Vacation!

The family & I are headed out for a two week vacation, but I've planned a few posts while I'm gone. Look for sneak peeks of my Back To School party prep next week!

Ice Cream Birthday Party

Phillips Pfamily Mama threw an wonderful Ice Cream Party for her daughter's 3rd birthday. Everything about the party was absolutely adorable!

An ice cream invite

Ice cream cone balloon decorations
A Neapolitan birthday cake

Pin the Cherry on the Sundae Game

Ice Cream Cone Relay Race

Be sure to visit the Phillips Pfamily Pfive charming blog for more delightful party pictures!

Purplicious Book Club Party

We just celebrated our 2nd Kids Book Club party and it was Purplicious fun! We read Purplicious by Victoria Kann & Elizabeth Kann. The girls all wore purple outfits.

They sat on the floor to listen to a reading of the story.

Next, the girls had craft time. They decorated goody bags with everything purple! Inside the bag was a purple journal, purple tootsie pop and purple swizzle sticks.

Lastly, the girls shared a Purplicious snack of Parfaits!

The Book Party is a fun treat and a great way to get the girls together!

Budget Party Planning

Planning a birthday party for your child can be a daunting task. Combined with today's economy and it can be downright stressful! With a little planning and ingenuity, you will find you can throw a fabulous & memorable party on a tight budget.

1. Make a budget.
Before you party shop, make a budget & a list of supplies you need and make a pact with yourself to stick to it! A detailed shopping list with your budget written on it will help keep you focused & keep you from impulse buying.

2. Have the party at home or a neighborhood park.
Yes, Pump It Up is a great place to have a children's birthday party, but it will set you back $250. Parties at free locations can be just as fun.

3. Pick a theme.
Working with a theme that interests your child makes party planning so much easier. Suddenly your child's Star Wars action figures become cake toppers and mini pretzels become Fairy Wings. The Internet & party planning websites like Birthday Party Ideas are an amazing source of theme party ideas.

4. Shop your house.
Before you head out to the store, look around your house for cake candles leftover from previous parties or how about using a twin sheet for a tablecloth? Be creative and you will find that you have to buy less.

5. Balloons & Streamers go a long way.
A few dollars spent on a bag of latex balloons and rolls of streamers can have a big impact on your party. These colorful decorations are inexpensive and very festive. Instead of using helium, save money by blowing balloons up yourself the old-fashioned way (with your mouth!). Tape balloons to your walls & furniture or simply let them float on the float in a big pile. Kids love tossing around blown up balloons.

Use construction paper, markers, crayons & glitter to make a birthday banner. Your child will love helping and since most of us have those things around the house anyway, it doesn't cost a thing.

6. Make your own cake.
Homemade cakes taste great and cost a fraction of the cost of bakery cakes. Worried about time? Ask a friend or family member to make the cake for you. Consider it their gift to the birthday child.

7. Stay away from licensed partyware.
While the Transformer plates & napkins are really cool, they will totally blow your budget. Most kids won't even notice them anyway. Instead, buy 1 licensed item, such as napkins, and use solid partyware in coordinating colors for everything else. For example, at Wal-Mart you can purchase a package of 20 solid colored plates for $1.50 while a package of 8 Tinkerbell plates will cost $2.94.

8. Use your own utensils.
It is cheaper and better for the environment than buying plastic forks & spoons.

9. Scoop your own ice cream.
Sure, it is more convenient to buy those cute little ice cream cups at the grocery store. It will also cost you double. Instead, a day before the party scoop ice cream into cupcake liners, place them on a cookie sheet, cover with plastic wrap and stick in the freezer. The same convenience, but half the cost!

10. Play classic party games.
Games like Simon Says, Musical Chairs and Simon Says are all fun & FREE!

Kids are pretty easy to please and I think you will find that a little goes a long way! Happy party planning!

Carnival of Children's Parties!

Kelly of Kelly's Korner is hosting a Carnival of Children's Parties! Head on over & check out some wonderful parties!

Bathing Beauties

How great are these Chocolate-Gingerbread Bathing
Beauties? Once again, Martha comes to the rescue with something super cute & original!


