Teacher Appreciation Week: Door Decorating

Kids Bedroom Wall Art Decor

Yay! After collecting unique pieces from here and there…. I finally completed the wall art collages for both the kids’ rooms! We ended up moving, so I got a chance to kind of move things around a little bit…. but you can see how it started out, along with when I was making one of the glitter shoe pieces myself.

Okay… So where are some of these goodies all from?

Bicycle – After Valentine’s Day clearance at Target

The two small square canvas art – Dollar section at Target

Fabulous Me – $10 clearance at Target

Green Owl – On sale for $4.99 at Kohls

Keep Calm and Sparkle On – Purchased a print from Etsy and put in a frame from Target

Pink Crown – Hobby Lobby – Don’t forget the 40% coupon!

Glitter Shoe – DIY see link above.

Cinderella quote – $4.99 Kohls

Chandelier Canvas Art – Ethereal Vision from Oliver Gal (but I happened to find it priced down on Zulily!)

One another side of my daughter’s room, I found the pink chevron board from Hobby Lobby when I ordered the crown… and the cute Owl vinyl wall art was from Dollar Tree!! weeeeeeeeeeeeee!

 

 

For my little man…. the goodies came from:

Teal Chevron board – Target

Keep Calm and Go Get Mom/Wake up and Be Awesome – $4.99 on sale at Kohls

The large Initial Letter – $11.99 at Ross

You are my Sunshine – $7.99 at Marshalls

A Little Man Sleeps Here – Print ordered from Etsy and frame from Target

Robot Wood Cut-Out – Etsy

Mustache (its actually a corkboard) – Kohls

DIY Cardboard Robot

I first saw a pin for a cardboard robot here. I thought it would be an inexpensive way to add some fun decor to our robot party. First things first… Start collecting boxes! Once I got most of the shapes I needed, I started to spray paint it….. unfortunately, that robot had a really big body!

To be honest I ran out of spray paint after just doing the body and head… so we opted to just foil the arms and feet for contrast. Was then going to do the legs in red or something (because that’s a leftover color I had) but we lucked out when my mom went to Costco and saw these star patterned boxes in exactly the shape we needed. Score!!! For the shoulders and hands, we bought the tubing at Home Depot for a few bucks.

We pretty much tried to use whatever we could find around the house to finalize the robot. The ears are spray painted pieces of a to-go cup holder from some fast food restaurant. The eyes are cupcake wrappers. Colored popsicle sticks for the mouth. Pipe cleaners for the antenna!

We then recycled the number 3 cutout I had made for the photo prop from my son’s birthday photos. It was perfect on the body! Then we found some little stampers to use as buttons.

Total cost: about $15

 

DIY Tablecover Backdrop

I first saw this on Pinterest here and totally thought it would be the perfect way to backdrop the photobooth this year.

I bought a little bit more than I needed to start. … but ultimately used 3 table covers and two banners from Walmart. Didn’t cost more than a total of $7

The longest part was probably the cutting. The strips were about 3 inches wide and the braids were maybe 3 inches down. I’m pretty good at braiding so that was easy, although my arms were sore from being in the upward position for so long. Haha.

I have to admit. It looked pretty cool once it was all braided and the colors mixed together.

Add the banners… and there you have it. I contemplated doing the fans at first…. but I didn’t want to take from the photobooth template.  So I kept the backdrop simple.

Looks good! I’m definitely going to do this again! Different colors!

Party time: All things Disney

For my daughter’s 5th birthday, we went for a “Disney” theme. It was good timing as she now has gone to Disneyland many times and familiar with all the stories and characters. Having a Disney theme was definitely due to come! Oh and I had so much planning this one!  Let’s go over the details:

Centerpieces: I found lots of versions on Pinterest and went for a pretty simple one. Went into detail about it on the blog here.

I was able to find a HUGE lantern on Oriental Trading on clearance for $5. Didn’t realize how big it was until it arrived. But my dad was able to rig some ears to it out of a foam board, lots of tape, spray paint. It turned out pretty good. Could also be used for a Deadmau5 party for sure! 🙂

For the fruit display, my mom carved Mickey into a watermelon and also used cookie cutters to skewer some as well.

