Rainbow Birthday Party

My girls' birthdays are exactly 3 years and 361 days apart.  That means that we throw them a joint birthday party every year - or I will do that as long as I can get away with it!  This year the theme was rainbow - rainbows, rainbows everywhere.

My sweets

I made both girls' tutus.  Maddie didn't want the curly tutu, so that saved me a lot of cursing because I normally curse when I sew (a wonderful trait that I picked up from my mother.)  Isn't this curly tutu cute?

I wish I had a better picture of it.  I got the idea from this picture on Pinterest.  I'd been oohing and ahing over the picture on Pinterest for a while and I found this forum that kind of helped me figure out how to go about sewing it.  The tulle will naturally curl when you sew the ribbon on the bottom of it.  It turned out really cute.

We made this pretty balloon arch:

The two people in this picture were responsible for blowing up the balloons - one of them with an air compressor and the other with pure lung power.  I pretty much followed the instructions I found here but instead of using waxed twine, I used yarn because that was what I had.

We had a rainbow candy bar.  I used mason jars and filled them with rainbow-colored candies.  I left the candy in their wrappers and then filled the jars up, so red was Kit-Kats and purple was grape Nerds - you catch my drift.

We also used our dot markers and made rainbows on the party favor bags.  Got that idea here.  I also made rainbow hair bows and clipped them on each bag for the girls to take home.

I almost left that horrible picture out, but I was so dang proud of my paper flowers I had to include it.  I have, like, an infatuation with tissue paper flowers.  I just think they're so pretty!

Everybody at the party got a chance to guess how many Sprees were in the jar, and whoever got closest without going over won the jar and the candy.  Well, our niece won but she didn't get to take it home because my youngest dropped it and glass shattered and Sprees went everywhere - awww, the joys of having a 4-year-old.

I made rainbow cupcakes.  Got that idea from this pin on Pinterest.

And we had a photo booth.

Yes, I used the falling-apart trampoline as the backdrop.  We taped plastic tablecloths over one side of the trampoline, grabbed a bunch of hats, wigs, sunglasses, different things from the girls' dress-up box and stuck them in a bucket.  We also cut mustaches and beards and lips out of foam and hot-glued them on wooden skewers.  The girls all had a fun time with this.

 

 Thank you, Pinterest, for making me pretend I'm creative!

What I've Been Working On - Yard Sale Stool

I bought this beaut at a yard sale a few months ago for $8.  The poor thing had seen better days, but I thought it had good bones, as they say, so I bought it. 

The gold velour fabric was brittle, and all I had to do to deconstruct this thing was rip the fabric off - didn't have to use a seam ripper or anything.  I was very careful, though, to rip the fabric along the seams so that I could use the old fabric as a pattern for cutting out my new fabric.  

Now, I'm not the best sewer around, but I thought recovering a stool would be easy.  It would have been super duper easy.  But do you see that piping going around the top and the bottom of the cushion?  I thought that would cause me some serious heartache, but it actually didn't.  I found this great tutorial on Pinterest on how to make your own piping. 

Since I saved the rope from the original piping, it was just a matter of cutting the new fabric on the bias and then sewing the rope into the material.  I figured out that when sewing the rope in the material, you shouldn't get right up on the rope with your seam because after you attach the piping, you might be able to see that seam.  (That makes perfect sense in my head, so I hope it makes sense to y'all - LOL)

Just kidding...this isn't really the after. 

I fell in love with this fabric at Joann's.  It's called Penny Candy.  It made me smile.  And the second I saw it, I knew it belonged on this stool, so I bought it.  

It still makes me smile just looking at it. 

You ready for the real after?  Here it is:

I swear I hugged myself after I finished this thing.

Sometimes you've just got to give yourself a little hug and say, Way To Go!