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Banner and Garland for a Sweet Girl’s First Birthday Party with Tutorials

My niece Liz, who swears she is flair-impaired, asked me to make some decorations for Audrey’s first birthday party.  I jumped at the chance to make a garland…You can see the tutorial below…I used purples because Audrey’s cake was purple.  The pink flowers I attached to the front of the garland. Looking pretty cute, huh?Not nearly as cute as this, the birthday girl who was awakened a tad early for the party!  She had to do a bit of blanket snuggling on the floor before we got started. Her big sister immediately asked me if she could play games on my iPhone so she was in a great mood!!  Plus she had a great audience of aunts, uncles, grandmas and grandpas….

I made Elena’s dress (you can see the project here) from a woman’s small ruffled tank top and a t shirt top.  She loves it!

Miss Audrey sure make a dent in her own personal cake!  She pretty much decimated it in very sort order!  That is the bottom of the cake liner you see in the middle of the cake.  She ate that much!  And that was after a ginormous amount of food at dinner.

I made a banner to go across the cake with the scraps left over from the garland…it was soooo cute!!

Laney was a bit put out by all the presents for her sister and the lack of complete attention on her!  She melted down a few times, running down the hallway and throwing herself on her bed!  She is three after all, you wouldn’t expect much different!Audrey had a great time helping her mommy open the presents…she sat on the walker box pretty continuously after it was opened.   She then decided to poop unceremoniously in the middle of the party crowd!   Silly baby!

Now for the tutorial! 

You will need:   Heavy thread, string or yarn (I used bakers twine)

Cardstock

I used a large circle cutter, you could just cut them out freehand, but I went the lazy route!

I also used my Xyron to put the adhesive on the back of the circles.

Cut as many circles as you want to make your garland long and run them through the Xyron machine.  I folded some circles in half first, then opened before I ran them through the Xyron.  Some I didn’t fold first and I folded them after.  I must say it was easier to get them folded evenly if they were folded first before they had the adhesive applied.

Then lay the twine in the middle along the fold…and then just fold the circle in half with the string inside.

I added some flowers I found at Michaels in the $1 bin.  I think it was a package of 12 and I just ran them through the Xyron also (double lazy!) so that they stuck well to the half circles.

I had these strips of paper left over…I have always wanted to make a cake banner.  I cut the strips 1 x 1.5 inches, then I trimmed them to a triangle shape, just free handed them!

Then I took them upstairs to my sewing room (AKA the disaster zone—but more about that later!) and sewed them together with a variegated pink heavy thread.

Now I had myself a great flag banner.   I attached each end to a bamboo skewer and cut off the ends of the skewers so they were close to the cake but not right on top of it.  And I added a shorter skewer in the middle to keep the middle of the banner off the cake!

So that’s all there is to it!  They looked great and added a sweet touch to the party!

 I am linking to these great parties!

Wool Felt Rose Wreath

My oldest niece just had a birthday…she wanted me to make her a wreath for her house, to hang in her living room.  She gave me a list of colors and just let me create!  I love those kind of gifts!

Jess wanted some darker jewel tone colors, so I decided the wreath needed a little something extra.  I found some feathers on sale in the floral section…all these were on one pick and cost only $1.99.  I thought it turned out really nice…I will probably hang it with a deep red or deep purple wide sheer ribbon.  You can see how to make these wool felt flowers and wreath here. By the way, I had started using Windows Live to do my blog posts.  The first post took me four hours and didn’t turn out too well, but this post was a bit easier.  I think after I get used to it, it will definitely be better than uploading pics through blogger.

   I link to these great parties!

Family Auction

Almost a year ago my dad died…my mom had all this stuff that she wouldn’t use, so she decided to have an auction.We had the most beautiful weather, the sun was out, although the forecast was for cloudy.  It was a tad cool in the morning, but it warmed up nicely in the afternoon. We had good friends, family and food!  And of course, the auction….my brother is an auctioneer here in Missouri, but he was able to get his Illinois license and was the auctioneer. Mom’s dog Rachel was trying to catch some rays, she didn’t let all the hub bub bother her!Mom did great, she seemed to enjoy herself…I know it must have been hard in some ways, but she was surrounded by family and friends. Plus we had Baby Audrey (who was born the day after Dad died) to snuggle with and carry around…She is such a sweet little thang!Josh and his big girl Audrey on the big tractor.  Ruthie and Sue modeling on the tractor.Jenny is carrying around the princess-wanna-be Elena and the Gabe is tricking Max here!The first tractor selling…Cullen starts it up…while Clinton waits.Mom’s siblings were all there…here’s Aunt Jean (she took me to see Bambi when I was just a little thing) and Aunt Marge (she is the master quilter!)…It was a great time to just people watch…Let me tell you, I believe this might have qualified as a redneck event…we had corn cobs, we had people sitting on shower chairs in the front yard…we had This guy must not have read the forecast or the dress code…nice with the boots and shorts!