Sesame Street First Birthday

My youngest turned one back in September. I really love throwing kids parties! I try and use my creativity to do the most I can on the budget I set for the party. So I made plenty of trips to the Dollar Tree, of course. Got out all of my crafting supplies and started about a month ahead putting things together. At first I had thought I'd break and buy the licensed party supplies, but I like the look of DIY much better. So I started with making shirts.....

I found these organic long sleeve onsies for $1.50 each at Walmart. I bought about a half of a yard of some flannel Sesame Street fabric,a pack of  felt rectangles, and iron-on, no sew adhesive to adhere to the back. I drew a number one on some card stock, free hand. Then cut it out and used it to cut the number one's from the Sesame Street Flannel. I then placed each number one on a coordinating felt rectangle and cut around until it had enough border to make it pop! I bought matching bows for the girls at Walmart for $1.00 each.

Moving on.....I wanted to make a bunch of different character bags for favors. I realized it could take forever to cut and paste ( I don't have a Cricut machine). I narrowed my choice down to Elmo and Big Bird. I found red and yellow plain party bags at the dollar store in packs of ten. I used cookie cutter circles to trace eyes, and Elmo's mouth (cut bigger circles in half) on construction paper and hot glue to stick them on the bags. I then free hand traced a nose for Elmo onto card stock, and when I made one that looked good enough I used that as my guide to trace onto orange construction. I traced a rounded triangle for Big Birds beak and then folded the construction paper and traced it so the folded line was the back of the beak. That way I had a top and bottom to the beak without having to glue. I traced the inner parts of Big Birds mouth and hot glue those to the beaks. I then cut the pink and blue eyelids, then glued them onto the bags. When it came time to glue on Big Birds beak I decided to glue down the entire bottom portion of the beak ( I originally wanted to glue the crease so the whole beak popped off of the bag). The last thing I did was take a black sharpie and make pupils. They weren't all exactly uniform, but thats what I love about DIY! Inside were Sesame Street themed board books, stickers, and baby flash cards ( all from Dollar Tree)!

I normally make my own cakes, but due to the fact that I was already investing my time in various crafts for the party I decided to give myself a break and ask Walmart to do the cake. I saw a Dora and Diego themed specialty cake in their book and asked if they could use the same format to do a Sesame Street cake, this is how it turned out!

The guest tables were a combination of Dollar Tree Elmo balloons, string, and party wieghts, and Party City summer clearance confetti ( 50 cents a pack, one pack per table)! I also took all plates, cups, napkins, and cutlery and staggered the primary colors for visual effect ( all Dollar Tree)!

At the last minute (12-4am the night before) I realized I wanted to make a homemade banner and that I'd regret if I didn't. So I kept it primary colors, simple rectangles, and traced stencil letters in white paint. I also made labels for the snacks on the table(see picture at top of page) with crayons to look like Elmo's world. We had Elmo's goldfish, Abby's magical marshmallows, Number of the day cookie ( a back to school special at walmart, number cookies in primary colors), and the letter of the day was M for M&M's!I got Sesame Street juice boxes by Apple and Eve in 8 packs at Walmart ( fruit punch has Elmo on it and Apple juice has Big Bird). I wrapped an empty Huggies jumbo pack box with Sesame Street wrapping paper (Dollar Tree) to elevate the cake on.

I also used a party hat I had leftover from another party and felt and fabric leftover from the T-shirts to hot glue and make a party hat for the birthday boy!

The kids area I set up had an empty swimming pool filled with ball pit balls ( Rubber Ducky's pond), a bubble machine ( $6.00 at Walmart, $1.00 for the mega bubbles), various Sesame Street interactive toys from our home collection ( Elmo Live, Cookie counting Cookie Monster, Musical Ernie), and giant inflatable Happy Birthday Elmo (eBay, oh yeah). The little ones had a blast in their safe play zone and the mamas got to enjoy the party too! All in all it was a great time! Hope some of these Ideas help for those of you throwing a Sesame Street party!

Dollar Tree Baby Shower

So a friend of mine is having her second baby girl at the end of November (God willing). She asked me not to "go all out" knowing I can get a bit carried away at times, especially when it comes to parties! So I remembered seeing some super cute new shower decorations at The Dollar Tree! Take a look!

http://www.dollartree.com/party-supplies/Baby-Shower/Pink-It-s-a-Girl-Baby-Shower-Paper-Party-Plates-8-190-/207c346c346p300416/index.pro

Anyways I attempted to use my creativity to make a cake that matches the decorations. I used the Wilton baby buggy cake pan ( using a 50% off coupon at Michaels it was just 7 dollars!) Here's how that went....

