Guest Post: Sesame Street Party!

Hey everyone! Jen here.  Like most crafty people, I surround myself with other crafty people.  Jessica is a dear friend of mine, who also is another Navy wife.  I asked to her do a guest spot on the blog about her daughters birthday party that she did on the cheap!

Hi! I am Jessica of Jess Nicole Photography. I recently did an awesome birthday party for my sweet, darling daughter Ava's 2nd birthday! I decided to do a Sesame Street theme because Ava was really obsessed at the time. I wanted to do a whole party for about 20-30 people for under $250. I got pretty overwhelmed when I began thinking about food, decorations, invitations, and party favors. I turned to my beloved Pinterest for inspiration, my crafty background for the leg work, and my hubby, mom, and aunt to help me pull it all together!

Decorations:
First, I decided to go with a rainbow Elmo theme with a really cute rainbow chevron pattern. I found the perfect accent fabric (which really tied the whole thing together) at this Etsy shop- $20: http://www.etsy.com/shop/ShuShuStyle I ended up serging around the edges and using it as the food table runner.

 

Next, I decided to make a ton of the tissue pom pom balls to hang from my kitchen ceiling. The white ones I borrowed from a friend from her daughter's birthday a few weeks prior. The others I got from various stores: Hobby Lobby, Target, and Dollar General. Word of advice, don't buy tissue paper from Dollar General. It tears super easy. It's not a huge deal, but just so you know. Also, start on these a few weeks in advance. They can be time consuming. I followed this tutorial on Pinterest from the All Knowing, Martha Stewart: http://www.marthastewart.com/265163/pom-poms-and-luminarias-how-to I had two leaf sized trash bags full and I spent about $12. I did cut some of the tissue paper in half to make smaller, fuller balls. The mix really looked great hanging in a big cluster from the ceiling.

I got 3 blue metal tubs during the Wal Mart summer clearance sale for $2 each. I used them to hold iced water bottles for the adults and the other held iced juice boxes for the kiddies. The last one held party favors on her gift table.
I splurged and bought 2 linen table cloths for $20 total in lime green and fushia. I will be able to use these again and again.
The most expensive decoration, which was by far my favorite was 2 wreaths I made. One Elmo feather wreath ($15) and one yarn and felt Cookie Monster Wreath ($10).

I bought a fish bowl for $3 at Michaels to hold the Goldfish crackers.
I also bought, which I got *so* many compliments on, a Wilton 3 tier cake stand from Jo-Ann's. It was originally $35, but I had a 60% off one item coupon. Bringing it all the way down to $14. I can't wait to use this again!
I went to Hobby Lobby and used their 40% off coupon to purchase a small helium tank that was $27, but the coupon made it about $17 and 2 packs of balloons for $4.
For her gift table, I bought a book for everyone to sign birthday wishes in. I chose "If you Give a Pig a Party" by Laura Numeroff. It's a sweet little tradition we started on her first birthday.
I sat her Sesame Street Characters all around the food table and gift table. It was a really cute added touch.

Food:
I decided on a simple menu. One pleasing to adults and toddlers alike. I chose homemade chicken salad with crossiants, Italian pasta salad, hummus, cut up veggies for dipping, vegetable dip, fruit kabobs (huge hit!), Goldfish, and Alphabet cookies from Trader Joe's. I made all of these except the fruit kabobs the night before, and truthfully, that should have been done the night before also. It couldn't have been done with out my aunt! All of the food was under $60. The paper plates, napkins, and forks I actually traded for. They were new in the pack and I put a "in search of" post on a local Knoxville trade/swap group. That's a wonderful and economical way to get things you need or want. We bought a small cake and 30 cupcakes from Sam's Club, totaling $24.