I just love the Lifesaver umbrellas & stripped napkin beach towels! Find the recipe & How-To's on the Martha Stewart website.

Gingerbread Men (& Women!) are my absolute favorite decoration at Christmas and now I have the perfect excuse to bring them out this summer!

Happy Gummy Worm Day!

According to the National Confectioner’s Association, July 15 is Gummy Worm Day! Here are some fun ways to celebrate:

Make Dirt Cake Cups with Gummy Worms! Deanna's Corner Cooking has the recipe here. Mmmmmm!
Read the book How To Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell with your kids.
Or watch the movie!
The adventurous can even make their own gummy worms - here is the recipe. Me? I'm off to the store to buy a bag!

Happy Gummy Worm Day!

Christmas In July ~ Food

This post is all about the yummy food we had at Christmas in July Bunco. I used the bar as the buffet table for the food and my friend Karyn brought over a grass hula skirt to decorate the bar. It wasn't quite long enough to fit the entire bar, but it still looked festive!

In keeping with the theme, I pulled out all of my Christmas serving dishes and platters.

Inspired by Melissa's cookies, I made flip flop cookies with Nutter Butters, Betty Crocker can cupcake icing (this icing is so easy to work with - it is already colored in an aerosol can and comes with 4 different decorator tips) and mini red M&M's.

Some Fisher Fusions Snack Mix. This is the Ice Cream Sundae mix - I liked this because it has the dried banana chips which are very tropical!

Pictured here is the vege tray (all red & green veges, of course!) served with Ranch dressing, Snowman Cheeseball (recipe below) with Ritz crackers and Hot Bacon Swiss Dip with Corn Chips.

No party is complete without the perennial favorite - Chips & Dip!

I replaced the water bottle labels with Hawaiian print scrapbook paper.

SNOWMAN CHEESE BALL

1 8-ounce tub cream cheese spread

2 cups shredded Cheddar cheese

1/4 cup finely chopped fresh chives or green onions

1/4 cup slivered almonds, toasted

1/4 teaspoon ground red pepper (cayenne), or to taste

1/4 cup grated Parmesan cheese

Whole black peppercorns

1 baby carrot, or the tip of a regular carrot

Rosemary branches, stripped of leaves - I used pretzel sticks

Mix cream cheese spread, Cheddar cheese, chives, almonds and red pepper until well blended; cover. Refrigerate for 1 hour.

Divide mixture into 3 different-sized balls (1 small, 1 medium and 1 large). Coat with Parmesan cheese. Arrange on serving platter in a line to resemble a snowman lying down. (Largest ball should be at bottom of serving plate for base of snowman. Smallest ball should be at the top for head of snowman.)

Decorate with peppercorns for the eyes, mouth and buttons. Add carrot for the nose and rosemary branches for arms.Serve with crackers and cut-up fresh vegetable dippers, such as carrot sticks and celery sticks. Serves 16.

I apologize for not giving credit for the snowman cheeseball recipe. I found it online last December and forgot to add the URL to my recipe file!

Check out the decorations here!

Christmas In July ~ Decorations & Crafts

Last night I hosted my Mom's Group monthly Bunco night-out. The theme was Christmas In July. It was so much fun coming up with decorating ideas that combined Christmas with Summer!

Here is the hall table:
I placed one of my Alpine Christmas trees in a red sand bucket. To stabilize the tree, I filled the bucket with red lava rocks. The garland is colorful leis that I cut and connected to make a continuous strand (leis from Dollar Tree 3/$1). I decorated the tree with paper umbrellas and tropical wood cut-outs hung with pieces of raffia hot-glued to the back. The cute cut-outs are from Joanns and were on sale for 33¢ each! The topper is a pretty shell.

Using the Cricut & scrapbook paper, I decorated another beach pail to hold players' money. Rather than give out a lot of prizes, my Bunco group splits the pot 60/40% between the 2 players with the most Wins. The person with the most losses gets to go home with their $10 and the Hostess provides a gift for the player with the most Buncos. To get a red & green sand pail, I just switched the handles & shovels at the store.

