Enchanted Mommy

A Super Hero Birthday Party for only $45!

So excited, so excited!  After a lot of planning and anticipation, It was finally time for my little monkey’s 4th birthday party!!!   It was so much fun.  We did a lot of cool things and the entire thing from decorations, party favors, and food cost just $45.  You will love this…  here are the details:

The Invitations:  I used an e-vite.  Simple, free, and easy to track the guest list.  The invitation went a little something like this:  “Calling All Super Heroes!  We must all unite to help defeat the evil villain trying to destroy Tyson’s birthday party.  Meet at hero headquarters at 3pm for some fun super hero training!  Hosted by Wonder Woman (aka Tyson’s Mom).”The Decorations:  I put a home made printed sign saying “Super Hero Headquarters” with a couple balloons on the door. Used some dollar table clothes and balloons, and hung a few streamers.

  • 3- $1 table cloths form the dollar store (one for the play dough table, one for the cake table, and one as the back ground for pictures)
  • 2 – $1 streamers (one red, one blue) from the dollar store
  • 1 – $1 hanging party centerpiece from the dollar store
  • 2 – $1 packages of balloons (one red, one blue) from the dollar store
    TOTAL:  $6 plus tax on decorations

The Party:  As the kids arrived they were greeted and invited to play at the super hero play dough table.  The table had lots of play dough and even more super hero action figures of every type to play in the play dough with.

After all the kids had arrived I sat them all down together and told them that there was an evil villain lurking about trying to ruin the birthday party.  I needed all of them to use their super hero strength to defeat him.  Then I called them each up one at a time to receive their super hero rings (plastic superman rings I got in a 12pack on Amazon).

Just as the last child got his ring, the evil villain (my hubby dressed up and wearing a mask) showed himself while doing an evil villain laugh.  He had two large trash bags full of black balloons.  He told the kids they were bombs and that he would use them to destroy the party of they could not diffuse them in time.  The kids took a couple minutes jumping and popping all the “bombs.”

After all the “bombs” had been defused I told the kids they had all won a super hero award for their work diffusing the bombs.  I gave each child a super hero cape.  They were all pretty pumped to get their capes!  I then told them that the evil villain would be back and that we need to do some special super hero training to prepare.  The Kids went down to the basement for a special obstacle course.  The course ended with a pop up tent full of balls.  Each child had to search through the balls to find their super hero wrist bands with their initials.  (Note:  I just tossed one in before each person started the obstacle course).

One of the party guests during the super hero training course

The kids completed the course to find that they had earned their super hero masks.  The kids now had a ring, cape, wrist bands, and a mask.  They all put them on and posed for pictures in front of a blue background (a plastic $1 tablecloth from the dollar store hung on the wall).  After the pics the evil villain dared to show himself again.  Each of the kids rushed to grab a ball from the pop up house to throw at him.  The birthday boy was given silly string to spray to defeat the villain.

The birthday boy spraying (with a little help from his mom) the evil villain

The super villain was defeated and the birthday party was saved.  Time for cake!  I always make and decorate my own cakes with the birthday boy.  It makes it that much more special.  This was a super man cake.  I also had incredible hulk juice (green sherbet, sprite, and green food coloring – all in a large punch bowl).  It was a big hit.

My sweet sweet birthday boy!

After cake, the kids all ran around playing and pretending in their super hero gear.  I also had a good friend who is awesome at tying balloons do me a huge favor and come help.  He tied a couple balloons for each child.  The boys mostly picked swords and sheaths and the girls picked flowers and animals.

The kids had so much fun, but even better, the birthday boy had a blast and declared he wants a super hero party every year!

Here is the price break down:

  • $6 on decorations
  • $2 for 2 bags of black balloons (used as bombs) from the dollar store
  • $2 cake mix
  • $2 frosting
  • $2.19 2-liter of sprite
  • $2.15 green sherbet
  • $1 for 2 paper cups (one red, one blue) from the dollar store
  • $1 for 2 paper plates (one red, one blue) from the dollar store
  • $1 for red plastic forks from the dollar store
  • $1 for 2 napkins (one red, one blue) from the dollar store
  • $1 for silly string (to spray the evil villain) from the dollar store
  • $10.91 masks and wrist bands
  • $6.68 capes
  • $3.40 superman rings

TOTAL COST OF THIS PARTY:  $45.33

Making a Super Man Cake!

