Celebrations – Page 10

Mickey Paper Wreaths

December 5, 2013December 5, 2013 chantelledoll

We have a very large corner mantle over our fireplace that normally gets filled by my Christmas village for the holiday season. I absolutely love my Christmas village, but each building is boxed up individually and it is a ton of work to bring up from the basement, set out and arrange. Just like a lot of the other Christmas décor, we decided to keep the Christmas village packed up and that left me to figure out a new way to decorate that space for the holidays.

My initial idea for the mantle was to do a large wreath. I had seen other crafters versions where they had various sized artificial wreaths zipped tied together to form a Mickey shape and thought that would be easy enough. Unfortunately I didn’t have any luck finding smaller sized wreaths for ears, so I went to my plan B which was to buy foam wreath forms from Michaels and wrap them in green garland. Well, the price on the styrofoam shapes was more then I was expecting so I decided it just wasn’t worth it and moved on to a plan C – cutting and crafting my own paper wreaths from Dollar Store posterboard. And, because I had done Mickey and Minnie versions of everything else, it only made sense that I would make 2 versions of the wreaths.

A paper wreath is nice and all, but I was worried it still was going to look pretty plain. I needed some way to dress them up and that is when I recalled these:

For each of my baby’s first Christmases, I ordered them personalized Santa hats from a wonderful eBay seller out of the UK. They no longer fit Camden’s or Keira’s head, so I was happy to find a way to repurpose them and put them on display.

I found and followed the Construction Paper Wreath Tutorial from Our Small-Town Idaho Life, with mine just being on a bit larger scale. The posterboard was a bit awkward to work with due to it’s size and stiffness, but it was worth it for the impact the finished wreaths make.

For each of the large wreaths, I began by cutting a full sized piece of posterboard in half lengthwise and then folding each half again lengthwise.

Along the non-folded edge, I marked out 1.25 ” strip that would later be used as my gluing area. I then marked along the fold in 1″ intervals and used my ruler to draw in straight guide lines perpendicular to my glue strip.

I then cut along each of the lines from the fold upwards, making sure to stop cutting when I reached the glue strip guideline I first marked out.

Once all strips were cut, it was time to flip my cut posterboard sheet inside out and join the glue strip on each side together to form a cylindrical tube. I chose to work with rubber cement because it is fairly forgiving if you need to reposition a little, but it creates a quick, permanent bond (so long as you coat both sides of the paper you are bonding together.)

Once my tube was formed, I inserted the last ring on one end into the last ring on the other end to create a circle. If you didn’t want a Mickey shaped wreath, you could now decorate your wreath.

For the ears, I repeated the same cutting and gluing process to 4 sheets of posterboard I had cut down to 8″ x 11″. Once I had my tubes, I trimmed each of 4 loops from one end, leaving the glued strip so I had something to attach the ear onto the big wreath form with. I then fed it through 3 of the loops on the big wreath and attached it on itself on the other side to form the ear.

I fit the kids Santa hats onto the loops to find the spacing I needed between the ears and then attached the second ear on the other side of the Santa hat. I was lucky that the hats fit snugly on the loops and I was able to keep them on without gluing or damaging them.

I then hot glued on some red pom pom’s to both wreaths to create hidden Mickey holly berry bunches. To differentiate between the Mickey and the Minnie wreath, I also added a red bow to Minnie.

The wreaths were a little flimsy on their own, so for my final step I cut a piece of wrapping paper to fit inside two large square picture frames (from Ikea) and hot glued the wreaths directly onto the wrapping paper. This will allow me to remove the wreaths and still use the photo frames after Christmas. I am sure the wreaths would be fine hanging directly on a door or wall, but this seemed to be the best solution for displaying them on my corner shaped mantle.

The framed wreaths fill our large mantle up nicely and I love the personal touch they have with the kids names on the Santa hats! The large stuffed Mickey and Minnie also on the mantle are toys the kids received last Christmas. They work perfect up there, but it has been a battle with my 3 year old to allow me to keep his Mickey up there.

Make sure to check back tomorrow to see the Mickey and Minnie stockings I crafted for the kids!

