Wooden Wedding Blocks

My best friend got married the other week and although I couldn't go I wanted to make her a special wedding gift. After some Pinterest browsing I decided to do something with vinyl lettering on wooden blocks. Since I don't have a cutter (yet) I found a local friend who was able to help me out. I used the larger letter S for their last name then the other two blocks will have two rows of lettering each.

Next, I had my husband cut up a 6x2 board into 3 blocks. 1 was 5 1/2", 1 was 8" and the other was 10". I sanded the blocks down and here is what the blocks looked like.

Now the blocks were ready to be painted. I have a large growing stash of latex paint which I picked 3 colors that coordinated. A dark brown, white and a tan-ish grey, I promise they work. Once I painted them I gave them a little sanding to give them that vintage look, just around the edges. 

Finally I added the letters, then used I believe it was the red label mod podge. I noticed there was a bit of tackiness so I finished the blocks with a high-gloss sealer around the edges to get rid of that. And the finished product is below. Since we ended up using a larger piece of wood than I intended these are a bit wobbly when stacked up. However, I believe she is just having them lined up along their mantle instead which is also a great idea. I hope to do more gifts like this in the future, it was very fun.

Princess Party

Little girls love Princesses so for my step-daughters' birthday we did a princess party. This was almost 4 years ago, but I thought I'd blog it so that it was up with all the other birthday parties. This is when I was just starting doing fun themed parties. My big project, which I wish I had more time to do was a pink castle. I sent my husband to go search behind the local appliance store and he found me 2 washer/dryer boxes and a thinner one, not sure what when in it, but they all worked. Silly me I only got 1 can of pink spray paint so the paint job wasn't awesome, but they lil one's didn't seem to mind. I let the birthday girl help by decorating with some princess foam stickers. Overall the kids had fun climbing around in the castle.

We used the typical Disney princess decorations for around the house and some pink and purple balloons. Party favors were jewelry to dress up with. Snacks we had fruit and lil bagel donuts hole things. I went to Safeway (a.k.a. Vons) for her cake since I hadn't gotten into baking and cake decorating back then. She had been wanting this princess cake for the longest time so we got it.

At the end of her party we went out and blew bubbles for the girls to run around in. It was fun seeing all the girls dressed up in princess dresses chasing bubbles. 

Bubble Valentines

My son is finally old enough that he is in a Mommy and me Preschool class. So this year he will be exchanging Valentine's with his other little classmates. Browsing Pinterest I found these cute Valentine's we could make that included bubbles (and NO candy). I printed the template (Found off here) onto some light pink paper then cut those out with the wavy specialty scissors. I then used a glue stick and glued it to a sheet of dark pink paper so that it was a bit stiffer. Using some curling ribbon and a tiny piece of double sided tape I attached the bubbles (bought at Target $1.50 for 12) and this is how it turned out. I'm letting my son help add some heart stickers and he will be in charge of handing them out to his friends at school during their v-day party. He loves bubbles so I made an extra for him to keep.