I have to say that I am huge on making and decorating my kids birthday cakes.  I have three boys and on each of their birthdays we get up and make and decorate a cake together.  I am not an expert (my cakes obviously show that) and I have never taken any cake decorating classes (although I’d love to find time to).  For that reason, and because I always have an extra set of little hands helping me, I need to keep my designs simple.This year my little monkey had a Super Hero party.  He wanted his cake to be superman. I looked up the super man logo and new exactly what to do.  A two layer cake with the top layer cut in the shape of the super man shield logo.

  • Step 1: Bake your favorite cake in two 9-in round pans.  I am a simple when it comes to this… I use a $2 cake mix.  We never choose anything but chocolate at my house!
  • Step 2:  Carefully dump the pans upside down to release the cake from the pans. Put the cakes face up on two different plates and put them in the freezer for a couple hours.  This makes the cake easier and smoother to cut and shape later.
  • Step 3:  Take the cakes out.  Use a long piece of dental floss to cut straight across the cakes to make them level.  If you do not feel confident in doing this, just flip your cake upside down on your cake tray so that the bottom of the cake (the nice and flat side) is facing up.
  • Step 4:  Carve one cake into the shape of the super man shield.  The cake should cut clean and easy if it has been in the freezer long enough.  Using a frosting knife, frost a thin layer of frosting over the entire cake.  It doesn’t matter what color or if bits if cake show in the frosting.  This is only the first layer.  Place the cake back in the freezer (this seals the frosting and allows you to come back and put on another thicker layer of frosting without getting the itty bitty cake pieces in the frosting.  HINT: To save your serving tray from messy frosting while you are decorating, put pieces of parchment paper under the edges.  You can easily pull them off when the decorating is done.
  • Step 5:  Re- frost your cake in the main color you will use and decorate the top with other colors to make the superman logo.  I used a little bit of frosting in a decorating bag with different decorating tips.  You can also use a zip lock bag also; it works just the same.

How to Make Super Hero Capes

I am almost done preparing for my soon-to-be-4 years old’s Super Hero birthday party.  One last detail to make it perfect… super hero capes!  After rummaging through my local party store after Halloween looking for inexpensive capes to use for the party, I realized that it would be easier and more cost effective to make my own.  Then I would get the ones I wanted and spend less money for them.

I collected my 20% off coupon from Joannes Fabric store and headed over.  I found a nice black costume satin material on sale for $1.99 a yard.  I got 4 yards and used my 20% off coupon for the total.  Besides the material, I used some fabric iron on velcro left over from making the super hero wrist bands.

Using a satin material instead of a stretch fabric was a little more difficult to work with. The satin tends to fray a bit around the edges and takes a little more effort hemming. The satin look was worth it though.

Step 1:  Make sure the fabric is pre-washed and ironed before starting.  You want to make sure the fabric is already shrunk before you cut the fabric to the correct size.  Cut the fabric in the the shape of your rectangular cape.  I used a plain rectangle size 2′ by 3′.  TIME SAVER HINT:  Fold your fabric in half when you begin measuring and cutting so that you are cutting two capes at once.
Step 2:  Fold over the sides of fabric and pin down.  Using a overcast stitch, hem all four sides of your quilt.  You can do this by hand, but I highly recommend using a sewing machine.  Almost all machines have and overcast stitch setting.
Step 3:   Cut your velcro into small one inch pieces and iron on to the corners of your cape.

Hemming the egdes was quick and easy. I spent less than 10 minutes on each one and got them all finished during my little guys nap.

So there you go… I made 10 capes and had plenty of extra material.  I could easily have made 2 or 3 more capes out of the extra material if I needed to.  The total cost after taxes for this project was $6.68 since I already had the velcro from making the super hero wrist bands.  If you need to buy the velcro you can get a large package of it for $8 (using the 40% off one item coupon at Michaels).  The velcro will last a long time.

