Super Cool Pirate Invites

Yarrrr!!!!! Ahoy there me hearties. It be that time o' the year again: Indy be having a party. Yarrrr!!!

Okay, enough of that. I can't type it without actually saying it like a pirate in my head and that's just silly. Plus, I think I might make crazy faces too. Weird.
Anyhoodle, Indy is turning 8 next month (which I cannot believe, because surely we just brought him home from the hospital) and wants a Pirate party (Yarrrr!). To be perfectly honest, he started planning this the day after his Indiana Jones party last year.
We've been in full party planning mode for a few weeks now (and by this I mean obsessively browsing and buying stuff from Oriental Trading Co.) and I finally got around to making the invites.  Pretty important, huh?  Sure, sure, we could just buy premade invites and write the info in, but where's the fun in that?  Where's the mess?   Store bought invites are not for me.  This year, we were going with a message in a bottle.  I started off by making the invites on MSWord, printing them on heavy brown paper, then dampening the back of the paper (don't do the front or you'll smear the ink-ask me how I know) and sticking it into a low temp oven for a few minutes.  This makes the paper crinkly and feel old.  Then comes the mess fun!  I lit a candle and burned the edges of the paper.  There were ashes all over the kitchen.  Good times.  Indy really, really, really wanted to help with this part, but I didn't think our insurance would cover birthday party invite related fires, so he had to stand by and watch.  BTW, if you do this, do it near a sink of water in case you can't blow the fire out (ask me how I know this!).  Also, when you're blowing out the fire, blow very gently (or you may need the a fore mentioned sink of water).
See how cute?  BTW, last year Indy asked for food for a local food bank instead of gifts, but this year he's asked for dog food to be donated to a shelter in memory of Miss Pepper.  Is my boy amazing or what?

After I was sure the edges of the paper were cool, I rolled the invites up and tied them closed with twine and dripped some red candle wax on them to seal it. I made sure one end of the twine was left really long. You'll see why in a minute.

I "made" Mr. HH drink several bottle of beer that came in a clear bottle and did not have a deposit (most glass bottles in Germany have a deposit).  I soaked the bottles to get them clean and get the labels off.  After they were dry, Indy and I poured sand in them and dropped in some sea shells (he thought this was really fun). I printed off some cool labels and glued them on.

I then slipped the invite inside, leaving the long part of the twine hanging out the top, so the guests could easily get the invite out (now, you see why I left one end long), put a cork in the bottle (Really, this is the reason we drank all that wine.  Promise.) and tied a small shell to the loose end of the twine.  The label reads "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here."  Indy went crazy over these.

Here they are all finished.

We actually have a few more to make, but I ran out of bottles.  I guess Mr. HH will have to drink more beer  while watching the World Cup this week (don't you feel awful for him?).  Or, I may use plastic bottles for those guests who have younger siblings.  We'll see.
So, there you have it, our super cool pirate invites.  What 'cha be thinking, maties? 


PS.  The mother of my future DIL (she told Indy they were getting married and he said "okay") got their invite yesterday and posted this on my FB page:

OMG! You are the coolest mom ever! What awesome party invitations! You have totally outdone yourself!

See why we're friends?  She totally knows me and validates that I truly am the coolest mom ever.

Linking to:

Quick, easy, patriotic cup cake paper wreath

Hi all. Before I talk about my wreath, I want to thank all of you who took the time to say such lovely things about my sweet Pepper. We still miss her like mad and your kind words meant a lot to me.

Okay, enough sadness, on to my super cute wreath. Well, I think it's super cute, anyway. And of course since I think it, it must be right.

You all know how much I love my crazy paper bag wreath and I wanted to create something similar, but also different (cause, why not be difficult?) for the 4th of July.  I had ideas, but they all seemed...too much like work complicated.  I thought and thought and thought had a drink or two and thought some more.  I surfed the web and came across some super cute ideas, but they just weren't what I was looking for.  After another drink a while, the perfect idea, which was an amalgam of several different ideas, came to me.  All I had to do was find the supplies.  And of course I couldn't find exactly what I was looking for.  What's a creative girl in gorgeous heels to do?  Improvise!  I bought a foam wreath, some blue cupcake liners with white stars on them and some star confetti.  At home I whipped out my trusty glue gun, Matilda, and some red scrapbook paper and got down to business.

Since my cupcake liner were not solid color like I was looking for, but white on the inside, I took one and flipped it wrong side out, put a dab a glue in the middle and glued 2 of them together.  I then crinkled them up around my finger (put my finger in the center where the glue was and wrapped the liner around my finger) and started gluing them on.  I stuffed and stuffed until it the wreath was full.  I used 200 cupcake liners in all, including doubling them up.  Since they were doubled they were extra fluffy.  I like fluffy.  I then took strips of red scrapbook paper and folded it accordion style.  I glued the ends together to make a red medallion (note it must be longer than it is wide or this will not work), and then glued them to the wreath.  I picked out some of the large red and white stars from the confetti and glued them on randomly.  This took about an hour and a half start to finish, including breaks to be fascinated or grossed out by the people auditioning for America's Got Talent .  Some people don't have any.  I do though!  Check it out.  Isn't it cute?

Here's a close up of the medallions.  The one in the back was the wrong proportion so I couldn't get it to make a full circle.  I just glued the others over the open space and it looks like I meant to do that.  Clever of me, yes? Yes.

Here's our patriotic front door.  I added a few red flowers I had in my stash to the white pitcher along with some blue ribbon and voila!   Ready for the 4th.

The total cost of the wreath was about $7.  Mr. HH should really appreciate how much money I save him.

Hey, check it out!  My cute little wreath was featured!!!  I'm cool like that.