Mickey Christmas Wreath Tutorial (amanandhismouse.net)

Big Hands, Celebrations, Crafts

Tabletop Decorations: Merry Mickey Snowman and Tabletop Trees

December 4, 2013March 28, 2017 chantelledoll

Today I am sharing a couple quick projects I did to spruce up our kitchen table and add some decoration to the side buffet in our dining nook.

SONY DSC

The inspiration for this Mickey project came largely from the Mickey Tree Topper I shared yesterday and the images of Mickey snowmen I kept coming across on the internet. I was downstairs searching through my Christmas stuff and there he was just staring at me from the shelf begging for a set of mouse ears! I bought him several years ago, and I still really like him so I was happy to find a way to fit him into my holiday décor and theme.

Continue reading “Tabletop Decorations: Merry Mickey Snowman and Tabletop Trees” →

Big Hands, Celebrations, Crafts, Everyday Life

Mickey Top Hat Tree Topper

December 3, 2013December 3, 2013 chantelledoll

Creating a Mickey themed Christmas really hasn’t been that difficult given the amount of Mickey stuff already in our home. I loved Mickey when I was a kid and that certainly hasn’t changed as I’ve gotten older. For evidence, you need not look any further then my kids toy box or closets. With a boy and girl I think it is that much worse because I have reason to buy both the Mickey and Minnie versions of things!

I have slowly been adding Mickey and Minnie themed Christmas items to our main floor over the past week and it finally took until Friday for my husband to comment “I guess we’re going with a Mickey theme for Christmas, eh?”. I love that he rarely questions my obsession and was even willing to go so far as to go give me my dream wedding in Walt Disney World.

While in Disney World for our wedding and honeymoon, they had bride and groom themed mouse ears that I purchased. I wore my ears headband for most of our time in the parks, but the groom version was a bulky top hat and was too uncomfortable for my other half to really wear in the hot Florida heat. My bride ears got packed away in a box somewhere in the basement after our wedding, but the top hat has been sitting out on top of a shelf in our living room for the past several years.

While searching on pinterest for different tree topper ideas, I came across an image of a Santa Mickey top hat and was instantly reminded that we still had the groom hat sitting around. After trying it on my little tree, I decided it would make the perfect tree topper.

The hat looked good on the tree as it was, but I have a hard time not adding my own personal touch to things. To Doll it up and make it more festive, I simply added a strip of red ribbon and a poinsettia embellishment I found at the Dollar Store.

It’s a little quirky and different, and I love the way it finishes off our tiny tree.

Hooray for being able to repurpose things I already own!

Big Hands, Celebrations, Crafts

Salt Dough Mickey Snowman Ornaments

December 2, 2013December 2, 2013 chantelledoll

This year we have decided to keep our Christmas pretty scaled down in terms of decorating. After last Christmas, we nicely boxed up all our ornaments and Christmas décor thinking we would be moved into our new house by this point. We are still a good two months away from being in our new home, but we have made the decision not to pull out all the Christmas decorations and then have to box it back up when we’ll have enough other packing and organizing to do right after Christmas. I was originally disappointed by not being in our new home for Christmas and not getting a real tree like we normally do, but it has proved to be a bit of a fun challenge for me to come up with alternative cheap and simple solutions to decorate the house.

We have a 4 foot artificial tree I bought several years ago and we will be using that as our tree. I decided to make some quick Mickey shaped ornaments for it out of Christmas balls, and then things kind of snowballed from there with Mickey themed DIY projects throughout our main floor. This week I will be sharing with you what I have been up to and highlight a different Mickey themed Christmas project each day.

Today we have some relatively simple salt dough ornaments I created to hang on the tree alongside the large Mickey Balls. In my search for ornaments inspiration I came across these adorable Mickey snowman ornaments from busykidshappymom and thought they something simple I could recreate in salt dough.

I remembered I had bought a Mickey shaped cookie cutter about a year and a half ago with the intention of eventually doing a Mickey or Minnie themed birthday party for one of the kids. I have all kinds of Mickey party ideas pinned on pinterest, but there are just so many other fun themes to pick from that now I am not sure I will actually ever end up doing a Mickey or Minnie birthday party. I wasn’t originally planning an entire Mickey/Minnie themed Christmas, but it worked out nicely due to our circumstances and has been a good excuse to put some of those pinned ideas to use.

