Pink and Gold Winter Wonderland First Birthday Party

Back in February we celebrated our daughter's first birthday with a Pink and Gold Winter Wonder Land Party.

Since her birthday was early February a Winter Wonderland Party seemed appropriate, and being obsessed with gold and pink it was an obvious choice. I decided very early in January this was going to be our theme, so I was able to find a few after Christmas deals that completed the theme.

What's a long winter without a hot chocolate bar!!?? The hot chocolate bar was such a hit!

I decorated with a large gold "A" surrounded by several pictures of Ava's first year. We used our Keurig to warm up the water and displayed powdered hot chocolate mix in a glass jar with directions for those who might have needed them.

Our toppings of course included marshmallows, butterscotch chips, white chocolate chips, peppermint chips, and caramel pieces. I made marshmallow pops covered with pink and white chocolate and white chocolate covered spoons for mixing up this yummy treat. See how I made these in the past.

I had a lot of fun with the sweet table! 

I borrowed several gold and white Christmas trees from family members and made a couple pink feather trees by using a pink feather boa and wrapping it around a Styrofoam cone. I had a lot of fun making pom pom garland. I used various shapes of glass jars and modge podged gold glitter to the bottom half. I made a "Happy Birthday" sign with my Silhouette Cameo. 

Pink, gold and white sweets consisted of TONS of gold Rolos, white M&Ms, pink Hersey Kisses (a plus of a February party - Valentines Day candy!!!), pink marshmallows and white rock candy.

I also hand dipped Oreos in white chocolate and drizzled pink chocolate and gold sprinkles on top.

And then of course we have the pink smash cake!! It was not so obvious in person, but you can sort of see in the pictures I was going for an ombre effect in my frosting of the cake.

I spent so much time trying to brain storm a party favor for this party and I also procrastinated making party hats. The day before the party I had the brilliant idea of using a winter hat to cover both! Some how, I have no clue how I got so lucky, Target had the perfect winter hat on Clearance! Problem solved!

Most importantly, the Birthday Girl had a fabulous birthday!! She loved her cake! And loved all of the attention she got at her party! It also didn't hurt that she got like 5 baby dolls as gifts, her absolute favorite!!

I can't believe my baby girl is almost a year and a half!!! Where does the time go???

Thanks to the fabulous Danielle at First Moment's Photography for the fabulous photos from her first birthday party!!! Danielle does a fabulous job and it was so nice not to have to worry about taking pictures. I could just sit back and enjoy!!! If you are in Wisconsin, you should check her out! First Moment's Photography

Valentine's Day Mantel

Better late than never, but here is my pink, white and gold Valentine's Day mantel. I am obsessed with gold at the moment! I am also obsessed with making pom poms!!! So of course my mantel has lots of gold and pom pom garland!! 

The best part of this mantel was that it was so easy and free! I used letters I had previously used in other projects! It also didn't hurt that we just had my daughter's first birthday party and the colors where pink and gold!

Does anyone else love pom poms as much as I do?

Happy Valentine's Day!!

Quilts from Baby Clothes

After I finished my first quilt in the fall, the wheels were turning for my next quilt.  When my daughter was born my sister-in-law gave me a bunch of special outfits her girls wore when they were babies and instead of handing these special outfits to someone else I knew I needed to do something with them for my sister-in-law. That's when I decided to be an over-achiever and sew TWO baby clothes quilts for my nieces for Christmas.

Since I only had about ten outfits, coming up with my design took me a while. I eventually decided to use the babies outfits and create a bunch of hearts! Once my design was determined, I then procrastinated about cutting up adorable, perfectly fine baby clothes!!! Once I started I was very happy I did. I love how it turned out and more importantly my nieces and sister-in-law loved them!

How I created them:
After getting over cutting up baby clothes, I cut the clothes so I could add fusible interfacing to the back of the clothes. Then I traced various sizes of hearts onto the interfacing and cut out my hearts.

