Summer Party Prep & Paint Chip Crafts

Today is Lu's Summer Party. We're expecting a small turn out, which is just fine by me but it means that I waaaay over baked. There is a slight possibility that I did that on purpose because I really enjoy the fruit of my labor. Not that I'll admit that it's true (it's true). I should just put the cake, cookies and cupcakes in my pockets, it would be faster, although it wouldn't be as fun.

So, for starters, Lucie Schmoopsie made a sign for the lawn.

Schmoops likes to make things and if she's intent on making something she'll use what's around her. Thus the sign painted on cardboard from the basement. (I LOVE kid artwork!) She and her friend also built the structure it's hanging from with a little help from dad. The kids engineered it, dad assembled it. One by-product of working on the house is that we have a lot of this stuff laying around so finding something with which to build something is easy.

Speaking of structural engineering, yesterday she designed this lean to and assembled it with help from dad. She was out on the lawn with the wood trying to lay it out, she tried to build it herself too. She's a determined kid.

At first it was covered with a dirty, disgusting tarp. I made the mistake of calling it ugly without qualifying that it was the tarp, not the lean to that was ugly. I got in serious trouble. I felt so badly that I sacrificed that sheet and the lilac ribbon to make it pretty. She forgave me.

Paint Chip Projects

I decided to do a paint chip garland for the party table. I've been seeing all these paint chip crafts so I thought I'd give it a go. Here are the supplies:

Total cost: > $1.00. The paint chips are free. I bought the embroidery floss. Next time I'll look at the paint colors in daylight, I'm not thrilled with the green.

I traced and cut out sixty circles, which took me about an hour. If you think your time is worth money then you can buy punches from Michaels or AC Moore that will make things go much faster. I, however, determined that my time was not worth the money. If I were going to cut out 1,000 it would be different.

Here they are all cut out:

Then I took the embroidery floss, left about an eighteen inch tail on the end and put a dot every six inches. I centered the dot on the center of the circle and mashed another circle of the same color on top with a healthy smearing of glue stick in between.

Here it is finished.

The only problem with cutting the circles free-hand is that they don't always match exactly. If that bugs you even them up a little when it's dry. If it doesn't bother you, and honestly why should it, leave it alone. If someone mentions that they're not even you have my permission to blow raspberries at them.

Finally, here are the layers to the rainbow cake

I think they look like they're made from Play-Doh. The cake actually tastes pretty good but I would say that this is definitely kid food. I'm going to have a piece, because I have to test it (it's the truth, I really do!), but I wouldn't make this for a grown-up gathering. Your guests might wonder if they accidentally wandered onto the set of Sesame Street.

That's all for today, party post tomorrow.

H