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!

Trick Or Treat Sack & Keepsake ideas (2014 & 2015)

In 2012 I came up with the idea to make each of my children a Halloween treat sack and to decorate it over the years with hand and footprint art! This is such a fun idea that can be used over the years and then saved as a special Keepsake!

I like to post what I have done with their hand and foot print each year to help people get ideas for their own! Here are my kids prints from last year, 2014. I will first say that every year we have at least two costumes because the kids love dressing up all through the year and there are tons of events we go to around this holiday. If you only have one costume for the year but want to do both hand and footprints on your child's sack just choose a fun halloween print. I post a few of those ideas in my first post.

Kiki was Elsa so to keep it simple I  painted her foot light blue and added white glitter to the paint before it dried! I even added a little glitter mod podge over that to help seal the glitter! Another idea is paint the main logo of the character on the print like I did for both of Garren's costumes last year. 

 For Brenden's hand print I literally tried to copy the look of the glove he was wearing as a swamp monster.

For this year, 2015, I had so much fun with these prints! Here is Garren in his Thor costume! If you can't tell, the costume is HUGE so I just rolled it up. I like to buy big so they can wear it for years! LOL

For his Thor print I just painted the hammer over his silver handprint. Now I don't really know what his second costume will be but he is a little obsessed with Hulk lately and always dresses up like him so I just did that for his footprint! I am not very happy with how his actual footprint turned out but I love the "Hulk Smash" idea!

Brenden is a little tricky for me this year. He is really into Beyblades so he wanted to go as Gingka the main Beyblader guy on the show. If you don't know what a Beyblade is, it's kind of like a top that spins really fast! He is holding one in his hand in the picture below.

For his beyblade handprint I used the same concept as the Thor handprint above and just tried to paint a simple Beyblade in his hand. It's not the best but hey I tried! Brenden's second costume is Jengo Fett so I found a simple drawing of the helmet and just tried to copy the design into his silver foot print. I have to say his Jengo Fett footprint turned out way better than I thought it would! Im so happy with it! 

I forgot to mention I used black puffy paint for all of the writing and the detail! 

My kiki girl chose to be Ariel. I had so much fun with her mermaid print adding on the tail and the head. Kiki is also going as a Vampire so I just kind of made a face out of her handprint!

   

My FAVORITE year on the Halloween sack is their first Halloween! I love how little the prints are! My sweet baby Rowen is 10 months now and he is going as Robin. This is a family tradition. I have picture of my other two boys in this same costume. This Batman Costume was also a hand me down from Kiki because she went as Batman when she was 3 years old. 

Here are my sweet baby's first prints. I held up the small paint container to give you a reference to the size. I love this witch print! I think all of my kids have this on their bag from a previous year. 

I hope these give you ideas to get you inspired to start a Halloween sack for your own kids even if they are older! Brenden was 5 years old when I started his sack! If you want to read my first post on this to see how I started it and to see more ideas click HERE! If you need help coming up with a hand or foot print of a specific costume, comment below! I would love to help!

First Day of School Teacher Gift Idea

Every year it seems that summer goes by so quickly!

I have been having so much fun having all four of my babies home with me all day!

My favorite part about summer is not having to wake anyone up and rush out the door!

Here is the most recent family picture we had taken on a HOT summer day in the end of June 2015.

 I guess time flies when you are VERY busy....so no wonder I don't know where the time is going. These guys always have me on my toes! 

Since school starts NEXT WEEK for us here in Kansas I figured I should get on this first day present thing!

This year we decided to do a different first day of school gift for the kids teachers.

Normally I buy Apple foam soap from Bath & Body Works. I trace my child's hand on a sheet of colored card stock and write, "Let me know if you need a HAND!" 

I still love this idea but since my son has a Male teacher this year I figured we needed to change it up a bit.

I looked up ideas of presents to teachers and one was treats so I took my kids to Trader Joe's and they picked out a good treat/snack for their new teacher.

This saying on the brownie bites could go for any package SWEET treat your child chooses. 

I still wanted to trace their hand and add the "let us know if you need a HAND" but we added "Let's make this a SWEET year!"

 My daughter chose Powerberry trek mix for her teacher, which is a healthier type of treat.

Because of the nuts in it we wrote, "I'm NUTS about having you as my teacher this year!"

The other idea I had that I really wanted to do was based off of something I saw on Haley's Daily Blog(click on the picture below to see her post). She blogged about an amazon printable for a gift card. This was more for the end of the year so I was just going to change it up and write, "Let's have an Amaz'on year!" or "Here's to an Amaz'on year!"

Hope these ideas help spark something fun for you to put together for your child's teacher.

They deserve it!

Here's to a great school year 2015/2016!