Dinosaur Birthday Cake

 

Kellen's cake for his 3rd Birthday dinosaur party! I improved the whole thing so its kinda all over the place.  I picked up the dinosaurs at the $1 store and ordered the little trees on Amazon-I think they were around $5. I made all the icing and tinted the dirt part with cocoa powder. You can see I have minimal cake decorating skills and this did take me a good bit of time but I thought it was fun and if I messed up, I just added a dinosaur or put more grass out.

You can see the easy to make dinosaur birthday invitation here.

Cheap Terracotta Pots Re-Do

We needed two new planters for our living room and I didn't have the money for a lot of the pots I saw that I liked. So we found the terracotta pots in the size we wanted and they were like $10 each.  So we grabbed those, some spray paint and some glaze.  Then I thought they needed a little extra something, so I took a stamp I had already and some acrylic paint that I had laying around and ta-da!

Here are the pots.  We did two of the smaller size in Antique White and a large one in Colonial Red. All the paint we chose was Rust-Oluem.  We ended up using two cans of the Antique White but just one Red.  And two cans of the glaze.  But the large pot took a lot, so if you're doing just smaller pots, I imagine one can of glaze would be enough.

We glazed the inside first.

 

Then we did 3 coats of paint on each pot and base and three coats of glaze on each pot.  I did stamp the design and then go over it better with a small paintbrush that I stole from my kiddo's.  I'm pretty happy with the way they turned out and we might have spent $60 total for all three pots, bases, paint and glaze.

We got all our supplies at Home Depot

Easy T-Shirt Dress for Toddler

I had some t-shirts of mine that were in the donate pile but I decided I would see if I could make them into something for my daughter, Blythe.

I took one of her current dresses that she can wear and laid it on top of the t-shirts.  I used this as my template and cut out around her dress leaving about a 1/4" extra for sewing the seam.  I used the existing neckline of my shirt and kept it the same length so I could use the hem that is already there. 

After I cut the shirt, I pinned it, inside out, everywhere I needed to sew (basically just down the sides).  I sewed a straight seam, flipped back to the right side and viola! I was actually surprised at how well it turned out and how easy! 

Most of my shirts were a small and Blythe currently wears a 5T, sometimes a 6, but she is on the shorter end of the scale.  So I won't be able to do this for long, unless its a tunic, but I really enjoyed this project and so did Blythe, cause I let her help with everything.  I am far from an expert seamstress-the exact opposite, I would say. But I can sew a straight seam (or semi-straight depending on how closely you look ;) and I can follow simple directions.  Unlike a pattern.  Which is the exact opposite of simple.

Here are the shirts before I butchered them...and I was very over-zealous thinking I could get 3 done....but only two made the cut before I had to walk away.  Below is the first one and we are actually wearing it as a nightgown currently.  Don't ask about the Grandma-Loving school picture pose.  I will insert a fake woods back drop next time I'm using photoshop.  And perhaps a picket fence or a bale of hay.

Dinosaur Birthday Invitation

I decided to challenge myself when it came time for my son's 3rd birthday and see if I could make his dinosaur birthday invitation with only the things I had in my home.  And by challenge, I mean it was the end of the month and I'm on a budget…and I am obsessed with staying on budget this year.

So…I had white 8 x 11 card stock and some ink in my printer waiting patiently for my brilliant idea.

Which didn't evolve until much pinteresting (too much, actually…master at the art of time suck-age).  I decided I couldn't draw a dinosaur that didn't look like it was a mix between a shark, a dinosaur and a duck; and I wasn't a fan of any clip art I found.  So I decided to fake it.

I cut the 8x11 into (4) 4x6 pieces and set this as my paper size for the document in Word.  I would cut extra for sample prints.  I needed 30 invites, so I cut 34.

Then I played with the fonts and right aligned all the wording. You can obviously use any font you want and size.

"Roar" is the font Cracked in size 65.
"Kellen's 3rd Birthday" is Desdemona in size 24 in bold.
And the rest is Chalkduster in size 11, also in bold.

Then I printed a couple of samples…which was good cause apparently I don't know which way my printer sucks the paper through.

Once I had it the way I wanted it, I printed them all out.

This is where it gets weird and very budgety (it is a word).  I found a foam sheet (could be any color) with the sticky back and cut out a shape that resembled a dinosaur footprint (I googled it for pictures and then did my best rendition).  I used some brown ink I already had (it was dark brown/espresso like color).
I actually stuck the footprint to the  clear lid of the ink to use like a stamp.  I think you could stick this to anything clear, like a glass-it just helped to align the stamp and know where you are putting it.