Cake: Again, we got our favorite marble and bavarian creme with fresh strawberries from Renaissance Bakery (Ranch Events Catering). Went for a simple Minnie Mouse patterned design with the ears and bow on top.

We had our usual photobooth set- up with template designed by Snapshots Photobooth. The kids and adults always love the photobooth.

For the goodie bags, I had one of my friends who is a passholder and lives in Anaheim, collect the “I’m celebrating” buttons for me for a couple months leading up to the party. So each bag got an authentic button from Disneyland. The girls got Minnie ear headbands that got for $1 a piece in the LA Fashion District, and the boys had gotten a Cars glider that I got for $1 a piece at Target’s after-Easter clearance. What else was in those bags…. crayons from Target’s after-Halloween sale, and little playing cards as well.

More on the pinata from previous blog post here. It was HUGE! $13 in Tijuana baby!

Lastly, I put several of the costumes myself and blogged about it here. All except for Mike from Monsters, Inc. – which was actually a children’s costume that I got on eBay for $17 and then sewed to a $3 t-shirt from Michaels. It was to match my son’s Sully costume which I got half off the day after Halloween at Target last year (always think ahead!)

DIY: Tweedle-Dee & Tweedle-Dum Costumes (and Toy Story Woody)

For my daughter’s “Disney” themed birthday party, I had to conjure up some costumes for my mom and aunt. I was trying to think of cool BFF costumes… and decided it would be fun for them to go as Tweedle-Dee and Tweedle-Dum (I ended up dressing up as Alice anyways, so it worked out!)

I headed to Michael’s and purchased the following:

2 Yellow Gilden T-shirts

1 blue 8×10 felt

1 white 8×10 felt

1 sheet of Yellow foam

Then I headed to Walmart and picked up some white fleece material about a yard and a half – got extra because I was making a Woody Vest for my dad as well (more on that at bottom!)

So for the lowdown on the homemade costumes…

The hats: I used fabric “puffy paint” to write in the character’s names after I cut out small rectangle pieces. While that was drying, I sewed a straw to the top of each hat. I opted to sew it because I couldn’t imagine any type of adhesive or glue being able to keep a stick straight on top of the hat. It actually held it up pretty good and was easy to fix if it got moved at all. After I sewed on the straw, then I hot glue gun the yellow “flag” piece at the top and the names on the front.

The shirts: I visually saw what shape I was going for for the collars of the outfits… so I actually kind of free-handed the cutting. Lucky for me they turned out pretty good. But you can see the shape and where the cuts were made. Once it was cut, we sewed the back part of the collar and the top shoulders, and the center to the shirt. Just those key spots – not the whole perimeter of the collar. For the bow, I folded it into a pleat and sewed the center. then let it fan out before we sewed it to the shirt.

So for the Woody vest. I basically folded my fleece in half and cut out a neck hole first. Then plopped it over my dad and drew out the lines for where I wanted to cut off the shoulders and down the sides. Then free-handed where the cut down the front would be. For the cow spots, I cut out random shaped oblongs onto card stock and spray painted them onto the fleece. Once that was done, we sewed up the sides of the vest, added a red bandana ($1.50 at Walmart) and a cowboy hat and we were good to go. Simple but still in the spirit of the party.

DIY/Upcycle Kid’s Vanity

A friend of mine had posted on FB about this project she just completed. I thought she did such an amazing job! Told her it had to be blogged about and then unleashed into the Pinterest world! Thanks so much for sharing this Rosella!

Here’s how she completed this beautifully crafted vanity for her daughter:

I got the vanity from my  sister-in-law who was kind enough to offer it to me because she thought my daughter would like to play with it.

It’s vintage style and the white color was fading. I liked it immediately, It’s real wood too! I was so excited to give the vanity some new life- with paint!  My newest hobby has been upcyclng beautiful furniture. It’s so exciting to see old furniture look like new and more personalized than anything you will find in a store!

I used some paint I had leftover for when I painted my baby girl’s nursery.  I’ve been painting the house and working on some pieces for our backyard. This piece has been my favorite so far!

Here are the steps I followed for painting this piece:

1. Clean the furniture- I used some wet wipes that are made for wood surfaces that I got from Target.

2. Set down a drop cloth and place furniture on top- you don’t want to get paint all over the place.

3. Tape/remove anything that doesn’t need to be painted.   In this case I removed the mirror and the hardware. The handles are too small and intricate to be taped.

