Thursday, October 27, 2011

It's All in the Details...

In case you're curious, I thought I'd share the details of James' Mickey Mouse party today.



My Mickey and Minnie topiaries were by far the most time-consuming of all the projects. I found a picture on Pinterest and the girl said they were pretty easy. Well. They might be easy for someone who is not a perfectionist, but these almost did me in. I finished them the morning of the party. If you're a real-life friend and would like to reuse these, let me know! Ha! They need to be put to use!

Basically, I took a foam wreath, cut tulle into squares, folded the tulle, and pinned each piece into the foam with a floral pin. Hundreds and hundreds of pieces. The ears are foam as well and I just glued those on. I wish I'd been able to find smaller floral pins (and BLACK floral pins) and I should've sprayed the green wreath forms black. The part holding it up is a painted dowel rod that I stuck into a piece of foam and glued into the pot. The pots were the EASIEST part. I bought two red pots and for Mickey's I just glued on big buttons. On Minnie's I just used my Silhouette to cut out dots and stuck those on.

Y'all, these are cute but they will take hours and hours of work. Just be prepared!


I ordered my ears on Amazon. I actually bought them from two separate sellers.



My banner, invitations, thank you notes, and address labels all came from Sweet Peach Paperie on Etsy. She was SO easy to work with. Initially, I started working with a blog friend, Lianna Knight, but I realized I needed things faster so I had to go with someone else that could email me my items. Sweet Peach Paperie had EVERYTHING to me within four hours of placing my order. I would highly recommend Lianna, too! She was very generous to re-create exactly what I wanted. I'll use her in the future for sure! (Obviously, the invitation is her sample online! I just didn't scan ours in!)

A shot of the whole clubhouse. The table cloths are just plastic ones from Wal*Mart. The hats were leftovers from John Michael's 1st birthday party. It was Mickey, too, so I used what Lori had left! :)

Last year I painted a canvas to match James' circus-themed party. The dots were red, white, and blue. I had Bess paint "Celebrate" on it when she got to my house the night before the party. This year, not wanting to re-do, AND knowing that Bess couldn't save me from an artistic disaster, I cut out black vinyl dots to cover the blue and just repainted over those. The genius part is that it peels right off! I think I got the original idea from Erin's blog a year or two ago.

This cake was modeled after Granddaddy's in-real-life boat, the Sea Chaser!


We rented the inflatable from Jumpin' J's in Tifton. They set it up at 11 and came back to get it at 5!

I ordered James' t-shirt from THIS Etsy seller. It was quick and SO well-made. I'll be ordering a Thanksgiving and Christmas shirt from her soon!

The pinata came from our local party store. It was the pull-string kind (my kind of pinata after a run-in with a bat when I was about 9 - my tooth is still knocked back from that, even after braces!) but Eddie put his foot down and said no way!

The balloon wreath was another recycled decoration. I made it last year and simply pulled out the blue balloons and added black instead. I LOVED making this. It, too, was very time consuming, but I would go into business making these if I could. I cannot explain why I enjoyed it so much. The Mickey is from Wal*Mart and is our back-up lovey. I just bought him a few weeks ago after we had a disastrous tummy-trouble night (just in case!) and tied him on with floral wire. Now I'll hold onto him for a just in case moment!



Finally, favors! If I had a dollar for every time Eddie asked, "What is the purpose of a goody bag?" or "Why do you do this to yourself?" while we were making these, I would be rich. He was the BEST helper! I really wouldn't have finished these if I hadn't had his help. Alright, directions for these boogers! You need to open up a Double Stuf Oreo. Scoop out a little of the icing where your stick can go. Add some extra icing to help stick the two cookies halves back together. Dip the bottom half in red candy melts, tap off the extra, and very quickly put the stick in where you've scooped a place out. (If you don't prepare a place for the stick we found that the Oreos just come apart.) Let those dry (in the freezer if you'd like to be faster!). The next step is to open up a Mini Oreo and scrape off all of the icing. You won't need it. Pipe some icing into the top of the Oreo to give the Minis a place to stick. Press "ears" on and let those dry. Later, dip the top half into chocolate and dry. You could pipe on Mickey buttons, but I gave up. Ha! These were fun but time consuming as well!

I think that's it for the details. No one asked me to mention them and I wasn't compensated in any way for providing links, names, or brands. Enjoy!

2 comments:

The Morrows said...

So cute!!! Love his shirt, topiaries, favors, and balloon wreath. I know that was lots of work but You did a great job!

Lauren said...

cute cute cute!