 This stuff is so fun to use! It comes in what looks like a pastry bag and it even comes with three different tips for decorating.

 Here is what it looks like after I squeezed the Collage Clay on top. It drys hard after 24 hours.

Next project I made was the aprons for the workers and waitresses in the sweet shop. I found these cute aprons in the dollar store that say Chef on them. 

I simply glued a piece of felt over the word chef with No Sew.

 Then I used sparkle Mod Podge to glue and seal the paper logo to the felt square.

 I like using Sparkle Mod Podge because of the glittery finish it puts over the logo. 

Here is Kiki wearing the cute apron and serving up some cupcakes.

   

The next project we did was to make milkshakes. I got these 6 plastic glasses for a dollar and 4 small bath sponges for a dollar at the Dollar Store.

 Kiki chose to paint the inside of the glasses purple.

 I used hot glue to glue a straw into the bottom of each glass after the paint dried.

 Lastly, I hot glued one bath sponge into the top of each glass.

I hope you enjoyed these Sweet Shop party Ideas so far. 

I have so many ideas that I had to break this up into two posts.

Click HERE for part 2!