Salt D0ugh Recipe

1 part salt (1/2 cup)
1 part water (1/2 cup)
2 parts flour (1 cup)
A small bag of glitter to add some sparkle (optional)

To make the dough, I just dumped all the ingredients into my stand mixer bowl and used the dough hook to combine. They came together fairly easy with a bit of hand kneading afterwards, but my dough was a little dry and I ended up having to add more water.

Once the dough was made, I simply rolled it out with a rolling pin, and used my cookie cutter to cut out my Mickey Shapes. I then transferred the cut shapes to a cut sheet using a metal spatula, just as you would making sugar cookies.

For the ear hat portion, I used the same Mickey cutter and then used a circle cutter to cut off excess at the bottom. I decided to do them separately and not stick the two pieces of dough together at this point so painting the ears would be a little easier.

For the small snowman noses, I free shaped them from bits of the dough.

The final step with the dough was to put a hanging holes in each piece. I used a drinking straw and just poked through each head and set of ears to create a hole for my string to go through.

Once happy with my cut shapes, I put both pans of ornaments into a 200 degree Fahrenheit oven and let them slowly dehydrate for 2 hours.

Once dried and cooled, my next step was to paint the ear and nose pieces using acrylic craft paint, and then assemble each of my snowmen using hot glue. Most of my string holes lined up pretty well when stacking the pieces, but I did put the strings through before gluing so I wasn’t struggling to feed them through afterwards. Finally, I drew on the mouth and eyes with a small sharpie pen.

I also had some snowflake pieces I had cut out and baked so I gave those to my son and let him go to town on them with my sharpie markers while I was busy assembling my Mickey’s.

This was my first attempt with salt dough and it was so easy it is something I will definitely try again. If I were to make these same ornaments again, I would make the ear pieces a bit thinner, but overall I love the way they turned out. They look cute on my tree and it was a very inexpensive project using ingredients and supplies I already had on hand.

We’ve Got Ears!! Mickey Christmas Balls (dolledupdesign.wordpress.com)

Four Legged Fun, Gift Ideas

Friday Favorites: Santa is Coming to Edmonton Book

November 8, 2013 chantelledoll

It amazes me how quickly stores make the switch from Halloween into full Christmas mode. It is hard not to feel a slight bit of panic November 1st when the Christmas decorations fill the shelves, holiday music fills the air, and you realize Christmas is just around the corner. I hate the crowds, but I love shopping this time of year and seeing all the Christmas themed clothing, toys, decorations, housewares and books.

This year I am hoping to start a new tradition with the kids. One of the ideas I have seen floating around the internet is to wrap a stack of books for them to open in the night’s leading up to Christmas. Books are already part of our bedtime routine so I thought this would be a great way to bring a bit more Christmas magic and excitement into our house. I have seen it done as a 30 day advent calendar, but I think I will shorten it and have enough books wrapped to read for the 12 days before Christmas.

We already have a few Christmas books that I will wrap, but I stopped at Cole’s bookstore yesterday to quickly browse and see if there was anything new that caught my eye. I was immediately drawn to a stack of books titled Santa is Coming to Ottawa by Steve Smallman. I picked it up, disappointed it wasn’t Santa is Coming to Edmonton and then was delighted to discover that exact title hidden beneath the Ottawa edition. As I flipped through the pages and saw the references to neighbourhoods and landmarks in our city, I knew it was a perfect Christmas book to add to our growing collection.

The illustrations in this book are beautiful and I love that they show the familiar landmarks like the High Level Bridge, Art Gallery, Muttart Conservatory and Rexall Place. I am not sure my kids will be quite old enough to recognize and pick them out this year, but I see them getting excited over it in the upcoming years. My three year old has just started asking about where we live and trying to figure the world around us, so I really love the relevancy of this book.

This book is just one of many in the series. Other major Canadian cities that Santa is Coming to include Calgary, Vancouver, Hull, Ottawa, Toronto or just Canada. For my American friends, there is a wide variety of titles that cover states and major cities from across the country. And, because he is a British author, there is a vast range of English and European titles such as London, Belfast, and Scotland.

And if these still don’t work for you? There is simply Santa is Coming to My House.

Visit the Chapters/Indigo/Coles website to find all the Santa is Coming to titles.