3. Sand furniture if needed.  I usually sand rough spots, even out dents and sanding also can remove old chipping paint.

3. Prep paints and paint brushes, put them in a place you can reach while working.

4. Then I painted the vanity in light pink. I used a glidden paint, semi gloss.

5. I let it dry a night and  the next day checked on it. The paint had dried mostly,  it was dry to the touch but the paint can scrape off easily if you don’t handle it carefully.

6. I painted the pink flower on the top and let it dry for hours and then came back and added the turquoise center.

7. I let the finished vanity dresser dry for another night and voila! It was done!

Minnie Mouse Centerpiece

For this year’s Disney themed birthday party, I saw some really cool Minnie/Mickey Mouse Centerpieces on Pinterest that I could definitely recreate. Armed with my Michaels coupons, I loaded up on all the supplies and it turned out great! Not hard to compile at all. Here’s how it went:

I used 5″ Styrofoam balls for the head and 3″ for the ears. Stuck them on some skewers before I inhaled a ton of spray paint 🙂

For the Styrofoam holding the bottom I just loaded up on what they had at Dollar Tree. I also lucked out and picked up the yellow pails on sale at 40% from Michaels so they came out to $3.12 a piece.

These number 5 ‘ s  were from Michaels and basically unfinished chipboard pieces at $.79 a piece. I used some regular acrylic paint on the first coat followed by a glitter red coat.

Assembled the heads… I used a thicker dowel to hold up the head for the actual centerpiece. Had spray painted it black when I did the balls.

Got ribbon on sale. Made sure to get the wired kind so that it would be easier to shape into a nice bow. Glued them to toothpicks.

The yellow stars were also chipboard pieces from Michaels. They were already yellow so that was a bonus.  Glued the stars and the 5 ‘ s to skewers. Then bought a red paint pen to write my daughter’s name on the star. This totally could have been done with a thick sharpie or glitter glue.

For the final touches…. I got some tissue paper to hide the Styrofoam bottom. I actually put sand on the bottom as well to give it some weight.

There you have it!!!

P.s. I’m saving all these pieces (minus the star and bow) so I can reuse them in 2 years when my son has his 5th birthday party Disney themed.

DIY: Ikea Spice Rack Bookshelf Hack

This all started with Pinterest. Of course. And if you simply search “ikea spice rack” you will see tons of pins for it. Simple enough.

I actually found my spice racks on Amazon for about $10 each. Remember that they don’t come with the hardware!

This was probably one of the simplest projects because it was just a matter of spray painting the parts, assembling and then mounting onto the wall. I did however have a hard time with the installation (maybe because I’ve never necessarily hung shelves on a wall before) – but apparently, you need to have the right kind of anchors for the drywall. It looked good to start, but after a couple tugs and rough dropping of books into the shelves, and they came easily off the wall. 😦

They are much more studier if you use the right drywall screws and anchors or if you are lucky, you can get it lined up with a stud in the wall. I saw some other options on Pinterest for actually mounting them onto one end of the Kura Bed…. so I may revise the reading nook situation later on.

Either way… its still a cute and simple way to get books up!

DIY: Embellishing a boring ass dress – No Sew!

When my cousin got married last month, she ordered a traditional Vietnamese dress for my daughter to wear as a flower girl. However, when it arrived it was as plain as could be. We decided it desperately needed to be embellished! There was no was my daughter was walking down the aisle plain Jane!

She went and picked up the supplies for me. Apparently there weren’t any small flowers or ready to go iron-ons…. so we got creative. She found a bundle of these little metallic flowers. Went for fabric glue here as well…. no sew!

I went ahead and clipped each of the flowers away from the stem and laid them out on the dress. Had a cardboard underneath the first layer. And good thing I did! The fabric glue totally seeped through (expected if you are working on a silk like material right?) Omggg. After it initially dried, I had to go in and carefully pull them off the cardboard. If anyone were to look behind that first layer of the dress…. There are a lot of cardboard spots back there!

Nonetheless, who cares what the inside looks like! The front turned out fantastic. I went for a diagonal design for the layout of the flowers.

Here’s my finished product and a happy, beautiful flower girl!