How to Make a Super Hero Mask and Wristbands

My little monkey is asking to have a super hero birthday party this year.  I want it to be really fun, but don’t want to spend a ton of money.  I decided to make the kids their own super hero masks and wrist bands to use during the party and keep as party favors.

I made blue, red, and pink masks for the party.

I ended up finding some really cheap felt pieces at Michaels.  I could pick any five pieces for $1.  I ended up getting 10 pieces, $3 stretching string, and some fabric iron on velcro.  I also used a 40% off one item coupon from the Sunday paper, but you can also find them online.  In the end I was able to make ten super hero masks and ten sets of matching super hero wristbands for a total price of $10.91.  In fact, I ended up having some leftover felt as well.

Making the mask: 
1.  After getting the felt, cut out a mask template.  You can design your own or use one of the many templates they have online.  I used this template.
2.  Use the template to cut masks out of the felt.
3.  Thread your stretchy string through a large holed eye needle.  I used a simple not to hold the string in place on each side of the mask.

Making the Wristbands:
1.  Measure the length of your child’s wrist so you know what length you need to cut your fabric.  The fabric must wrap around at least an inch so there is room to secure the velcro.  I let mine wrap around a bit more since I was planning for kids of different ages at the party and wanted to make sure I left enough room for it to fit the older children as well.
2.  Use the felt to cut out the initial you want to use on the wrist band.  You can cut out any shape you want in place of an initial as well.  By hand, or by machine, sew the edges of the initials to the middle of each wristband.
3.  Cut small one inch pieces of fabric iron on velcro.  Iron on to your felt wristbands.

 

 

Here you can see the approximate sizes I used for the letters and the lenghts of the wristbands.

 

Recipe Party = Huge Success

You might have read my previous post about how excited I was to have my recipe party.  The party was everything that I imagined.  It was so much fun!  Everyone got along so well (probably because I have so many nice friends) and all the food was over-the-top delicious!

Here’s the jist of the party that I previously posted:
Each person emails the host their five favorite recipes before the party, brings one dish of their five sent recipes and shows up for a childless great night!  I made sure to let people know that it’s supposed to be stress free, if they show up in sweats, no one will judge.

It started at 6:30 and I think everyone was here by 6:45, let the party startttttt.  The girls labeled their recipes (I had a sharpie with some blank index cards), grabbed some delicious cocktails and I went around and introduced everyone.

Sangria was a hit cocktail.  I made it (I can’t take credit for the recipe)!

sangria

Sangria. One of my recipes. It was a huge hit!

Introducing was actually fun because it brought back old stories that everyone got to hear.

Next, we chowed down!  The food was so delicious.  I took pictures, it’s okay to start drooling because this food was SO scrumptious.

Asian Noodle Salad Recipe Party

This is a delicious Asian Noodle Salad, so yumm!

Broccoli Salad

Jamie brought this! I love broccoli salad for picnics (and you can totally make it south beach friendly).

Buffalo chicken dip with blue cheese

Perfect appetizer! Buffalo chicken dip!

Ceviche yum

Ceviche

I was so proud of my friend that made this!  She never (no exaggeration here) cooks.  This is actually a more difficult dish and it was so yummy!

chicken divan casserole

Classic Chicken Divan. I made this.

I wanted there to be an actual meal type of dish.  I also told the girls that it was a great dish to take to someone if they had a baby or had something going on in their life (i.e. I took it to my aunt when she had a knee replacement).

perfect pumpkin cream cheese dip

Perfect fall appetizer or even sweet treat. Pumpkin Cream Cheese Dip!

Rich Potato Casserole

Rich Potato Casserole. I love warm appetizers!

Taco Soup

So, Paula Dean does make a great Taco soup!