Celebrations, Gift Ideas

Treat Filled Pumpkin Balloons

October 31, 2013April 11, 2014 chantelledoll

I wanted to bring something special for the kids at playgroup this week and found this cute DIY Pumpkin Patch from one of my favorite party blogs Hostess with the Mostess. After gathering up some orange balloons, green ribbon and small treats, I set to work following the great tutorial on Hostess with the Mostess.

To help get the treats in the balloons, I cut off a chocolate milk bottle and put each balloon on the end. Suckers may not have been the best treat choice because I did end up with a few deflated balloons, but luckily I still had enough pumpkins for all the kids. Other treats I included inside were chocolate foil pumpkins, a piece of candy corn saltwater toffee, a small glowstick and Halloween stickers.

Once filled and inflated, the toughest job was drawing on all the faces in permanent marker. To finish off my pumpkins I used some ribbon and tied on a leaf shaped tag that read “From Camden and Keira”.

We also had to bring a treat to playgroup that day so I made this delicious Pumpkin Fluff Dip I found on the Kraft Canada website. I served it with some sliced apples, cinnamon sugar pita’s and ginger snaps. I am not sure too many of the kids ate it, but us mommy’s sure liked it!

Celebrations, Everyday Life, Two Legged Fun

Our Hectic, Happy Halloween!

October 31, 2013November 1, 2013 chantelledoll

It has been an incredibly busy week for me with Halloween preparation and festivities. We had a Halloween party at playgroup on Tuesday for that I prepared treat-filled pumpkins and a Halloween wall hanging craft for. On Wednesday I carved our pumpkin and we were out and about almost all day on actual Halloween.

Camden was a Ninja Turtle for Halloween. I looked everywhere to buy a costume, but the toddler sized one seemed to be out of stock everywhere I found it in-store or online. Luckily, I had ordered this awesome Michelangelo hoodie from Mamabargains.com earlier in the summer and it ended up being his costume. To complete the look, I found a pair of green pants I safety pinned orange bands to (cut from a dollarstore tea towel!) and I repurposed the shell from a 6-12m sized turtle costume into his ninja shell by pinning it to one of his old mini backpacks and adding on toy nunchuks. The turtle treat bucket and turtle socks were Target find’s.

My original plan for Keira was to make my little Doll into a cabbage patch, but that was quickly abandoned after several tantrums just attempting to try the yarn wig on her. I had some returns to make to Old Navy late last week and just happened to notice their costumes were marked 50% off so I decided it was probably easier to pick up a costume for her. The leopard wasn’t my original plan, but it still turned out pretty cute!

Last year I carved a Spiderman pumpkin to match Camden’s Spiderman costume so it only made sense to make a Ninja Turtle this year. I started with a pumpkin from my mom’s garden and spray painted it green. I then carved out the turtle mask, eyes and mouth. It was a lot of scraping and cutting but the final result was worth it.

And the treats we handed out? Ninja Turtle candy, of course!

Camden’s weekly preschool class fell on Halloween so he got to wear his costume and spend the morning playing Halloween games, trick or treating around the recreation centre and creating a Halloween craft. The morning started off very well when we got to class and Camden discovered one of his little buddies was Raphael – I think the two of them ended up being inseparable for the morning because of their shared love of Ninja Turtles.

While Camden was in class, Keira and I made a quick run to Walmart to get her a treat bucket and then went back to the rec centre to play at the indoor playground. We also stopped for mom to enjoy a treat – a pumpkin spice latte.

After lunch and an unsuccessful attempt at a nap, the kids and I headed out to enjoy the Halloween festivities at one of the local malls – Bonnie Doon Centre. It was a little out of the way for us, but I am so glad I chose this mall over the closer one we went to last year. It was far less crowded and they had trick-or-treating as well as all kinds of kids friendly activities including crafts. bouncy castles, face painting, balloon animals and a petting zoo. We will definitely be going back next year if they offer the same event.

After the mall, we came home to have dinner with daddy (pizza for our little turtle) and then Camden and I headed out trick-or-treating around the neighbourhood. We didn’t go far, but his turtle pail filled up quickly and we now have more then enough candy and chips for the next several months!

