Rainbow Cupcakes

I got this idea from one of my girlfriends who did this for her daughter's birthday. First make a white cake mix as directed. You may want to use two boxes. One only yielded 15 cupcakes for me. Divide the mix evenly to bowls. Drop in food coloring. About 6 drops per bowl. It looks best the brighter it is in my opinion.

Teaspoon the different colors into the baking cups. Fill only to about 2/3 full. And cook in oven as directed from cake box.

Frost the completely cooled cupcakes.

Pour sprinkles into bowl and after frosting each cupcakes, turn over cupcakes to collect sprinkles.
Voila - end product

Here is what the cupcakes that I made looked like inside. The kindergartners who had these said they were the best cupcakes ever.

Note - you can do this as a cake as well

Little Girls Luau Birthday Party

Food:

Pigs in a blanket with ketchup and mustard

Mangoes

Pineapple

Kiwi

Strawberries

Cake- 1 9" round white cake with white frosting. We frosted the entire thing white, then dyed some of the frosting pink to make a flower. Then instead of making it a double layer cake we made a dozen cupcakes. We used vanilla frosting dyed green to frost the tops. Then we used a kitchen knife to make the veins like a leaf with yellow sprinkles to make it shine a little.

Drink- punch made with pineapple sherbet and Sierra Mist. Water with lemon slices.

Even though these were all 5-7 year old girls, they ate almost everything. It was relatively healthy too.

Decorations:

Glass stem vases with bright silk flowers

Large glass jars with sand and seashells

Palm trees (in our yard) and plastic blow-up trees

Cut-outs of flowers and tropical birds

Activities:

I cut out hundreds of flowers with bright colored cardstock with my Cricut machine. Then I got straws and cut them in 1" sections. I cut yard, and the girls made their own leis.

Painting pineapples. My daughter LOVES crafts and painting so the girls painted little wooden pineapple ornaments.

Slip-n-slide.

Pinata... a recurring theme, I know. My kids love them.

Coloring the driveway with sidewalk chalks... a big hit with the girls.
Photo shoot. After the girls made their leis, we had them put them on, put on a grass skirt and stand by the little palm trees. They got a copy of the picture with their thank you card.

The last thing was flower hair barrettes that I made for everyone to take home. I made about 25 in just an hour and a half.

Little Boys Jungle Theme Party

This is still in the works so the post will not be complete for another week. This is what I have so far, so I'll probably make some changes.
My soon-to-be 5 year old son's birthday is coming up soon, and he wants to have a jungle theme for his party this year. The only things I haven't been able to find anywhere is jungle safari hats. I thought they'd look darling with their hats and bandannas.

Decorations:
Blue plastic tablecloth coming down the stairs to look like a waterfall.
Stuffed animals placed around the house.
Plastic figurines to decorate the table with the food.
Sound machine with jungle sounds.
Animal pictures. Calendars are on sale right now, so I got a Safari calendar with beautiful pictures of jungle animals.
Jungle leaves cut out with my Cricut on the walls

Activities:
Jungle Safari story- As the kids come in we're going to tell a story about jungle animals and they will all earn their own zebra print bandanna. I got material from Joann, and will cut them out with pinking shears (or with my straight edge and then putting Fray Stop around the edges). I don't have the time to sew them. When these are on we'll take a head shot of each of them for a passport picture. These will be the thank you cards.
Paint plaster of Paris jungle animals. I found them in the craft section of my local Wal-Mart. They were pretty inexpensive ($2.49 for 6).
Jungle search. Wal-Mart had their plastic animal toys on sale so I got plastic snakes really cheap. Everyone will search for their own snake. We might also search for alligator eggs (Easter eggs filled with various goodies.)
Pin the tail on the lion... pretty self-explanatory.
Pinata- we went to our local party store, and they had lion pinatas.
We may have the Jungle Book DVD or the Tarzan CD playing for those who arrive early or leave late.
For older children you could paint their faces to look like zebras or tigers. Make your own memory game where the kids have to match the animal picture to the animal sound or the footprint.

