Wizard of Oz party- putting it all together

Happy Thursday friends!

After sharing pics of my girls Wizard of Oz party HERE,

sharing how I made the invites HERE,

and telling you (again) about the awesomeness that is Picmonkey, where I created custom printables for the party HERE,

I thought it was time I pulled everything else party related into one big post, HERE.

TODAY.

AS IN, THIS POST RIGHT HERE THAT YOU'RE READING.

I'm breaking it up into the remaining categories of food, games, and decor, and since I'm a lil' hungry, why don't we begin with the...

 FOOD

 I narrowed down my top pics from my W of Oz Pinterest board and decided to go with "Aunt Em's" cupcakes in a jar, cupcakes with ruby slipper bookmark toppers and shiny green Emerald City-ish liners (purchased from etsy and ebay), "Somewhere Over the Rainbow" fruit skewers, "Lions, Tigers, and Bears- oh my!" animal crackers, and "Follow the yellow brick road" rice crispy treats. Since the party was a 2-4 after-lunch-party, we weren't having to provide a full meal. Just a few sweets and snacks.

We also had "Aunt Em's sweet tea and lemonade", as well as juice boxes which I had no clever name for.

The rice crispy treats were actually my idea, since they kind of remind me of bricks (don't ask) and I thought it'd be super-cool if I made them yellow and stacked them, like bricks, on the serving platter. Just like Monica in season 2, episode 11, I planned and planned and planned and then didn't leave enough time to actually do everything I'd planned. Ever happen to you?

Cue hubs and his bro and one super-quick trip to Target for the purchase of 3 boxes of already made rice crispy treats. No, they weren't yellow, but they served the purpose and tasted pretty darn good, and good golly if they aren't close to yellow in their natural state anyway...

Hubs and I also stayed up pretty late making these beauties for the kids to take home in their favor baskets-

Dorothy's ruby slippers and Glinda's wand in candy form on a stick. Helloooooo sugar rush. (shoe candy mold from ebay, star mold from hob lob) To get the 'sparkle' on top of the shoes and wand, we sprinkled glittery sugar sprinkles in the mold before pouring the candy melts in. Yup- we totally added sugar to sugar. So unlike us.

There were also real-deal wands, tiaras, and "Professor Marvels crystal ball" bouncy balls for the kids to toss into their thrift-store favor baskets.

That pretty much wraps up food and favors, so let's talk about...

GAMES

The 'Melt the Witch' game came from THIS party, and after showing the pics to my 3-year old, Dorothy-loving, birthday girl, it was all.she.could.talk.about.

For this activity, all we needed was a plastic tub of water, a few water guns, and some pics of the Wicked Witch of the West. The party I linked to earlier actually used a large watercolor painting so that when they squirted it with water, the colors actually ran down the page and she appeared to be melting. Since we didn't have time to be whipping up any watercolor portraits, I did a quick google image search, saved a few of my faves to a cd, took it to Office Depot, and for .59 they made color copies of Elphaba for me. Sweeet. Didn't even have to use my own printer ink.  I did get a kick outta seeing this on the screen at the depot though...

And since those color copies were pretty high quality, the colors didn't run as much, but hit any paper with a water gun for long enough and you'll pretty much put holes right in it. Either way, the witch was pretty much 'liquidated'.

We also did a photo booth with a galvanized tub full of costume pieces that we, for the most part, already had on hand. Hubs sunk two wooden posts into the ground and hung a giant frame in the center with twine. (giant frame was a craigslist find) He also remembered that we had some random bricks hangin' out in the flower beds in the backyard, (yay for never cleaning out those suckers!) so he cleaned them and hit them with some yellow spray paint.

 For the tin man's hat, hub's picked up a large black plastic funnel thingy from Homey D's and a can of this:

and voila! Instant Tin Man. My mum created his heart out of a paper mache ornament from Michael's, attached it to a chain, and glued on a clock face.

Mum also provided the lion's mane/afro wig (still haven't asked her how she happened to have one of those) and blew up a pic of his medal of courage onto some photo paper. I punched a hole at the top, threaded a bit of ribbon through, and...well shucks folks, I'm speechless.....

I made the Dorothy apron in about 20 minutes with no pattern by cutting a square (top), a rectangle (skirt), and a super long & skinny piece for the sash to tie in back. I did a quarter-inch seam around all of it, pulled one of the threads on top of the skirt so it would gather, attached both the top and skirt to the sash and two pieces of white grosgrain to the top, and that was it. I thought, for a split second, about photographing the process to show how simple it was to create any character apron with no pattern, but quickly ditched the thought since I really didn't have more than 20 minutes to spend making it. Remember my Monica problem?