And not to be left out of the fun, our hockey hound wore her Edmonton Oiler’s Jersey and Rumbull dressed up as the Rufferee. I know some people find it ridiculous to dress up dogs, but I have always done it and enjoy it. There is also something about a dog in costume that makes them look far less intimidating to the trick-or-treaters coming to our door!

So there you have Halloween 2013 with the Doll’s. It was a busy day, but well worth it to see the smiles on my kids faces. As we were walking home from trick-or-treating, my little guy kissed my hand and told me what a nice mom I was. I am so lucky I get to make these memories with them!

Celebrations, Parties, Recipes, Sweet

Cakes: Machine’s and Monkey’s for Max

October 29, 2013 chantelledoll

This weekend we celebrated my nephew’s 2nd birthday. My sister and her husband just bought their first home so they have been very busy these past weeks moving in and working on home improvement projects. She is also 7 months pregnant so I can only imagine how exhausted she is between chasing a 2 year old and unpacking. Because of all this, and because I enjoy doing it, I offered to bake and decorate the cake for my nephew’s birthday party.

My sister has mentioned Max is into tractors and construction vehicles lately so I knew it would make a good theme for his cake. I started with a 5 pack of small CAT toys I found at Target for $6 and decided to build a chocolately construction zone for them. My cake decorating skills can still use some improving, so I loved that the mud and dirt on this cake didn’t require perfectly smooth icing to look good.

Finishing details included green icing grass and small chocolate rocks. The “dirt” was Oreo cookie crumbs. For the final touches, I printed out some construction style signs with the birthday boy’s name and age to stick into the cake with the “2” candle.

I am not sure the birthday boy ate much of his cake, but he sure did enjoy playing with the tractors and trucks on it so I would call that a success.

The actual cake was from a mix and the icing was just a basic chocolate buttercream. Inside was a delicious Oreo cheesecake filling. I didn’t get a picture to show it in it’s full glory, but trust me it was tasty and definitely worth trying on your next cake. I *may* have even eaten the leftover filling on it’s own by the spoonful.

Oreo Cheesecake Filling

1 Package of cream cheese (8 oz)
1 tub of Cool Whip
1 tsp vanilla extract
1 row of Oreo Cookies, crushed

To make filling, blend room temperature cream cheese. Add in defrosted Cool Whip and vanilla extract, then mix until smooth. Gently fold in crushed Oreo’s.

Max’s First Birthday Monkey Cake

I also had the priviledge of making the cake for Max’s first birthday last year. I went with a monkey theme and ended up doing a large cake for the party guests and a small monkey just for the birthday boy. To get the round cake shape, I baked the cake in my Pampered Chef batter bowl. The cake was also baked from a mix and I used the same chocolate buttercream as the construction cake, with some banana flavored icing for the mouth and ears and melted chocolate for the mouth, hair and eye details.

I do enjoy cake decorating and love that this gives me a chance to both practice my skills and give my nephew something special for his birthday. I am afraid I may have started a trend and will now be asked to make the cakes for all upcoming birthdays, but I think I am okay with that!

Celebrations, Parties

An Elephant Baby Shower

October 22, 2013October 22, 2013 chantelledoll

My adorable curly-haired little nephew Max celebrated his birthday this week. I don’t get the chance to see him as often as I would like, but when I do I always enjoy visiting and seeing how he has grown. They change so fast and it is hard to believe it has been now been over two years already since I hosted the baby shower for my sister in his honour.

Décor
With Max, my sister knew she was having a little boy, so I decided right away on a green, blue and grey color scheme. For the overall theme, I chose elephants because my sister had a stuffed elephant growing up that she was very attached to and I think still sleeps with to this day. The main graphics I used were an “oh boy.” typographic image and a picture of a mom and baby elephant intertwined. These were used on the invite, banner and food toppers.

I created a simple wreath for the front door and strung articles of baby clothing with elephants on them across the front window of my mom’s house. Paper lanterns were put up across the food table with the “It’s a Boy!” banner and a felt elephant mobile I crafted up got hung from the kitchen light at the middle of the table. I also found small paper mache elephants at Michaels so those got put out on the food table.

Food

The shower was help in the mid afternoon so I served a range of finger foods and sweets. Savory items included spinach dip cups, pigs in a blanket, sweet and sour meatballs, bruschetta and garlic toast, stuffed mushrooms, and surprise dip with tortilla chips.