Food:
Funky monkey banana splits
Sandwiches- trying to come up with a fun name... any suggestions?
Jungle juice- apple cranberry juice mixed with Sprite

When everything is finalized I'll post pictures and update any changes. Hopefully this is a good jumping off point for you.

Candy Corn Sugar Cookies

Make your favorite cut-out sugar cookie recipe. Divide the dough into 3 parts. Keep one part white, color one part yellow and one part orange.
Place wax paper into a bread pan. Press the white dough into the bottom, then the yellow and then the orange. It won't be even, but that's fine. The cookies will still look great when you're done. Put the pan into the refrigerator for 3-4 hours. When it's done remove the dough from the pan using the wax paper, and keep the wax paper beneath it to cut it up.
Cut into 1/4" strips, and then into triangles as shown.

Put them on your greased cookie sheet, and bake according to the directions for your recipe.

When they're done remove the cookie sheets from the oven. Let the cookies sit for 1 minute, and then roll in sugar. It looks really white in the picture below, but in reality it's pretty transparent.

Here are some of the cookies on the cooling rack. The cookies look and taste great with or without sugar. Be aware that the cookies with sugar will dry out much more quickly. If you don't plan on using the full recipe you can freeze your dough.

Enjoy!

Quick and easy pumpkin cookies

This is a super simple and delicious recipe that calls for a total of 4 ingredients. You can even leave out 2 of them and it still tastes great. Best of all you can have 3 of them for one Weight Watchers point. (Or so I'm told...)

Ingredients:
1 box of spice cake mix
1 17 oz. can pumpkin
crystallized sugar (optional)
1 bag pumpkin spice Hershey Kisses (optional)

Directions:
1. Mix the spice cake mix and pumpkin together. Scoop onto a greased pan about 2" apart.
2. Add a pinch of crystallized sugar on top of each cookie. Or not. It tastes great either way.
3. Cook for 11-13 minutes in a 350 degree oven. While it's cooking remove the wrappers from the Kisses.
4. When done remove sheet and put on Kiss on each cookie.

Delicious and easy! Enjoy!

A few more Halloween crafts for you

Here are a few more crafts that you can do. Refer to these posts for directions for the wreath and the letters.One thing I did differently was to add a black boa to the top. All you have to do to add that is use craft or hot glue and stick it down carefully. You can certainly add it to a board or hang it with ribbon.
This wreath differs from the Valentine wreath in that I bought wooden shapes from the craft store. I colored them with Sharpies, then sealed them with Mod Podge. That will help protect them in case of rain. I hot glued them to the wreath.

This was a really easy craft. I spray painted terra cotta pots with a glossy black paint. I added the round foam and stuck the flowers in. To use it for Thanksgiving just remove the garland and raven.

Pumpkin Table Runner

Supplies:

Several pieces of orange, black and green felt (Yellow felt if you'd rather use that for the faces.)

Scissors

Sewing machine

Orange, black and green thread (or you can just use one- your preference)

Patterns (Either printed from the computer or cut out with a Cricut machine. You need two sizes so you can back it.)

Temporary (repositionable) fabric glue

Directions:

Cut out the pumpkin either from a computer printout or on your Cricut. Also make one that's 1/2" larger for the backing.

Cut out the pumpkin, stem/leaves and the backing. Cut out the pumpkin faces with either the black or yellow. When you're done with the faces then use a temporary fabric glue to secure them.

When the glue is dry stitch the faces to the pumpkins. The first picture is the backside, and the second picture is the front view.After you've stitched the faces on there arrange them until you like the way they look. When you have them the way you like them stitch them together using black thread. You can have them face the same direction or twist and turn them to add visual interest.

I opted to keep them all facing the same way. This is how my table runner looked when completed.Here's how it looks on my table. I spray painted the sticks black, found black roses and have a couple of luminaries. Fun stuff!