There were also two desserts.  There was an ice cream cake and a pumpkin dump cake.  I am so mad at myself for not getting pictures.  Now, I will have to make them and post them for you!  They were both delicious!  My old coworker use to make me an ice cream cake every year for my birthday, so I told her she had to bring it.  Oh man, I want some right now!  The pumpkin dump cake was also a huge hit!  My neighbor that came said she was going to make the pumpkin dump cake for Thanksgiving, see it’s totally worth having a party for all the yummy recipes.

After we ate, we played taboo!  We played the moms against the non-moms.  Team mom won!!  This was so much fun and was a great way for everyone to get to know each other!

Some people began to leave and three girls stayed around and we just chit chatted for a while.  I had the best time and I want to make this an annual tradition.  I love my friends.  The End.

 

Turkey Made out of a Pine Cone

fun pine cone activity

Look at this cute turkey!

First, before I write anything else, I apologize for the pictures.  I only had my cell phone with me when the craft was being made.

Who’s got the most creative friend?!?!?!  I do, I do!  My friend Brooke and I hang out all the time, it’s more at my house just because of location.  She comes here, the girls play whatever and we chit chat.  We go there and she has amazing activities planned for the girls.  This is just one of those activities.

I arrive to her house (she lives on an AMAZING 20 acre farm) and she has the girls buckets ready for their adventure!  The first step was for them to go find two pine cones that she hid (of course they were in obvious places).

girls on a mission for pine cone

And they are off to find their pine cones!

This is the base for the turkey, yes I’m captain obvious.

Pine cone

Ella found hers!

If you are a blog junkie of ours, notice she’s wearing her sweater from the consignment sale!

Next, they went and started putting their turkey together.

You need:
pine cone
paper to trace both hands
turkey paint colors
eyes, beak, gizzard cut outs
two orange pipes
hot glue gun

turkey hand paint

Here is Ella getting her hand painted for the back feathers.

Brooke painted her hand twice.  Once all red and the next time she painted two of her fingers different colors.

hand print for turkey pine cone

Here are the supplies and what the hand prints looked like before she cut them.

She had already had the beak, gizzard and eyes cut out for us.  So, we worked on the feet next.

turkey foot

Here is the foot, you just bend it to make it look like this!

Now, since your hand prints are just about dry cut them out and glue everything on the pine cone. Wahhlaaaaa!  Such a fun and cute craft!

 

 

Fun Thanksgiving Turkey Craft

It’s Thanksgiving time and I have a lot to be thankful for. Mainly, my three little monkeys that constantly amuse me (did I mention my hubby is a pretty good catch also?!).

I feel like Thanksgiving is often a rushed holiday… its thrown in there after the huge excitement of Halloween and rushed through so we can all gear up for the Christmas season. I really wanted to get my kids thinking about Thanksgiving and the things they are thankful for.

Here are a couple fun turkey projects to get your family in the Thanksgiving spirit!

Does it get any cuter? I obviously did not influence his answers. They are his own, but we did talk about how we are thankful for all the really important things in life as well.

These were fun projects for the kids and I so enjoyed their cute little personalities as they told me all about the things they love! I did this project with four different kids all 3 or 4 years old. A few of the things I heard about (so love these little guys): swimming, mommy’s and daddy’s, pets, Chuck-E-Cheese, power rangers, friends, little sisters, nintendo wii, cookies, baseball, etc…

All you need is a few different colored feathers cut from construction paper, glue, and a turkey body with its facial features.

 

For the hand print turkey, just paint each finger a different color, place on the paper in a circular pattern, then have the kids glue on the rest of the turkey cut from construction paper on.

Here is another Thankful Turkey project... Geez these kids are cute!!!

A Weird Mommy Moment!

With three boys (6yrs, 3yrs, and 2yrs old) I am not often surprised.  Most of the shenanigans they pull just make me shrug my shoulders and think, “hhhmmm, business as usual.”

I found while talking to my next door neighbor (she has three adorable girls aged 7 and under) and some of my other friends with girls, that the shenanigans my kids are pulling aren’t anywhere near normal or ordinary to her.

Although it isn’t even 3:30pm yet, I thought I would share my three most interesting events of the day.