My paper bag wreath

Finally, the big reveal! Remember how I was drooling over the wreath from Mary Janes and Galoshes? I actually finished it a few days after this post because I really did feel like a slacker, but forgot to show it to you! How silly of me!  I didn't have a cool paper punch like MJ&G does, so I had to cut all my circles out with my handy-dandy circle cutter. Here are my supplies:  Circle cutter, straight pins, paper bags, crazy edge scissors, styrofoam wreath and Matilda, my glue gun, who was feeling a bit shy and didn't want to be photographed.  She always says I photograph her bad side and was being quite insistent that I not take her photo.  She can be such a drama queen.

So, I started by cutting 3 inch circles.  Several of them had words on them, but I figured I'd work something out with them later.

When I first started cutting, I was only getting 6 per bag, but this felt somehow wasteful.  See?

So, I thought about it and examined the bags. How to get more per bag? Of COURSE! Open the bag and lay it flat! Genius!

Now I could get 12 circles per bag. I've just doubled my productivity!  I should be running a Fortune 500 company.  They'd be lucky to have me!

After I cut out approximately 90 gazillion circles, I folded them in half (I could cut 3 at a time) and used my crazy scissors to make the edges funky.  Really, if I were truly smart, I would have gone to the store and bought a nifty crinkle edge circle cutter, but clearly I am insane and chose to do this all by hand.  Maybe I should NOT be running a Fortune 500 company after all.  Then I took the end of pen and folded my little circle around it to make it all cook looking.

Then I started placing them on the wreath.  I did some using straight pins before I glued so I could see how full I wanted the wreath and how close together I wanted the circles.  I wanted a full wreath and packed them quite closely, which naturally meant that I had to go back and cut about 20 gazillion more circles.

Close up!  Clever me,  you can't even see the words on some of the circles can you?  With proper placement, you don't even know they're there.

It's pretty already isn't it???? Squeeeeeeeeel!!!!!!  I then took them all off and glued them back on.  Really, this took forever and any traces of  fingerprints I had left from my last project with Matilda were completely obliterated. And thus begins my life of crime.

When I was at the flea market a few weeks ago, I purchased an old (not old old, just a few years old) book of music for the recorder that had some interesting aging to is and cut out some butterflies in varying sizes.  I did the same with some pretty scrap book paper and glued them on.

Cute, huh?  Want to see the whole thing?  Really?  I haven't bored you yet?  Of course I haven't!  Here she is:

Do you love it?????   Cause I do!  Everyone comments on it when they come to my door.  When I tell them I totally copied it made it myself, they tell me how absolutely talented and amazing I am.  All true, of course.

Here it is dressed up for Easter with a few simple ribbons and some eggs.

And since we're looking at them, here's a close up of my other Easter decor:

Isn't that little bunny the sweetest thing?

I hope you enjoyed finally seeing my wreath.  It is makes my door happy.

V-Day decor, a tutorial, and you can call me Kate (if you want to)

The Christmas decor is gone and it's still winter. It's so.....blah. I decided to pretty things up (despite the fact that I am outnumbered by boys) for Valentines Day. Fortunately for me, Indy thinks V-day is still cool and loves everything I do. I love that kid. So, I mostly shopped the house (thanks Nester) and the 1 Euro store (like the dollar store in the States) and my beloved IKEA.

We have a chair in our entry way (for M to take off his combat boots before trekking mud through the house). It needed....something. I used Kimba's idea for a no sew pillow and made this cutie pie pillow from some scraps.



An apothecary jar filled with cinnamon imperials (I could eat every one of those yummy red hearts!), a scrap of pink ribbon, red books and an old lantern are on the entry shelf.


The entry table. The pink candle is sitting on a (red) copy of Romeo and Juliette.


More apothecary jars. The rose petals come from IKEA. The twine balls came from the 1 Euro store (3 for 1 Euro) and the porcelain flower under the cloche was a gift from M several years ago. He actually had a friend fly it in from Italy on his private plane.


Willow branches with red ribbon tied on and hung with paper hearts I cut out while watching TV. I'm cool like that. More twine balls and rose petals in the bird cage and a little piece of art I made on top of another red book.


Now, onto the tutorial for how I made the little piece of art in the above photo.

I printed off a bunch of lovey-dovey quotes on a regular piece of white paper with a fancy script.


A piece of red paper (left over from the hearts on the tree), and a photo frame (isn't Indy cute in this photo? He was 2).


I thought the white paper was too white, so I took my tea strainer (it had dried a lot from my morning tea, but was still damp) and tapped it all over the paper. Don't do this too much or it will smear the ink. I then patted it with a paper towel.


I cut it to fit the frame, put 2 cut out hearts in front of it and voila!

It was so easy and took all of about 10 minutes. Actually, gathering the supplies took longer than making it.

I got an email from Sweet Rue jokingly saying that I needed to give some kind of name so she didn't have to call me 'Mom.' I laughed and realized she was probably right. I don't want to use my real name because it is so unusual and I've only ever met 2 others with the same name. Also, my parents spelled it weird. Those of you who know me IRL know what I'm talking about. So, I thought and thought and thought (I didn't hurt myself, don't worry) and then it hit me: my bar name! When you were in college did you ever have an alias that you gave guys you met at parties/bars/the library/the caf that you weren't really interested in? No? Well, my friends and I did. The main reason I did it was because of the unusualness of my name, but all my friends had aliases and we had to know them, so if a guy asked we gave them the right (incorrect name). My alias was Kate MacNamara. I just liked the way it sounded. Say it. Kate MacNamara. Doesn't it sound awesome? I think so. It was given out (along with the wrong digits) to many a weird guy during my college years. If you feel that you have to call me something, feel free to call me Kate. I'm not giving you my digits though.