Halloween 2012

I hope you all had a lovely Halloween! We did the traditional "let the kids run around in their costumes while I take photos", followed by the "pick up dinner from a drive-through" and "trick-or-treat at the grandparents and great-grandparents houses".

We're nothing if not consistent.

As most of you know, my kiddos are in costumes most days of the year. They start throwing around ideas of what they'd like to be for Halloween some time in September, and it's really anyone's guess as to what they'll end up as on the actual night. This year, I was lucky enough to again score some fab costumes at Dirt Cheap for $1 and $2 bucks. As in, I may have bought 15 last week because that's a smokin' hot deal. We ended up with an Ariel (purchased at Target several months ago), a pink bunny ($1 at Dirt Cheap), and Batman ($2 at Dirt Cheap). Not too shabby, hmmm?

Here are just a few of my favorite photos of the evening...

Sweet little Owen was also Batman.

I mean, how fab is this pic?

And since yesterday was also Wednesday, which happens to be ballet day, Ariel did lots of twirls and arabesques. Good thing she had those legs...

So how do you spend Halloween?

Do you go door to door with your kiddos?

Do you hand out candy at your casa?

Do you watch episodes of the Munsters?

Do tell...

How to make your own custom printables

**If you missed yesterday's post, there's a fabulous giveaway going on here this week- just go to THIS POST to enter!**

Hello friends! Today's post is all about how to make your own customized printables for birthday parties, baby/wedding showers, teacher gifts, Tony Awards viewing parties, Mad Men season finale parties, ......you get the picture. As most of you know, I do NOT consider myself to be very tech savvy, so the fact that I was able to do this means that anyone could do this. You actually may already know some great tips/tricks on this subject, but I'm going to share how I made the printables for the girls Wizard of Oz party because fabric, yes fabric, was involved.

Chew on that for a sec...

Since Dorothy's dress is blue/white gingham, I knew I wanted to use tons of it in the party decor. It served as the table cloth on the food table, and I also made a couple of banners with it as well as a dress-up apron for our photo props, but I still thought, that's just not enough. I need more gingham just like Christopher Walken needed more cowbell. (SNL anyone?) I wanted to somehow incorporate it into the tags on the favor baskets as well as the labels for the food, and that's where fabric.com comes in.

I went to their website, typed 'blue and white gingham' into the search bar, and BAM. Several fabric samples to choose from, just like that. I found one that would work, enlarged the sample picture, and right-clicked on it to save it to my computer. Once you've done that, you'll have a pic that looks like this:

which is great, but I didn't really want that ruler at the bottom.

Enter Picmonkey.com

(once again, this is not a sponsored post, but I should totally be on their payroll as I tend to mention them 128 times a week.

Just sayin.)

I uploaded that pic onto picmonkey's site, used the crop tool, said buh-bye to the ruler, and added an oval in the center to provide a perfect spot to add my text. I also faded the oval out a bit so the gingham was visible behind it as well.

Now all I had to do was add the text on top.

It's just.that.simple.

Once I added words, I printed each of them out on cardstock in whatever size I needed. I used the wallet-size option to print 9 favor tags per 8.5 x 11 sheet:

 

and also printed wallet-sized labels onto adhesive paper for the

cupcakes in a jar:

For the food labels, I printed a 5 x 5 pic, glued them to a piece of cardstock folded in half, and voila!

This works with any picture/graphic you have saved on your computer-

 for example-

I used this Batman graphic I found online (from a simple google image search) for the food labels, favor tags, and even the invites for O's party back in February:

and, just in case any of you are planning a Batman shindig anytime soon, here's a blank one in black and white:

 and a blank one in black and yellow:

** one last tip **

these blank templates can also be used as custom thank you notes! I printed the blank gingham cards in a 3 x 5 size, and now we have our own *free* thank you notes that match our party theme.

So tell me-

what do you plan to make first with picmonkey?

Custom labels for your office/craft supplies/tools/makeup?

