GIRLZ ROCK T-shirts

So we're taking the Girl Scouts to Sea World for their end-of-the-year celebration. Twelve 10-year olds... are we crazy? They've done such an amazing job selling nuts and cookies last year and this year that not only have we been able to go on lots of cool outings and camping, but we have enough money to go to Sea World for 2 days with the in-park Dining Plan and Quick Queue to jump to the front of ride lines.

It is so much easier, in a group, when we all wear our matching troop shirts. We have silk-screened ones back at the beginning of the year for all of the girls and adults to wear whenever we have outings or events. Those will be great for Sea World... but what about Day 2? We wanted matching shirts for the second day as well but didn't have the budget to silk-screen again. We had to DIY-it!
I ordered solid colored shirts online for just over $3 each. I really wanted to try out using bleach as well, so we started with a large stencil of a guitar and, using a spray bottle, misted a 50/50 water/bleach solution onto the shirts.

I wish we had made multiple stencils as not only did it get a little ragged before we finished 18 shirts, but it took forever to do these one by one and then we still had to wash and dry them before proceeding.

We then had another stencil that said GIRLZ ROCK that overlaid the top of the bleach guitar. We used three different colors of spray fabric paint across that stencil.




They turned out looking pretty cool, I think. I hope the girls like them and they're 'cool homemade' not 'embarrassing homemade'.

To speed things up (again, only 1 stencil and 18 shirts...) we needed to find a way to press the stencil down on the next shirt when the paint on top of the stencil was still wet (we had re-positionable adhesive on the backside of the stencil) we resorted to laying a piece of cling wrap on top of the stencil, rolling it on to the shirt, then peeling the cling wrap off. The stencil stayed stuck to the shirt and we were ready to spray again.


However, then we noticed that the design left on the cling wrap was pretty cool too. So we wanted to see what would happen if we laid that same cling wrap on another shirt, rolled it on to transfer the wet paint and then peeled it off.


We were left with this: I little more messy but still neat!


Once we were able to make 2 shirts for each stencil positioning and spraying... it sped up significantly. We made 18 shirts... 13 kid sized and 5 adult ones. It was a lot of fun and I really hope the girls like them.


So we're heading off to Sea World in about a week and we'll be that large, loud group in the bright shirts... on both days :-)

Blake's 8th Birthday

Wow! My second child is now eight... how the years scream by, yes?

Simple, small party... just a few friends at one of those "Bounce House" places... we've done one there before.

Couldn't decide what to do for the cake. We didn't really have a 'theme' for the party. So he just decided on a character from one of his favorite video games... SackBoy from Little Big Planet. (those circles at the top are where the candles will go)

Oh no, but it didn't start off this pretty :-)

Baked up a nice marble cake, split and filled it with chocolate buttercream... and then just HAD to take a potty break. Come back to find this:


THE DOG ATE THE CAKE!!!!! Oh my heart just sank. I guess it was better now than after it was frosted, right?

So I put the dog outside and cut out the corner of the cake (is that wrong? Would you have still used the un-eaten part?) I really had no choice... this all happened about 10 in the AM and the party was at 1:00.


And filled it in with a half-a-chocolate-cake-mix-baked-real-quick-in-a-loaf-pan. This corner was not pretty marble... did not have filling... so I was actually hoping we wouldn't have to cut into it at the party.


Everything turned out well... no one was the wiser :-) (until I showed them these pictures anyway).

Dean absolutely LOVED this big slide...


He probably climbed these stairs 30 times:


Blake playing with friends:


It turned into a money birthday, too. I guess maybe 8 year old boys are hard to buy for??? He ended up getting well over $100 in birthday money.

Happy Birthday Bud! Love you!

Guitar Cake

Had a friend ask me to make the cake for her daughter's birthday... and she wanted a guitar.

I could have just done a sheet cake and laid a frozen buttercream transfer of a guitar on top... I'm familiar with that process. But, no, she really wanted a guitar. I'd never done a 'sculpted' cake before, but was certainly willing to give it a try.

It was SO not perfect but I was actually pleasantly surprised with how well it turned out.

The girls were all supposed to dress like a rock star... I didn't really get a good picture of Paige before the party, but I channeled my inner 80's girl to make her an off the shoulder, side-tie rocker chick shirt. Here she is on the left with her back to the camera...


And here she is with a few friends:


Apparently they all stayed up until 4 AM, woke around 10 AM and had waffles covered with maple syrup, chocolate syrup and whipped cream! She had a blast!