I than laid out my washed purple piece of flannel and determined my design with the hearts and pinned them in place. Next I carefully zig-zag stitched around each heart with a darker purple thread.

Then I pinned together my batting and another piece of flannel for the back and quilted with long lines with the same dark purple thread - avoiding the hearts. Lastly I binded it and I had two fabulous quilts for my nieces for Christmas!

I did a few test runs of appliqueing the hearts onto flannel first to figure out what worked best. I did a couple without the fusible interfacing and it works SO much better with it! This is my 2nd and 3rd ever quilt, so this was pretty simple!

When adding my hearts I also added an initial for each of the girls, so they could tell their quilts apart!

I can't wait to some day make these for my kids with their baby clothes, but we all know that won't happen until my kids are at least 20!

My First Quilt

I am so happy that I completed my first ever quilt last week!!! I completely love how it turned out! It's not perfect but its good enough for a first quilt! My sister and I took a "class" from her awesome Aunt-In-Law who has been quilting for years. We followed the beautiful pattern from Quilting is more fun than Housework. It was a great quilt to learn on and as you can see my son loves it!

 I can't wait to make my next one.... now just to find the time.

Monogrammed Burp Cloth

One of the baby projects I made in preparation for my daughter's birth in February was to sew some girly burp cloths! Since these were so fun to make (and SO fast!!) I have since given several out as gifts! There are so many blogs with directions on how to sew these, so I won't reinvent the wheel, but these seriously take less than ten minutes to sew! Fast sewing projects are my ABSOLUTE favorite! 

These are made with fleece, so they are extra soft! I was even lazier on this project by not measuring any of my fabric, I just eyeballed it and trimmed at the end if needed. None of the pre-folded diapers were really the same size anyway, so you can't tell. (Plus they are cloths meant to wipe up baby spit up.....)

After making a few cloths, I had a lot of scrap fabric left over, so I got fancy and monogrammed a burp cloth for my daughter (and it would work for my niece too!) I simply cut out an A and traced it onto the fleece and cut it out. I then sewed my design on before attaching to the pre-folded diaper. Still very easy! And now no one will try and steal her burp cloth.... except maybe her baby cousin who also is an "A" baby!

Smore Bites

My sister recently had a baby and right before the baby was born she was craving Smores, which she never got since the baby decided to make a slightly early arrival. So me being a nice sister, I wanted to figure out a way I could take her a Smore in the hospital. 

These were so easy to make and they are SO SO good!!!

I started out by filling a mini muffin tin 2/3 of the way full with sugar cookie dough. Any kind of sugar cookie would work here, store bought dough or homemade, you decide! I baked those for 7 minutes until they were fully cooked.

While the sugar cookies were baking, I cut large marshmallows in half and un-wrapped Hersey Kisses.

Once the sugar cookies were done, I added the halved marshmallows and put the muffin tin under the broiler for about a minute and a half. Watch them closely until they are to your liking!! Then I gently pushed a Hershey Kiss into the Marshmallow. Gently remove them from the pan and enjoy immediately or they even taste awesome later!

How good would these be with a different cookie on the bottom, or a Peanut Butter Hersey Kiss!! I think I might need to make some more now :)

60 Things We Love About You

This past week we celebrated a very special birthday of a very special birthday girl. My mom (or Nana as she is called by my little man!) turned 60! And in honor of her turning 60 we came up with 60 Things We Love About You. Between my three sisters, our dad and little man, we came up with 60 things we love about her (though we could have easily come up with more!!!) 

We decorated our stripes of paper with some Washi tape and put them in a cute glass container decorated with scrabble pieces. Easily creating a heartfelt birthday gift for our fabulous mom! (Who doesn't look a day over 40!!)

Little man was in charge of coming up with some as well. His were pretty funny! I especially like the part about Nana taking him to Costco to buy pop tarts and her house having lots of windows!

Happy Birthday Mom / Nana! We love you!!!