Little Man's Birthday

Isaac's birthday was back in January, mixed in between meetings and gearing up for the ball. We had family come over so I wanted to do something special for the little man. He likes Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, so I did a Mickey Mouse party. Fun, right? Well, yes it was. Some of the decorations were a little tricky, but I was able to get them to work.

In the window, I hung Mickey's, round decorative ornaments with red, black, and yellow stripes, and Mickey hands.  For the Mickey's I used black strips of paper that were about an inch thick.  The head used strips that were about 12 inches long and the ears about 4 inches.  I punched a hole in each end of the strip, and put a brad through one end.  I then divided the strips and looped them so each side formed half of the circle and stuck a brad through the end.  The last step was just to separate the strips so they formed a ball.  To attach the ears, I poked a hole through one strip and used the bottom brad through the hole to attach them.  I mistakenly didn't take photos through the entire process.  I wasn't sure it would really work, but I was pleasantly surprised.  I did make a few different sizes of Mickey's.  The bigger ones (12 inch) used about 24 strips, but I wanted them filled in pretty well, but if you want more space you can use less strips.

Here is one of the Mickey's.  The photo isn't the best because it was easier to take the photo when it was in the window but it also caused some issues with lighting.

Here is the decorative orbs.  It is the same process as the Mickey's but I used colored paper that is known as Mickey.  The circle isn't the best, but it has been hit and bumped so I would just need to "fluff" it a little.  I used fishing line to hang everything in the window.

For the Mickey hands, I used surgical gloves.  I tied the pinkie off and turned them inside out.  These are larges so the fingers are a little long, but they are what I had.  If I were to purchase them, I would have gone for the small.  I drew 3 black lines after blowing them up to make them look like Mickey's gloves.

 Originally I was going to use the surgical gloves and blow them up with helium to make balloons too, but I ended up running short on time and since it was only Isaac's 1st birthday, I figured he wouldn't mind.
For the cake, my mom found this bowl that I could use as a stand.  I cut a few circles out of cardboard that would fit inside the bowl.  I glued them together and then glued the circles onto a square of cardboard that was big enough for his cake.  I covered it in foil so I could set the cake straight on the stand.

 

 This is the little man's cake!  I used a standard 9 inch cake pan for the main circle.  It is a 2 layer cake, the main part is chocolate and the ears are yellow.  The frosting is butter cream with food coloring.  We had someone coming that was a no chocolate person (sad) so I wanted to some of both.  I also didn't want Isaac to have chocolate as his first time having cake, let alone sweets.  The yellow was in a decorating bag.
To make the yellow cake for the ears, the size I needed, (and a mini cake for Isaac, and a few mini cakes that hadn't been anywhere near chocolate) I used cookie cutters.  I left some of the frosting white to fill in the layers.
The yellow cake was hardest to frost because they had been cut out so the edges were super flaky.

With all the excess cake pieces (from cutting out the ears and mini cakes) I though about making cake pops...but that seemed like a lot of work.  So I made a cake casserole! I dumped all the excess cake in a 8 inch square pan.  I heated up the red and black frosting slightly so I could pour it over the cake, then emptied the decorating bag that held the yellow frosting.  Doesn't necessarily look all that great, but it tasted pretty good!

 

 

Isaac enjoyed his cake.  The first night he ate the ears, the second night he went for the body.  I though him having his own cake would be best for everyone.  I liked the Mickey Mouse theme, but black frosting is the pits.  It would get on the floor and if we waited too long to wipe it up, it left a little purple spot.  It cleaned up just fine, but took a little more effort that other colors.  It also took quite a bit of food coloring to get it black and not grey.

For his birthday, I also made him shirt.  I used a white onesie, the one I used is typically an undershirt so I didn't realize how thin it was until I was working on the shirt.  I found black patches that I cut circles out of.  It made it easier to sew on, since I was able to iron it on.  I had the green fabric, and cut a 1 out of it.  I used the sewing machine to do the zigzag around the 1 but found out the corners were difficult.  I tried to do it around the Mickey, but since the fabric was thinner than I thought, it ended up pulling and ending up straight, not zigzagged.  I loop stitched around Mickey by hand.  The spacing wasn't the best but he's little and it was my first birthday shirt.  He didn't seem to mind. :)

 I've decided that I'm going to do a birthday shirt with his age each year.  The design will vary based on what he likes and his birthday theme.  Hopefully they don't get too complicated.



MSU-Northern Foundation Ball

Hello, it has been quite a while.  I was looking at my posts last night and realized how long it had actually been.  I have been pretty busy preparing the decorations for the MSU-Northern Foundation Ball and time has been getting away from me pretty easily.  I thought I was doing pretty well, then the whole family got sick.  Isaac showed signs first but he also gets a few cold symptoms when he is teething.  Then when Eli and I got sick and Isaac wasn't wanting to play at all, things didn't go well in our house.  We were all pitiful and grumpy, Isaac started getting better first which sucked! I got a little worse when he was getting better so trying to keep him busy and happy wasn't easy.  He liked when I would read to him but my throat was hurting so it was hard to speak.  He would want me to play and I'd be achy and low on energy.  Luckily, I'm starting to get better.  Still a little stuffy and getting pressure headaches (and caffine headaches cause coffee has been taking more effort than I have the energy for in the mornings), but Eli is pretty good to go, Isaac is just teething now, and hopefully I will be completely healed by the end of the week for the MSU-Northern Ball, Mardi Gras!!
I'm guessing you aren't reading this to hear about me and my sick family so let's get to it.  I have been debating if I wanted to post these or not.  The photos are from when I was working on the mock-up designs for the ball.  They aren't the best photos and when I was able to take the photos I didn't have a few of the items in yet.  I thought about waiting until we got things set up for the ball, but we didn't choose some of the mock-up designs and for those that want some insight on how I work or how to come up with centerpiece ideas, I wanted to talk about some of the goods and bads of the process.