Custom invites?

Monogrammed stationary?

Do tell...

Batman party

Hello friends, and happy Tuesday to ya!

I wanted to have this posted yesterday morning, but I may have stayed up until the wee hours watching the Oscars and live tweeting the Oscars w/ my friends and watching post-Oscars coverage, because...

I heart the Oscars.

If you watched, who was your pick for best dressed?

I'd have to go with Michelle Williams and Viola Davis.

And Angie's leg, because let's face facts- it kinda stole the show there for a sec.

Moving on.

My little man turned 7 on Friday and we had a Batman shindig on Saturday. Lots of family and friends celebrating our sweet Oliver. It was a gorgeous day which was an answer to prayer since the Bat Cave and Joker's Hideout were both outside. Here's a few party pics followed by details on what I made/crafted/designed.

 Gotham City food table y'all.

Bat sandwiches (used a Batman cookie cutter found on eBay), Poison Ivy's Veggies, Robin's Pizza Rolls, Two-Face Pretzels, Riddler's Chips, and Penguin's Cake Poppers

Fab cake made by my Aunt C

Joker Juice, or....green Hawaiian Punch

 Found these Batman masks on eBay

and the Batman activity books came from the dollah spot at Target.

I also heart Target, but you knew that... 

 Found the Batman candy mold on, yup...you guessed it....eBay. It was my first time attempting a two-colored design and it's a bit tricky. Gotta let that first color harden a bit before pouring the second color on top, just FYI.

The hubs has mad chalk skillz

I had a plan to completely cover the trampoline in black tarps/streamers/paper to make it a bit more cave-like, but I don't think the kids cared one bit that it lacked decor. I also wanted every square inch of our playhouse/swingset covered in green to be the Joker's hideout, or getaway, or whatever it is the Joker's place is called...

So happy that Oliver's friends were able to come and celebrate the day with us, because when you're 7 and you're a boy, you really just wanna run around doing boy stuff with people your age. Oliver was really into the decorations this year for the first time, as in 2 weeks before the party he started asking me why Batman stuff wasn't everywhere yet. Don't get me wrong- I love that he wants the decorations, but the fact that he was asking where they were before I'd even made a game plan was putting a little pressure on this momma. Thank goodness Gotham City came to me at 9:00 pm the night before his party. I swear to you that the best ideas come late at night.

For the Gotham City background on the food table, I used 5 pieces of black poster board, some tri-folded and some folded in half, and cut 'windows' into the buildings with an exact-o knife.

Here's a pic of the candy mold I found on eBay-

I used it to make toppers for the cupcakes we took to school as well as chocolate suckers for the partay. Word to the wise- If you're planning to make a gazillion of these as I did, you might want to pick up 2 or even 4 of the candy molds if it only holds 3 or you could be up all night melting, pouring, and freezing. Just a thought...

The invites, as well as the favor tags and food signs were all created with an image I found and saved from a google search and edited in picnik.

I found the table cover & napkins the day before the party at Wal-wart, and ordered the striped straws from THIS etsy seller. I had a few things planned that didn't quite get finished (like making green question mark stickers for the chips bags so it would make sense that they were 'Riddler's Chips'), but O seemed to have a smashing good time despite the fact that the chip bags had no question marks, and after all- that was really who mattered.

I'm also pumped that the house is still semi-clean since there's another shindig here on Friday. Remember, if you're local I'd love for you to join me this Friday from 4-6 for a Matilda Jane trunk show & open house of my etsy shop from 4-6 right here at my hizzy. There will be lots of good eats and pretty things to look at. (For more details, see THIS post) I'll also have some live music provided by my 1 & 2 year-olds. No doubt they will treat us with a few ditty's from Mary Poppins or VeggieTales....

Until then, I'll be cleaning and sewing and cleaning and sewing...

Happy Tuesday!

p.s.- I've linked this post with

Beth at Home Stories A to Z,

Jen at Tatertots and Jello,