 

 

A few other things I did, was hire a photographer to take pictures (except for these in this blog, these are mine) which was $40 because we worked out a massive trade between us. The last money saving thing I did was not send out invitations. I created a Facebook invite and called it a day. It's easy, time saving, money saving, and practical. Since I am a photographer, I took her birthday pictures and used those pictures to dress up her Facebook invite. I wanted to display those adorable pictures, so placed them in frames around the house and I pinned a piece of wrapping tulle to the wall and tied a bow on each end. I hung pictures of her on that with clothespins for FREE! It was so cute, I kept it up and it is now used to display her artwork.

The Breakdown:
Food: $60
Decorations: $121
Cake: $24
Photographer: $40
Total: $245


Finally, on her actual birthday morning, I made her Cake Batter Pancakes from Chef in Training (found via pinterest) :  http://www.chef-in-training.com/2011/06/cake-batter-pancakes/
They were good, sickeningly sweet, but a great way to start off her life as a two year old! She loved them, in my opinion, they were a bit tough. I have no suggestion as to how to fix this. We ate them, nonetheless.

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North Pole Breakfast

It's that time of year again...December 1st...and our Elf on the Shelf 'Elfie' has arrived! Yes, my kids got super creative with the name. My husbands in the Navy and will pretty much be out to sea this whole month..but I will NOT let that ruin the kids Christmas and all the magic that entails-enter The North Pole Breakfast.  I found this Pin while looking for Elf on the Shelf ideas and LOVED it. 
Here is the original PIN


How fun right!? 

Okay, first I'm going to go through a run down of everything I got for this little event.  I went into this thinking it was going to be pricey.  Thank God for Dollar Tree & Walgreens Rewards coupons!

--From Dollar Tree I got: Elf hats, socks, candy canes, candy cane straws, serving platters/bowls, snowflakes and the coffee mugs: around $17
--From Walgreens: coloring books, activity pads, note pads and ornaments: $2 after rewards
--From Target: plates and placemats: $12

Alrighty.  I am exhausted. I was up until 1:30am last night/this morning setting this thing up.  I then had to set my alarm for 6:45 to wake up before my daughter (the early riser) so I could finish setting up. 

The spread:

Just a glimpse at the table..

 

 

Nummy cinnamon rolls with red & green sprinkles

 

Peppermint Kisses (me & Moosey's favorite!)

 

North Pole Milk (green food coloring & peppermint extract milk)

 

Winter Oreos

 

Snow covered donut kabobs

 

 Fluffy's plate-she ate her donuts and the good half of her Oreo

 

 Ky's plate- he ate his donuts & Kiss

 

 The main Elf man himself...Elfie!

 

 



Just some randoms of the set up: 



Pretty snow flakes 

 

 Ornaments

 

 Ky in his Elf hat

 

 Miss Fluffy in hers

 

 Socks (Moose wasn't awake yet, but his are the same as Ky's reindeer ones)

 

 Coloring & activity books

 

 He's awake!

 

 Yum! North Pole Milk!!

 

 Ky loves his little bro!

 

 

It was totally worth the long night last night and early morning.  The kids had a blasty, I retained my title of Buddy the Elf (of our house anyway).  Kyin was so happy he wrote a note to Elfie it said "L-fe (Elfie) I <3 you" Except he wrote the heart the normal way of course :)

 

Happy December y'all!

 

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Have Your Pic Drawn As A Disney Character

Now, this post isn't food or DIY it's a..well...review, I guess. With 3, soon to be 4 kids my husband and I (well, I'm in charge if it all, so I) are doing Christmas on the cheap this year. I'm sure there are plenty of families across the country feeling the economical pinch this year. I'm planning on doing as much DIY for gifts for my kids as I can.

With that being said, when I came across a Pin that is about sending in a picture and having it turned into a Disney Princess I was intrigued! I have an almost 4 year old daughter who is obsessed with anything Princess or Lalaloopsy. So this was right up my alley. I clicked on it to see what it was about and pricing. I assumed it would be semi pricey, given it's custom work, but I thought, why not check it out. I am SO glad I did! The Pin brought me to Fiverr.com.

If you've never heard of Fiverr.com it's a website that people can post "I will do (insert whatever here) for $5" Everything's $5. Now, some stuff is out there. I seen one where a girl will paint her toe nails in any shade you want and take a picture of it. I do not want to know what that's about. But, there are some really cool ones on there..like the custom Princess images!

