Some Treats to Serve

I plan on having a sweet table at my sons party and here are some treats that I made.

First, candy apples.  I first dip the washed and dried apples in caramel.  Then snipped the side off two marshmallows and suck them to the top sides of the apple for ears.  Last, I dipped the apple in chocolate.

Second, I made cake pops the old way, not by the new pans that they have on the market.  I baked a box cake, let it cool, and then crumbled it into my stand mixer.  I added canned frosting to the crumbled cake and mixed it until it was dough consistency.  Then I scooped out small portions of the dough and made small balls.  To form the ears I took mini Oreoes, separated the two halves, and stuck them into the balls.  I put them into the frig to set and then dipped them into chocolate.  I let that set and then dipped them into tinted white chocolate.

 

The next thing that I made was these cute Mickey cookies.  They are made from mega stuff Oreoes and Mini Oreoes.  Separate the minis and glue each half to the mega stuffs using chocolate. I let them set and dipped then in chocolate.  After that I dipped them in tinted white chocolate.  While the chocolate is still wet add yellow or white candies and then sprinkle red crystals on the wet chocolate.

 

 

Last, I made a Mickey head sculpture out of Dum Dum suckers.  I took floral foam and stuck Dum Dum suckers all around.

 

 

Some Décor

My son’s party will be outside under our four car metal carport.  I wanted to decorate the metal post of the shed so I came up with these.  I watch a lot of Mickey Mouse and would write down all of their sayings like “Say Super Cheers” or “We’ve Got Ears, Say Cheers”.  I then turned to Microsoft publisher and my printer and made all sorts of Mickey Mouse graphics, printed, and cut them out.  I used hot glue and glued them onto some ribbon that I had and made these great hanging banners, 10 in all with 15 different graphics.  Now all I have to do to decorate is place the Command hook on the post and hang the banner.  They are ready to go and hanging in my sons playroom until the party.

Some more décor is this Mickey Mouse statue that I got at the Dollar General and these letters that I got from a craft store that closed down close to us.  I got the letters for a $1.00 a pieces and used some paint that I had to paint them in a Mickey Mouse theme.  Then I used buttons off some old clothes and glued them onto the letters.  I will use these two decorating items to decorate the gift table.

 

I plan to put a tent, like you use for tailgating, over the gift table.  I decided to make some decorations that would hang for the tents center so I made these hanging Mickey Mouse heads.  A friend found the round floral foams at the Dollar Store for me, and I wrapped the large ones with black crepe paper and painted the small round disks with black paint.  I assembled the ears to the head with toothpicks and glue.  Then I took some felt that I had and cut out a “2” and glued onto the head.  I made 3 in total to hang for about $3.00 each.

  To decorate the tent I plan on making a cute Mickey Mouse banner out of these imagings I found on Google images.  Will use this to dress up the front of the tent.  Will show you the finished product the day of the party, so stay tuned.

I mentioned in an earlier post that I had visited a Kmart that was going out of business several times.  One of the items that I picked up was a package of Mickey Mouse wallies.  If you do not know what wallies are, they are vinyl stickers that you can stick to your walls and then peel of and re-stick when needed.  I bought them not sure at the time what I would use them for, however, when I was designing my plan I quickly thought of an idea based off a pin that I had seen on Pinterest.  I took each character and stuck them to white cardstock paper, cut them out and glued a wooden skewer to the back.  I will use these to make table decorations for the main food table.

Using the same idea as above I wanted to use each one of the Clubhouse characters as centerpieces for the eating tables.  A very popular pin of mine on Pinterest is centerpieces that use a flower pot with tissue paper and a Clubhouse character.  I changed it a little and used metal containers I got at the Dollar Store (2/$1.00), curling ribbon, and printed Clubhouse characters.  I only had five characters from the wallies and I needed a total of 9 centerpieces for the eating tables and I wanted an image both front and back so I made my own.  I found images at Google image and used Microsoft publisher to size them, make mirror images of them, and then printed them from my home computer.  So each character was printed twice.  I cut the first image, traced to the second image and cut the second image.  I then glued the two pieces together securing a wood skewer in the middle of the two and stuck the skewer into the floral foam within the metal container.  The metal container is decorated with stickers that I created using mailing labels that I had.  Created the image that I wanted, printed on the shipping labels and then cut the image out.  Each cost me around $4.00.  It is hard to determine how much the printing cost so I factored in $1.00 for the printing.