For this event, I was hired on after they set the date, chose a theme, and even after they had come up with a few decoration ideas.  During our first meeting, they brought this:

This was a big help as I had an idea of what they would like.  They said lots of feather, glitter, and the colors were purple, green, gold, and black.  We talked about what they liked and didn't like about each photo.  The following are what I came up with...and your imagination is needed with a few of them.

I made them one with a mirror to see if they liked it.  Mirrors are good to add demention and because they make it look like there is more on the table since they reflect what is already on the table.  Imagination time: add a variety of masks on sticks and a street sign.  The tables are reserved so each one will have a street name that corresponds to the group that has purchased that table.

Sorry about the blurry photo here. Not sure what happened with that. This is the same idea as the previous but with a boa around the bottom. They decided on this idea with different boas on the bottom so that not every table is the same. The photo below is what the hurricane would look like on a charger. I had it as an idea because they had lots of chargers that were free reign and could be painted or whatever we needed to do with them.

 

In order to have something to set the boas on, we used their hurricane vases and hot glued them to the chargers they had.  We will be wrapping the boas around the base to cover the chragers.

 I tried it wrapped with tinsle thinking it would add a little sparkle and shine and be a little cheaper than boas.  I ended up not liking this idea because it didn't look the same in life as I had pictured it.

 

 This is a cylinder vase filled with a boa.  I thought it'd be a way to incorporate feather in the centerpieces other than being wrapped around the base.  They wanted more than one type of centerpiece so I was trying to come up with a few other idea.  The boa looked a lot more squished into the vase than I thought it would.

 

 I tried it with actual feather to see if I liked it better. Nope.  I also tried sprinkling feather around (like many do with gems) and I ended up not liking this either.  I did take both photos and supplies in case they liked it.

 

I thought maybe a boa wrapped about a vase would look kinda cool. Now there are multiple types of boas.  The one shown is a chandelle style with bigger feathers, there are also marabou that are fuzzier.  When I pictured this and didn't turn out the way I pictured, I was slightly disappointed.  I decided that I must have been picturing it with the marabou style. Well, I decided maybe the tinsel would look better....

 

 Nope.  Didn't look any better.  I had another style vase that the Foundation already had, and another style tinsel.  So I thought I'd try a different way.

 

Now, I had imagined this filled with the clear stones that you see people put in vases, fish bowls, and scatter on the table.  The Foundation already had some of these stone so I didn't buy any.  The other option that I had pictured was to fill it with purple glitter...or to make it cheaper purple sugar glitter like I made in my last post.  I still didn't like it.  I showed them and I took the glitter sugar to show them how it turned out.  Luckily they didn't like it either.

 

The Foundation also had some square vases so I thought I'd come up with a few ideas for those.  I found the gold coins so I thought I'd see how they looked.  Nope. The masks and street signs won't stand up well and there just isn't enough there.

 I thought I'd see what beads looked like.  Nothing says Mardi Gras like beads.  I looked what they would like with Mardi Gras beads and they didn't look too bad, but I thought with loose beads it would be easy to add demention and maybe a little cheaper.  Didn't like it as much.  One of the other options was to use the glitter sugar to fill it.  We decided on the last of my designs, and the supplies purchased would be used in other areas where we decided needed a little something extra.

 

This is floating candle bowl with a boa in it.  The masks don't stick up, so we decided to add some styrofoam to stick the dowels into.  There are a variety of boas so that not all of them are the same.  I did try it with the tinsel...

Again, didn't like it as much.  The tinsel would be cheaper, but we liked the boa more and had a big enough budget to go with the boas. The tinsel will be used to add a little Mardi Gras color to the bathrooms without focusing too much on the bathrooms.

 

 

To imagine these better, note that the tablecloths are black with gold taffeta overlay...well it is called champagne but looks like the gold that we were going for.  For the most part, these centerpieces can also be put together before the actual day of. We luckily had a room we could use to store the items in because the hurricane based centerpieces are difficult to store and transport.  Another thing to note, we used different sizes and shades of gold, purple, and green ornaments.  We had a tough time finding purple, so I spray painted them.  It is fairly easy to spray paint ornaments and most only needed one coat.  It was easy because I had a place to hang them up so I didn't have to do them one side at a time.

So, if you have any questions or want some help on developing your centerpiece ideas, just let me know! Can't wait until this weekend to see everything come together.  In my next post, I'll show my makeshift photos I used to help convey my thoughts on how the rest of the decorations would look, and watch for the actual event photos!!