Here is the original PIN
 

Pretty freaking cool right!?  Well, I was saddened to see that the person who did this one wasn't offering this deal anymore.  BUT there were a few others who were doing this as well.  So, I bit the bullet and found one I liked and sent my daughters picture in and purchased it.  After I did that I was so excited for her to get this custom Princess drawing of herself I figured there HAD to be someone who does this but with boy centered things. 

So I searched Super Heros, there were a few hits, but they were kinda 'ehh'  Then I seen it. Custom Lego Man image!  My oldest son is ALL ABOUT Legos. Seriously. I even took him to the Lego Discovery Center outside of Chicago this past summer and he didn't want to leave.  Anywho.  I jumped on it and purchased a custom Lego image of my son.  It came today and I am so thrilled with it, I can't wait to give it to him for Christmas! 

Here is my son, Kyin & then the Lego Kyin




Now, obviously, it's a Lego man so there isn't all that much detail that actually goes into it. But it's got his glasses and his faux hawk. :)  The link to the person who made this is right HERE

And onto the Princess drawing!  I literally just received this about an hour ago, I had to wait to post this blog post until I got it. Just like the Lego drawing, you send in a picture for reference, but you also get to specify style and colors.  I chose classic Disney Princess and pinks/purples.

So here's the pic of my daughter I sent in and the Princess drawing:

I absolutely LOVE it, and I know she will too!  HERE is the link to the listing if you're interested in getting a Princess drawn of you're little lady! Pin It

Garden Tomato Sauce

I love pasta. Love.  If one day I had to cut carbs out of my diet, I would be a wreak..a healthy portion of my favorite dishes are pasta dishes.  You would think that if I love pasta so much that I would have a good red sauce recipe, right? Well, that wasn't the case-until today.

So, I pinned the garden tomato sauce recipe pin a while ago, mainly because the picture made it look oh so tasty.  Now, seeing how it's November I had to use store bought tomatoes.  Even if it was gardening season, I live in military housing with a tiny backyard that gets NO sun. None.  There was a family that lived across the court yard that grew corn in their back yard our first summer here. I hated them. They got the stink eye every time I went in my super shaded can't even grow grass back yard. Okay, enough about the crap hand of a backyard we were dealt.  This recipe would be even better if I did have a garden though..because I wouldn't have had to buy ANYTHING for it.

Here is the original Pin

See!? Yum Yum!!

Now, I altered the recipe some, not much..but some.

Here is the original recipe from myrecipes.com

Ingredients:
1 onion diced
tablespoon olive oil
1 garlic clove, minced
4 medium size heirloom tomatoes (about 2lbs) cored and chopped
Kosher salt
Fresh ground pepper
1/4 cup red wine
3 tablespoons chopped fresh oregano or marjoram Hot cooked pasta
Garnish: fresh oregano leaves
Now. I don't have red wine. I don't drink it, I don't regularly use it to cook with, so I substituted chicken stock.  I think this is a great recipe to use as a starting place for someone to make their own.  We eat clean (mainly, we do cheat sometimes) so if I can make my own anything, I'm going to attempt it!

Here are my ingredients that I used-
1 onion diced
1 tpsp olive oil
1 clove garlic, minced
3 1/2 off the vine tomatoes (they didn't have heirloom at Food Lion when I went, and these suckers were on sale, and fairly large, about the size of beef steak tomatoes), diced
Sea Salt
Pepper
1/4c Chicken stock
1 1/2 tsp Tomato paste
Pinch sugar
Dried oregano, marjoram, and Italian seasoning
Cayenne Pepper
Cooked Pasta
Shredded Mozzarella

Now. The original recipe says to use a dutch oven. I don't have one. BUT I do have my super awesome deep oval shaped Rachel Ray pan.  NOTHING sticks to this beast so it's my go to when dealing with tomatoes/tomato sauce recipes.