We already owned the Dorothy wig since our 3-year old is currently going through a dress-up-like-Dorothy-24/7 phase, and I picked up some sparkly red pumps at the thrift store.

The Scarecrow above is a burlap headpiece, floppy black hat, and a rolled up piece of white cardstock with a red ribbon around. Aaaaaaaand done.

Other dress up pieces included a tiara and wand (Glinda), and a black witches hat (for WWW).

A bubbles station, buckets of sidewalk chalk, a trampoline in Munchkinland, and an Emerald City playset rounded out the outdoor activities. Thank you, hubs, for making a most awesome Emerald City out of 8 pieces of green posterboard.

If anyone knows why I chose to stand like a flamingo, please- by all means, tell me.

DECOR

For the most part, I stuck to 2 rooms for this- the dining room, which is where the food was located, and the living room. I've shown you the food table, but I also cleared out some space in my china hutch for some Wizard memorabilia:

I pulled together 9 fabrics to represent characters/places from the movie for the pennant banner on the cabinet, (can you name each one?) and stuck to blue/white gingham for the banner above the food table. (p.s.- I make custom banners, such as these, in my shop) We also pulled this framed poster out of my son's room and put it in the dining room for partay day. He was only too happy for it to leave since he'd been itching to replace it with Luke and Vader.

For the foyer, I added a few red, blingy, curly things found on clearance at hob lob, some framed pics of the birthday girls in costume, and hubs drew the Emerald City on the chalkboard.

In the living room, I pretty much kept the mantel the way it was, and has been since Christmas. Yes I realize it's June.  At least I took the reindeer down...

I added 2 apples on the candlesticks (talking trees, anyone?), another pic of my birthday girl as Dorothy, and my copy of the Grimmery. I also grabbed my green sparkly cone trees and stuck them up there since they were Emerald City-ish, yes? The chevron banner was made for the Mustache and Lips baby shower I hosted in February.

Other party pretties included a hot-air ballon in the dining room, a 'bell out of order, please knock' sign on the door, and perhaps the most meaningful (in my opinion) line from the movie on the kitchen chalkboard.

So Folks, there ya have it. The details on what we made/thrifted/borrowed/spray painted/dug out of the flower beds for the big partay. I'd like to thank Aunt Cindy for making the cupcakes, my mum for her help with the photo props, and hubs for all of the many, many projects he took on. I hope all of you are having a fab day, and remember- there's a giveaway here this week that's live through Sunday night. If you haven't entered yet, just click HERE for all the details!

Sharing this with Jen at Tatertots and Jello

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...

Giveaway: D's Stitches

Happy Monday to you, friends! I'm so thrilled to host a giveaway this week for a fabulous etsy shop located right here in my home state of Alabama. Danielle of D's Stitches has some of the cutest mongrams & appliques to personalize anything from onesies and t-shirts to dish towels and bloomers! She sent shirts for each of my kiddos and not only do I love them, but my kids are thrilled with them as well. Know what we call that, friends? A win/win. Take a look...

I'm so thrilled to have new shirts that the kiddos will actually look forward to wearing, because if you have kids, then you've probably already experienced the whines that are brought on by trying to force something on their bodies that they're not keen on. Follow me? My kids started putting up a fight before age 2 about what they would/would NOT wear to the point of tears, tantrums, and hair loss. Well, that last one was just me, but I think I've proved my point. Thank you Danielle, from the bottom of my heart, for these shirts that will put a smile on their faces each and every time I pull them out of the closet.

A few of my other faves from Danielle's shop are the mustache onesie:

these sweet bloomers that can be personalized with a monogram or name:

and these fab linen tea towels that would make great gifts for friends, teachers, or yourself:

She also has Disney appliques as well as Roll Tide and War Eagle gear, and oh so much more. There are also additional product pics on her facebook page HERE.

***

Danielle is generously offering a shirt, onesie, or towel from her shop and there are 3 ways to enter. You could do just one, but wouldn't you rather have more chances to win?

Here's what ya do:

1. Visit her shop, D's Stitches, and favorite it by clicking on the heart under her shop header (leave a comment on THIS BLOG POST that you have)

2. Visit her facebook page and 'like' it (leave a comment on THIS BLOG POST that you have)

3. Leave a comment on THIS BLOG POST with your favorite item from her shop

**As always, giveaways here are for Mathews Family Happenings subscribers. Not a subscriber? It's easy!

Just look on the right sidebar----->

and join through Google Friend Connect or enter your e-mail address in the box to recieve updates**

I'll leave this giveaway open until Sunday night and will post the winner (chosen through random.org) on Monday.  Remember to leave a seperate comment for each entry that you do! I'll be back tomorrow and Wednesday with a few 'how-to's' from the party.

Good Luck!