"Can you tell me how to get....how to get to M & B street?"

My sweet hubby made this sign for his boys! Welcome!

What a busy summer!  I can't believe how quickly it has flown by!  Bridal showers, bachelorette parties, birthdays parties, ice cream socials, and more!  My favorite, by far, was planning my twin boys' second birthday party.  They LOVE Sesame Street, so picking a theme was simple!  Here are a few pictures of how we celebrated.

Food Table

Water bottles

Grover's Veggies & Mr. Hooper's Dip

Dorothy's Goldfish

Zoe's Fruit Kabobs.  I wrapped foam blocks with wrapping paper to hold the kabobs. I also cut the tips off of the skewers to make them toddler friendly.

Here's a close up of the food labels:

Cupcake Stands and Favor Basket

In addition to goodie bags for the little kids, I also made some M, B, and 2 shaped cookies for favors for the older kids and adults. Yummy!

Here's a close up of the favor tags:


Here's what the invitation looked like:

Our little family!  Happy 2nd Birthday to my sweet boys!

Black, White & Purple Bridal Shower

One of my good friends is getting married in July, so, of course, we had to shower her with love.  Here's a picture of the "Hostesses with the Mostesses" and the Bride-to-be!

 I was so excited to start planning all of the details.  First, was the invitation.  I am a very DIY type of person.  I try to do everything myself (at least once ;).  I am becoming very skilled at making documents (invitations, favor tags, water bottle labels, etc.) in Publisher. I think the most difficult part of creating the invitation is deciding what fonts to use.  There are just so many to chose from!  You can view the invitation here: invitation  All of the paper items (invitations, food labels, water bottle labels, favor tags, fingerprint tree, etc.) were printed at Office Depot.  Definitely cheaper than a color ink cartridge!

Since the bride had a large guest list, we thought serving brunch would be the most practical way to feed the most amount of people.  Pinterest was definitely an inspiration when planning this shower.  I can't tell you how many pins were on my "Bridal Shower" board!  Some of the delicious pins included donut hole kabobs and coffee punch - YUM!

 I also made the cute food labels in Publisher. 

We served two types of mini-muffins, mini-quiches, fruit, pancakes, chocolate cream cheese berry bites, oreo truffles, donut kabobs, and blackberry and cream cheese dip.

 Beverages included strawberry lemonade, coffee punch, mimosas, and bottled water.

Another Pinterest inspiration was the cute "Soon To Be Mrs. T" banner.  I used my Cricut to cut out the letters and heart and attached them to floral patterned scrapbooking paper.  I hole punched each corner and tied ribbon to link the squares together.

I also wanted to do something a little more unique than a sign-in book, so another Pinterest inspiration was born!  I was able to download the tree from weddingwire.com.  I copied the image into Publisher and added the title at the bottom "Stephanie & Steven 2012" using one of my new fave fonts called "Digs at My Hart".  You can download a tree here: WeddingWire.com  Guests used the ink pads to stamp their fingerprints on the tree and a sharpie or a similar pen can be used so they could sign their names.

 
Last, but not least, are these cute favors.  Using my Wilton cookie cutters, I made these wedding cake and dress shaped favors.  I was so excited to use my new Pampered Chef decorating kit.  I always make a mess with the piping bag and this kit made it so easy and mess-free!  What's great is that I can use the piping tips I already have with the decorating bottles in the kit. 

The favor tags were made in Publisher. I used a scalloped hand punch to cut the flowers using purple, black and floral cardstocks leftover from the banner.

Pinterest Crazy!!!

Soooo...I admit that I'm a little addicted to Pinterest.....It's amazing how many awesome ideas are out there!  If you follow my blog, you know that my sister was pregnant and gave birth to my niece at the end of January.  When my boys were born, my mom made a fab banner for my hospital door, so I wanted to do something similar for my sister.  I saw a really cute diaper wreath on Pinterest that inspired me to make a diaper wreath for her hospital door and a matching wreath for the front door of her house.  The entry of her house has double doors, so she hung both when they got home from the hospital.

All of the supplies were purchased a dollar-type store and a craft store.  I used a straw wreath from the dollar store as my base.  I wrapped diapers around the wreath and wrapped a rubber band around the ends to secure them.  As I went around the wreath, I scrunched the diapers together to give it a fuller look.  Then I tied ribbon around the diaper ends to cover the rubber bands.  I hot glued one end of ribbon to the wooden "S", looped the ribbon around the wreath and hot glued that end to the back of the "S".  I think it came out pretty cute!  Here's a close up of the wreath:

 I also found this great idea to make a Hospital Survival Guide on Pinterest.  This was so easy to make!!  I now "stalk" this blog: My Own Road.  There I found the printables for this giftie.

Seriously all I did was print, cut out, and use my adhesive runner to make this.  The picture on Jen's blog shows tissue paper, but I used ribbon on the handle of the bag for a different look.  I added some things I thought my sister would need/enjoy:  bobby pins, hair band, trail mix, hard candy, Twizzlers, make up remover wipes, lip balm (not shown), m&ms (not shown), and peanut butter crackers (not shown).

 My brother-in-law is know for his gag-reflex, so I thought it was very important to make him a Daddy Doody Kit (another gem from Pinterest, thank you!)  My mom conspired to make this with me.  We purchased all of the items at a dollar-type store.  The one gallon pail was from a scrapbooking store.

We included: diapers, butt paste, wipes, heavy duty rubber gloves, goggles, face mask, clothespins (for his nose), tongs for diaper disposal, hand sanitizer, room spray, and aspirin (for dad).  Another super easy/super cute gift!