For the sweet items, I made fruit bouquets in green and blue flower pots, baked and decorated elephant shaped sugar cookies and made a mini cupcake display. For the cupcakes, we had chocolate cake with mint frosting and white cake with a banana flavored frosting. To keep with the elephant theme, they were all topped with a small marshmallow peanut.

One other fun sweet item I made was blue candy popcorn. The labels were custom designed by myself and put on small wedding favor boxes, then filled with a basic sugar popcorn recipe. I love the pink colored elephant brand popcorn when I was growing up, so I thought this was a fun twist on it.

Games

I know a lot of people dread the typical baby shower games, so I tried to come up with some fun games that wouldn’t embarrass anyone or require my guests to eat disgusting mush. I decided on two games – Baby Scattegories and a Price is Right style game using baby items. I think the guests all enjoyed it and afterwards the mom-to-be was able to take the Price is Right items and put them to use with her new baby.

Favors

As guests left, they were given small bottles of hand santizer with custom designed labels I ordered from stickeryou. They were quick and easy and I think they turned out pretty cute.

So there you have it. Like any shower or party, I had a lot of fun designing and planning this special day for my little sister. She is expecting again this December and while I won’t be throwing another baby shower for this new niece or nephew, I am just as excited for their arrival.

You can also view my Elephant Baby Shower planning board on pinterest.

Celebrations, Gift Ideas

Backpack! Backpack! Dora Themed Gift Wrap

September 28, 2013October 10, 2013 chantelledoll

Over the past year, I have been lucky to meet some very lovely ladies and their adorable children through our playgroup. I had been in other mommy groups and classes and haven’t really clicked with anyone so I am thankful to have found these ladies and get to spend time with them on a weekly basis. Our friendship has grown outside of the regularly scheduled playgroup now and I am so excited that we have now started to be invited to some of the kids birthday parties.

The first party we have been invited to was a Dora themed party so I wanted to find the perfect gift. There is a lot of cheap Dora themed stuff out there so I ended up settling on a cute Disney princess dress and tea party set. I decided I could make it Dora themed through the wrapping, so I bought a roll of purple wrapping paper and set to work!

Part 1 – “Backpack” wrapping

This idea came from purple paper bag backpack themed treat bags I have seen on the internet. The gift I bought was a nice rectangular shape so I decided to wrap it and make it look like backpack. I simply started by wrapping the gift as normal with purple paper. The pockets, top flap and back straps were just folded out of the same gift wrap and taped on. The finishing touch was Backpack’s face which I found on the internet and printed on my home computer. It was cut out and attached with double sided tape.

The pockets on the backpack were stuffed with Dora fruit snacks and a Dora themed activity book I found from the dollar store. When I showed the final backpack to my 3 year old, his first questions was “where’s Map?” With all the other stuff I had for the pockets I didn’t even think to add him, but I am so glad my 3 year old suggested it! To make Map, all I did was print the same face I used for backpack and rolled up the sheet of paper.

Part 2 – Helium Balloon Star

If you have been “lucky” enough to have seen an episode of Dora, you have probably seen the happy faced stars floating around. When looking for Dora gift ideas on the internet I came across pictures of these stars and they reminded me of the star shaped helium balloons I have seen at Dollar Tree. I know how much my 3 year old loves helium balloons so I thought this would be a nice little addition to the gift. Unfortunately my Dollar Tree was out of the big star shaped balloons so my idea to have stars floating above backpack had to be modified to be a small star shaped balloon coming out of Backpack’s pocket.

The balloons are cute on their own, but I figured they could use an extra Dora touch by adding faces to them. To do this, I simply painted eyes on in whiteout and used a sharpie to draw in the mouth and eyeballs. And then I found cute “Happy Birthday” helium balloon with Dora on it at Dollarama so I was still able to have a balloon floating above backpack!

I love the way it turned out and was so excited to give it to the birthday girl. She didn’t even notice the gift inside wasn’t Dora related, and her mom tells me she was asking for a princess dress anyway, so it ended up being a perfect gift all around.

Now my problem will be to come up with something equally awesome for the next party! I think I may have set the expectations a little high.