I really wanted to match the decorations with a baby buggy diaper cake. I tried my best, got me some diapers, a pack of receiving blankets, some ribbon and a few bows. I watched a couple YouTube tutorials combined them all, came up with a few new ideas. Boom, bang, pop.....

The shower was simple, sweet, and everyone seemed to have a great time! Thank you Dollar Tree!

Mom's Pumpkin Bread Recipe

Every fall family recipes start to resurface. As the chill comes in I begin to crave the comforts of my childhood. My mom's pumpkin bread is usually the first thing I make to start off the fall/holiday baking season. She got the recipe from her mom, who got it from her best friend, years ago.I use this recipe to make either a few loaves of pumpkin bread, pumpkin muffins, or even pumpkin cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. They are best served the morning after being made ( they moisten overnight) Here's the recipe!

Pumpkin Bread

Ingredients- 3 1/2 cups flour

                   2 teaspoons baking soda

                   1 1/2 teaspoons cinnamon

                   1 teaspoon cloves or pumpkin pie spice

                   1 teaspoon salt

                   3 cups sugar

                   1 cup vegetable oil

                   2/3 cup of milk or water

                   4 eggs beaten

                   3 cups of pumpkin ( I use either 2, 15 oz. cans or one 32 oz. can)

Directions-

   Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix all dry ingredients thouroughly. Make a hole in the middle. Add oil, milk ( or water), eggs, and pumpkin. Mix until well blended ( I use a hand mixer for a few minutes on med-high). 

Bake loaves of bread for 1 hour, muffins/cupcakes approx. 30 minutes. 

Yields- 3,  2 lb. loaf pans or approx. 48 muffins/cupcakes.

Enjoy and please share your feedback! Follow me on Pinterest Shop,Craft,Bake (AishaAhm)!

Addition 3-23-13 *** Thank you Leena for reminding me that I spaced and completely forgot the cream cheese frosting recipe! Well dear here it is!

Cream Cheese Frosting

Ingredients- 1 package(8oz.) cream cheese, softened

                  1/4 cup butter or margarine, softened

                  1 teaspoon vanilla

                  2 to 3 teaspoons milk

                  4 cups powdered sugar

Directions-

   In a large mixing bowl, beat cream cheese, butter, vanilla and 2 teaspoons of the milk with an electric mixer on low speed until smooth. Beat in powdered sugar 1 cup at a time. Gradually beat in just enough remaining milk to make frosting smooth and spreadable. if frosting is too thick, beat in more milk, a few drops at a time. If the frosting becomes too thin, beat in small amount of powdered sugar. Leftover frosting can be tightly covered and refrigerated up to 5 days or frozen up to 1 month!

She did the mash, she did the monster mash

Fall is my favorite time of year. Old family recipes start to resurface, there's a chill in the air, and Halloween puts everyone in a creative spirit! Recently I was approached by a coworker about a doll cake for her daughter. This wasn't just any doll it was a Monster High doll. Now being that Halloween is right around the corner and the festivities are in full swing everywhere I go I felt a creative fire light within me. I decided to take the challenge! I am a novice decorator for now, but a fairly confident baker at this point. I mostly do cupcakes, but for some reason her request inspired me to view this as one giant cupcake of a project....Heres how it went!

I used the Wilton Wonder Mold pan, tie dyed my cake batter to match the doll ( turquoise  for her eye shadow and lips, and purple for her skin). I then dyed my home made buttercream black and violet. I froze the cake overnight, then "dirty iced" it to lock in the crumbs. Then I put it in the refrigerator for an hour. I went over the it with a layer of violet buttercream and ran a metal spatula under hot water and then around my cake to smooth it. I placed it back in the refrigerator for another 20 minutes. I then made the black roses on top with an open star tip by swirling backwards from the center outwards. I made a spider web ( which kind of ended up looking like ribs, but oh well). I then used the open star tip to pipe texture in violet to the dress and, since I ran out of  violet icing by that point, I made another spider web up the back. I kid you not I thought I felt like I was a modeling manager getting my monster ready for some kind of creepy beauty pageant. All the while in the back of my mind all i could here was... "They did the mash, they did the mooonster maaash."