Then I stamped all the invites.  I also took a pencil and inked the sharpened end and dotted it randomly to look like dirt around the footprints.

Once the ink dried, I cut jagged edges in the top left corner to resemble bite marks.  Ta-Da!  Each invitation was slightly different, but heck, its homemade and that makes it quirky and very cool...plus its for a 3 year old.
It was a tad time consuming, but easy to spread out the time and do a little here and there.  And free.  Sort of.

DIY Fall Wreath with Felt Flowers

I decided to try the noodle wreaths and the felt flowers you see all over Pinterest.  I found this to be pretty easy and super cheap.  I stole my daughter's pink noodle from the garage while she was sleeping...ssshhhhhh...

And I purchased green yarn from Walmart for $3, and bought cream, brown and khaki felt sheets at Walmart for $.23 a piece.

I taped up the noodle ends with packing tape.  I just wrapped it around a couple of times, but you can see in the picture that its already lost its round shape and I think more tape would have made it stronger...and I'm not sure if I hung it right at the seam...perhaps that's not a good idea...

So after taping the seam, I then wrapped the yarn around it.  This part will feel the most painful and possibly cause an arm cramp. When I finished wrapping it, I just laced the end through several wrapped strands to keep it in place.

Next, I made the felt flowers, which seemed daunting before I started but I found them easy and very satisfying to my crafting soul-yay! look what I did! So impressive!

I used Paper&Stitch's blog post: DIY Felt Flowers.

I wasn't as hard core as this, didn't really measure anything, just cut some circles based on things near me that I could trace and I didn't do all the ones she shows.  Just the easy ones. Oh, and I traced with chalk after tracing with a pen and seeing how not amazing that looked.

Then I laid them on the wreath until I was happy with a design and hot glued them on.  The banner was a last minute addition with some raffia, scrapbook paper and a sharpie.

I attempted a bow for the top and then quickly decided I hated bows.

I found a Command clear hook in my closet and put it on the inside of my door, upside down. Then I cut some ribbon I already had and tied it and hooked it over the Command hook.

Ta-Da!

I 

Easy Mickey Mouse Cupcakes

I've been pinteresting for my son's upcoming 3rd birthday, and came across these that I made last year for his 2nd birthday.  Kellen had just been diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia three weeks before the big day.  Cancer took its big foot and stomped all over his party.  

Kellen was pumped full of chemo and steroids and pretty much felt like doggy doodie, but he had wanted a Mickey Mouse party so bad, we put one together real quick.  I found these cupcakes online and thought they were super easy to make.  

I baked the chocolate cupcakes and iced the top with chocolate icing (all of this was store bought).  I doubled up the red cupcake liners to make sure the red showed up enough.

I piped the icing with a good ol' fashioned Ziploc bag (cutting a hole in the corner).   You wanna make sure you pipe the icing high enough to support the ears.

Then I jammed two Oreo's in the top for ears.

I thought they looked pretty good just like this, but decided to add the buttons to his "pants" and thought it made it look better.

I just cut out oval shapes from white printer paper (perfectly unperfect ovals) and in a very delicately messy way, wiped a glue stick on the back and stuck them on.

Kellen loved them.

$130 Backsplash

This is the backsplash the house came with:

nothing.  

But thanks to Home Depot, it now looks like this:

We couldn't decide on a tile material that we both liked (again, no fighting about this...at all). So we were walking through Home Depot one day on a mission for oh-so many things we didn't know we needed and I passed a little stand for the Fasade Faux Tile sheets.  It took a some convincing, but I got Dustin to agree to try it.  It comes in several color choices and all the trim pieces are right there, including the outlet cover sheets.  We have a very short span to cover and it seemed like a quick, cheap fix to make it look better and won't be a big deal if the stars align and we can make a decision on actual tile.

You can see the sheets on Home Depot's website here: Fasade Tile

We had to buy 5 sheets, but only needed a 1/4 of the final sheet.  Each sheet is $21 and then we had to grab the trim pieces.  We only needed to cover two outlets so one packet of outlet paper was enough for us. The outlet pack was around $10 and the J-trim pieces were roughly $1.5 a piece.  We applied with a high bond double sided tape.

It only took a few hours with both of us. And I live with an engineer, so we measure 3x and cut once.  Sometimes I think we measure 12x...I think he even rechecks again when I take a bathroom break.  Dustin is the annoyingly likeable person who reads the directions first all the way through and then gathers everything he needs.  This is not my usual approach.  My approach will always include a few extra trips, a couple of cuss words and a crooked line that will forever haunt me.