Heat oil in pan, and add your onions, let them cook for around 3 or so minutes-basically until they're soft.  Throw in the garlic and stir it up, let that cook for about another minute or so.  Then add your diced tomatoes and mix it all up.  Let that cook until the juices start coming out of the tomatoes.  Around this time the original recipe said to add your pepper and salt to taste, but I don't like adding seasoning until the end, so I'll know what the finished product will taste like, but feel free to season with salt and pepper to taste now if you'd like.  Once the tomatoes start releasing the juices add your chicken stock (or red wine) and stir in the tomato paste.  Let that simmer and thicken up a bit ( it shouldn't take too long).  Now add your pinch or two of sugar, and your seasonings to taste.  Feel free to omit the cayenne, I like my sauce to have a little bit of a bite to it.  Once you have it tasting delicious I let mine simmer on low until my noodles were done.  The mozzarella isn't really needed. but my kids like a sprinkle of cheese on their pasta, and a sprinkle of mozzarella never hurts anything in my opinion. 

Please excuse the poor lighting in my kitchen.

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Stuffed Cheese Buns..a love story..

Yes, that's right people a love story. These rolls, buns, whatever you want to call them are that good.

Magnificent even.

Tonight is duty night in the Christopher household. What that means for dinner is that it's normally easy peasy night.  Tonight was pasta. Not a fancy pasta, just boiled ruffle noodles and a jar of sauce.  So, because dinner was going to take all of 30 seconds to prepare I thought I'd make some sort of bread to go with it, and I knew just what bread to make. I have been drooling over the image of these cheesy buns ever since I pinned them. Seriously.

Here is the original Pin and the drool worthy picture..


Image credit: myfridgefood.com

I mean really. What is not to love about that image!?  So I set off to my cabinets to make sure I have all of the paraphernalia to make these delicious lumps of cheesy goodness. Jackpot. It's all there.  I read over the directions..super easy, laid out to where you should have no problem producing the garlicy dough.  Now, I'm not including step by step instructions/pictures because it really is that easy.  I did do a couple things different though.  I didn't have chunks of mozzarella (directions call for a 3/4" chunk of mozz) all I had was shredded mozzarella, but it didn't pose a problem.  I just pinch a chunk of it and worked it in there.  The recipe also said that she used shredded cheddar jack an swiss for the cheese on top, I used fresh shredded Parmesan and mozzarella.  I also sprinkled some garlic salt on the rolls before putting the cheese on top.

So you should get 20 rolls, hopefully they'll last you at least a day. My kids LOVED them as much as I did. My oldest had maybe 3, my daughter had close to 3 as well-but after taking her first bite she told me I was the best cooker ever! Oh yeah, that's right. I got the 3 year old's seal of approval.  

Really people. Make these rolls. Unless you're lactose or gluten intolerant-then don't, but know, I fell bad that you can't enjoy these bites of cheesy heaven.

And here are what my rolls looked like.  Just because sometimes you can't trust the pin picture. :)

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Home Organizer Binder

Pinterest is a great place to make you feel like your home is in shambles. I don't know about you, but I go on there and see all of these organizing tips and tricks and feel like I am an unorganized hoarder. So, I took it upon myself to make a 'home organizer binder'. I don't know if it was a moment if clarity or a mad craze of nesting (#4 is due in less than 10 wks!).

So, this Pinterest project isn't directed at just 1 pin, but a multitude of pins. I actually have an entire board directed towards "getting organized". Here is the link to that board, with a majority of the printouts I used pinned on there.

My main reason for making this binder is because my in-laws will be with my kids while I'm in the hospital giving birth. I liked the idea of having everything in one spot: phone numbers, medical release forms, weekly overview, days of the week in depth, calendars, menu plan for the week/grocery list, daily cleaning schedule, folders for everyone's papers (mainly for Kyin's homework), my coupons, and I added a section for planning out Christmas.