 

I needed a cneterpiece for the food table and the coloring table.  The coloring table cost me about $2.00 because I reused a centerpeice that I friend of mine had.  Just put it in a new container, used some stickers on the container that i had left over from the Wallies that I had purchased from the project mentioned above and filled in with curling ribon.  To cute.

 My friend just spray paint foam balls black and sesure with toothpicks.

 

The second one cost a little more because I had to buy the foam balls and spray them like my friend did. Used the same container as the above centerpiece from the Dollar Tree (love that store) and used more left over wallies that I had.  Added a felt number two to the mickey head.                                   

 

I have a lot more décor planned so stay tuned.

We’ve Got Ears, Say Cheers

Mickey Mouse ears where a must for the party.  I found a YouTube video that should how someone made them and I followed that video.  You can find the video at, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rrgVt1g5tJM. Used black felt, flexible hand bands, hot glue gun, and foam craft sheets.  Followed the video and they turned out great.  I made 30 for the party for both kids and adults to wear.  I made 15 red and white polka dot bows so that guest wishing to make Minnie Ears could tie on a bow.  Will put these in a basket on the gift table so when people arrive they can grab them a set of ears.

Always Looking

As people pin my ideas from Pinterest I get to see their boards and saw where someone had pinned these Mickey Mouse head bowls that Target used to carry.  Of course they no longer carry these items so I had to figure out a way to make my own.  Well I did find the bowls on eBay for about 30 dollars, but I laughed and said no way was I paying that when Target originally sold them for 8.99.  I was walking around my local Wal-Mart one day looking at the seasonal items in the lawn and garden area.  I walked by the stand that held the plastic plant containers and thought maybe.  I bought the deep ones, one large and two small.  Took them home and painted the outside of them black, it took two coats, and glued the pieces together to look like Mickey Mouse.  My Mickey Mouse chip and dip set cost me around $3.00.  

Also at Wal-Mart I found these red barrels that I picked up to put the kids juice boxes in and bottled water.  Painted two white dots on the front to represent mickey's buttons.

Stay tuned for more serving pieces to come.

Repurpose Things

A Kmart close to my work was going out of business so for many weeks I would go over and browse through things to see if I could find any great bargains for the party and I did.  In my plan I had decided to use my black table clothes and I wanted a red table runner.  I decided to get red table clothes from the Kmart at 50% off and cut them into table runners.  I was able to get three table runners out of each table cloth.  I used permanent hemming tape to hem the sides of the runner.  Then I looked at it and thought it looked a little boring so I started adding white polka dots to the runner but then decided that it looked more Minnie Mouse than Mickey so I got a smaller dot sponge and added ears to the dots to make Mickey heads.  Love the look.

 

Being Creative

One of the things that I really wanted at my sons party where the life size character’s from the Mickey Mouse Clubhouse. You see these all over the internet for about $40 a piece. I decided that I wanted Mickey, Donald, Goofy, and Pluto but could not spend $160 plus shipping on them so I made them myself. I searched Google images until I found images that would expand in size without becoming distorted. I copied that image to software like Microsoft publisher, made my canvas the size I wanted the character to be and then stretched the image to fit the canvas size. I choose 36 inches high for Mickey, Donald, and Pluto and a little taller for Goofy and then played with the width until the image looked good to me. Then a bought myself a good printer and printed the image out across multiple pages using normal letter sized paper, which gives you a puzzle to assemble. I laid out the pieces of the image and decide which pieces I would trim the white space from and which ones I would leave. I then taped the pieces together, putting double sided tape on the white space I left and then laying the other half of the image on top of the tape. I used double sided tape so that you would not see tape lines on the image. Once I had the entire picture assembled I cut out the image and then traced it onto the green insulated foam board that I got from Lowes. One sheet did all four characters. My husband then used a saw to carve out the image. I then glued the image to the foam and there you have it, life sized characters for the party at a fraction of the cost. I hung these on my son’s playroom wall to keep them safe until the party.

My Journey Begins

I am new to blogging so please bare with me.  I decided to start a blog because I wanted to share my ideas with other moms like me.  I am a mom that has grand ideas for her child but not the pocketbook to match it.

My childs second birthday is coming up in a couple of months and I have been working on a design for the party.  I have been observing things that my son loves and one of the things he loves is Mickey Mouse.  So I turned to my favorite place for inspiration, Pintrest.  I started pinning ideas and buying things as I found them on sale or clearance.  I will be posting things that I have come up with.  I am not a stay at home mom.  I work a full time job and get things done late at night or during nap times on the weekends.  Stay tuned to see the things that I have already completed and the things that I am working on.