Everyone picked a red or green lei when they arrived.

Each table was decorated with a Christmas tablecloth, Christmas Bunco Scorecards, Christmas pencils and Christmas note paper to keep tallies.

All of the tables had centerpieces consisting of sand scrapbook paper cut to look like a flower, Mylar palm trees (Dollar Tree), table number tent sign & glass bowl.

The table # tent signs have Santa surfing (all made with Cricut) and the glass bowls are sitting on a Christmas berry wreath and filled with sand, 2 shells and a Christmas ball.

The rest of the decorations were kept pretty simple. I put a Christmas wreath on the front door, hung Christmas towels in the bathroom & put out a few Christmas decorations around the house. I didn't want to put too many Christmas decorations out because I knew it would all have to come down and be re-packed the next day!

Check out the party food here!

Christmas In July Invite

This month is my turn to host my Mom's Group Bunco Night-Out. We usually don't have theme parties, but when one of the girls suggested Christmas in July, I thought it would be a lot of fun. I'm hoping everyone will want to have theme Bunco Night-Out from now on!

Here is the invitation I came up with using MyPunchbowl (I removed my address & phone from the invitation for the post). I know I've said it before, but I really do love using MyPunchbowl to send online invitations!
For this invitation, I wanted to combine Christmas with a summery-feel and this picture of Santa surfing was just perfect! The Hawaiian background and snowflake ribbon finished the look I wanted.

Tomorrow I'll show off some of the decorations I put together.

Book Club Party

Emma and I hosted our first ever Kids Book Club Meeting/Party last week and it was so much fun! My idea was to get Emma and her girlfriends together once a month to read a book and do a craft or activity and have a snack related to the theme of the book. For our first meeting, we chose the books Fancy Nancy and Fancy Nancy and the Posh Puppy by Jane O'Connor.

Since the moms decided to take turns hosting the meetings at their houses, I really tried to keep everything simple and keep the cost low. I didn't want other mothers to feel pressured into anything elaborate. I didn't decorate (which goes against everything in me!) and made it a really easy party to put together.

Eight girls were able to attend and they all wore their fanciest assembles! One little girl even came dressed like Nancy (the costumes are available in the toy department of Target)!
I put a quilt on the floor for the girls to sit on during story time and snacks. While waiting for everyone to arrive, the girls sat on the quilt and thumbed through the books.

I went to Burger King and got free paper crowns. I used large foam stickers to cover the Burger King logo. In the Fancy Nancy books, Nancy and her family enjoy eating at the King's Crown restaurant where they are given crowns that look just like the Burger King ones.

I read the two books to the girls. They were all very attentive!

Next, each of the girls shared a "fancy" item they brought from home. Here is Emma sharing her jeweled tiara ~

After Show & Tell, we did crafts ~

Each of the girls decorated foam wands and had an activity book and plumed pen (that's fancy for a pen with a feather!) to take home. The wands and pens were purchased 3/$1 at Dollar Tree. I downloaded Fancy Nancy activity pages from the Harper Collins website (free) and made books using folders purchased on clearance at WalMart for 10¢ each. All of the decorations for the wands came from my craft stockpile.

All in all, I spent less than 80¢ a girl for the crafts!

Lastly, the girls all made their own parfaits (that's French for ice cream sundae ~ everything sounds fancier in French!)

Again, very simple. The toppings including sprinkles (Nancy's favorite), mini marshmallows, mini chocolate chips & gummy bears. I made a Parfait table sign with scrapbook paper and used napkins I had leftover from another party. I purchased the spoons and plastic tablecloths at the dollar store.

The girls had an absolutely wonderful time and I spent less than $20 doing it. Everyone is so excited for next month's Book Club meeting!

And The Winner Is...

I thought it only fitting to choose the winners of the one-year Premium MyPunchbowl subscription from my punchbowl!

The kids each randomly picked a name...

This is so exciting....

The winners are (sorry for the fuzzy picture!)...

Jessica

and

L2L@ Love To Learn, Learn To Love

I'll be emailing you both with all of the details! Thanks to everyone who played along and an especially big thanks to all the wonderful people who read my blog!