I am having company over this whole week so I decided to do walk through the house and make sure things were mostly put together.  I got to one of the bedrooms that my two year old and three year old share.  I started to straighten their blankets on their bunk beds and found a couple toys.  By the time I finished making both their beds, this is the toy stash I had found… all in their beds!

The complete stash of toys I found hidden in their beds!

Those little sneaks!  This is one of those times where I am unsure if I should be deeply disappointed in their sneakiness, or secretly proud as sneaking this amount of toys and keeping it all hidden took an enormous amount of planning.  Their bedroom is on the top floor of the house and the toy room is two floors down in the basement.  It must have taken them several trips each to carry all these upstairs in their little hands.

A little later my six year old wanted to color.  Great!  He can color with his brothers (they almost always want to do whatever he does) and I can keep cleaning.  Ten minutes go by and he brings in a fortune teller he has made from paper… remember those!  Yep, the kids are still doing them!  Anyway, he wants me to play and I am more than happy to see what interesting things he has written inside.  Here is what my future foretold!

In case you can't read the six year old writing, this tells me that I will poop my pants in the near future

So later on, the boys have two of their best friends over to play.  I am organizing a little in the office and over hear their conversation.  It went a little something like this,

“You better tell my mom.”
“Why do I have to tell her?”
“You broke it, you should have to tell her.”
“Why can’t you just tell her?”
“Because I didn’t break it, you did.”

At this point my anticipation got the better of me and I decided to see just what had been broken this time (again, with three boys this is really not surprising in the least).  I was very happy to find out that the broken item in question was just a catalog rather than the hanging light fixture (that was broken just a couple months ago from a flying tennis ball).

Anyway,  this is my life.  I hope it brings you a smile.  For me it is just the standard occupational hazard of life with three little monkeys… and I wouldn’t trade it for the world!

Easy Dining Chair Re-Upholster

These dining chairs had gotten pretty grubby, but the chairs are solid so we didn’t want to replace the whole set.  We decide to see how hard it would be to re-upholster them.  As it turned out, this was so easy and cheap to do!

Total time for all 4 chairs: 20 minutes!  Total cost:  $20

The before and after!

All you need to do is measure your chairs so you know how much fabric you need.  You might want to get a little extra in case you make a mistake or want to have some material leftover to make future repairs using the same fabric.  1 yard for every 2 chairs will be plenty!

If you don’t get the Jo-Ann’s Fabric circular, just google “Jo-Ann’s Fabric coupons” to get a 40% off coupon.  Then, go pick out a canvas fabric that you love.

Here is what you do in five quick and easy steps:

Step 1:  Measure your fabric.  Make sure you have enough fabric to cover the enire seat part of the chair with 2 to 3 inches extra around all four sides.  Time saver hint:  Fold your fabric in half when cutting it so that you are cutting the fabric for two chairs at once.

Step 2:  Remove the seat part from the chair

Here are the grubby seats removed and ready to be worked on.

Step 3:  Place your fabric on the floor with the pattern side down and place the chair seat down in the middle of your fabric so that the bottom of the chair is facing up.  You should still be able to see several inches of your fabric from all four sides of your chair.

Step 4:  Fold one side of your fabric over the bottom of the chair seat and use a staple gun to secure the fabric in place.  Repeat for each side.

All fresh, nice, and fun! Ready to be put back on the chair!

Step 5: Replace the seat back on the chair! That’s it, you’re done!  So easy!!!

All done and fabulous!!!

Halloween Spider Jello!

My very creative sister came up with this cute Halloween snack to bring to her daughter’s Kindergarten party.    It is very easy and was a big hit with the kids.  All you need is a package of plastic spiders from the dollar store, some clear plastic cups, and some orange colored jello.  Make the jello as usual and put the spider in so it looks like it is climbing out of the jello before it chills in the refrigerator.Now you have a cute and festive snack that cost almost nothing and took no time to do.

Kids can be so funny… there were a few kids in the class that said they thought the spider went potty in the jello.  Random thoughts of some five and six year old kids!  Gotta love it!