I've been using this organizer for about 2 weeks now (and I think my printer has just now recovered from its over use!) and I have to say...it's has actually changed my daily schedule. It has made me hold myself accountable to my daily cleaning, and it's nice to have my schedule right in front of me!

All in all, if you're not anal and you need a little oomph to get organized and get stuff done, this is the way to do it. I honestly recommend it. Really. I'll end this post with a few pictures if my family binder.

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DIY Mentholated Shower Discs

Everyone in my house is sick. Literally everyone. The hubs seems to have gotten the sickest though (is he actually sicker...or is it just because he's a man? No, he really is sicker, damn flu shot gets him every time). So, thankfully I had previously Pinned the shower Discs! I set off to make these little mint lovelies .
Here is the original Pin

The directions say to use 1c baking soda 1/3c water and a mix of essential oils. Now, I'm not one to have random oils on hand-BUT I did have some Vicks type oil for a steam humidifier. I figured that it would work just the same.

So, I mix up the baking soda/water and make a paste, dump that into the lined muffin tin and baked for 20m at 350. When they were done and cooled I added the oil. The directions don't give an exact amount so I added about a 1/4 tsp- i didn't want my hubs to burn up in the shower.
He tried one last night, said it worked really well at first, but then lost its scent. So I added some more oil to the remaining discs.

All in all, this is a great DIY. Cheap, and it works. You should get around 6 or so discs per batch. Pin It

Magic Blackhead Remover?

Hey everyone, Jen here! So my older two are in bed, hubs is watching soccer...why not cruise Pinterest for some inspiration right?? So, as I'm checking out my peeps recent Pins I came across a blackhead remover. Sweet! I'm pregnant and get horrid blackheads when I'm preggo. So seeing how it only needed 3 things that I had, I figured I'd give it a shot.
Here is the original Pin

It says "Getting rid of Blackheads: Take gel facial wash and mix with a tbsp of baking soda & a tbsp of salt. Apply to damp skin with cotton pad; leave for 5 mins. SO GROSS!"

Sounds good! So, I check out the website linked to the Pin, because lets face it, the description didn't give all that much info. Well, website is in Russian. I tried to translate it with Google Chrome, but the pin wasn't on the first page, and there was no search option to figure out where it was as, so I gave up.  I figured I'd mix enough face wash with the salt and baking soda until it made a paste. 
So I get my paste all ready to go and start applying. My 19m old thought I looked crazy-I could tell by the way he stared at my face. I put it on my chin and nose, let it set for the recommended 5m and used a wet towel to remove it. 

Results: No difference in amount or look of blackheads :( Now I just have burning skin. I burns bad! I'm worried I'll have chemical peel looking skin for my ultrasound tomorrow. Eek!

So ya'll, take it from me-don't do it! Pin It

Make Your Own Chocolate Syrup

So, in my household we go through a butt load of chocolate syrup. My kids LOVE chocolate milk, and we ran out of chocolate syrup tonight.  I'm lazy and didn't want to run out to the store if I didn't have to.  I knew I seen a Pin on Pinterest for make your own chocolate syrup, I quickly checked it out to see if I had everything in my cabinet to make it- I was in luck! I did! Well, except vanilla extract, I forgot to pick some up during my last grocery trip, but I didn't think that would matter all that much.  So, here are my findings --
 Originial Pin


What you'll need:
1.5c sugar
3/4c cocoa powder
a pinch salt
1c water
1tsp vanilla (I feel this is optional, I omitted this item)

Now, combine sugar, cocoa powder and salt-mix well
Combine dry ingredients with water, wisk and bring to a boil
Once it's all mixed and boiling, remove from heat and let cool-if you were going to add the vanilla, you'd do this now.
Pour into a container and you're good to go!

Seriously, took me less than 10m. Here is the one pic I took to show you how much you get out of the recipe:

And then I looked on the back of my container of chocolate syrup I had purchased from the store and here's the ingredients:

I'll take my 4 ingredients (including the water) over Polysorbate 60 anyday!

Total cost:

I honestly can't say, because I had everything in my cabinet!  If I had to guess? .50?

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