Mommy (me): Okay Chacey, now remember, it’s a secret. This is a special project for Daddy. It’s Father’s Day tomorrow.

Chace (my 3 year old): okay mommy (excited giggle).

Kevin (Chef Kev) – from the hallway: Send Chace out, I want to give him a kiss goodbye. Heading out to do some errands…

Mommy: Ssssh, don’t tell Daddy. Let me wipe the paint off your hands first.

< door open and close as he goes to Daddy > 

Daddy: Bye buddy. Are you having fun doing your special secret project?

Chace: Yes Daddy. I painting. I PAINTING ROCKS!

< Daddy laughter > 

Aaand there it is.

Want to be let in on a little secret? Chace made Daddy a special rock for Father’s Day.

I bet you can’t tell that he painted it himself? Well he did. But mommy might have helped with the tag and string tying.

We had so much fun that he made one for Papa (my dad) and Pop-pops (Kevin’s dad) too!

The idea was set in motion after reading this over on one of my favourite blogs – and Chace put his own spin on it… with a bit of help from Mommy.

First up I lightly sprayed the tops of the rocks white. I didn’t coat them entirely as I wanted some of the rock to still show through but thought the white would be a nice base colour. In the end I don’t think I really needed this step though.

Once those dried, Chace and Mommy went into seclusion and the real fun began. I had thought that sticking to a colour palette for each rock would be good idea so that it didn’t just become a sea of swampy brown on each rock. Mix a bunch of colours together and that is what you get… So, started with the idea of an orange rock, a green rock and a blue one. Chace chose which colour and which rock Daddy, Papa and Pop-pops would get. The fourth rock was there as back up incase we messed up or I needed to show him what to do.

But nope. My kid is a pro and got straight to work.

There it is – the tongue out. Concentration at it’s cutest.

This was serious bidness. Brushes needed to be rinsed and wiped between each colour…

Sidenote: How cute are those P.J.’s? They are surfboards but for some reason Chace thought they were popcicles.

Double-dipper.

And then we had our three rocks painted.

So Chace moved onto the fourth and said he wanted to do it for himself.

And went to town…

I didn’t bother policing any paint mixing because paint + 3 year old = what’s the point.

But then I noticed it made some pretty funky art in it’s own right.

Speaking of artists, my little Picasso was having a great time being neat and tidy.

And yes, that is blurry black paint on his nose and lip.

almost done…

Assessing the situation once he finished his rock, Chace decided that Daddy, Papa and Pop-pop’s rocks needing some revisiting.

“more paint mommy, more paint”

Satisfied with his rockin’ (ha. get it?) creations Chace started helping Mommy clean up.

And the finished trio looked like this! I wrapped coloured string around each and tied a simple knot. No girly bows for Daddy! Mommy made a tag, cut it down and punched a hole for the string. Chace was so proud. And so he should be. Mommy is too.

The rocks were a big hit. And Chace’s little boulder was just as successful.

So what about you? Any budding artist stories? Rock painting? Spilled secrets? Dish. You know Chace would have (worst secret keeper ever). But he’s adorable so forgiven before he even opened his mouth.

Happy (belated) Father’s Day to all the dad’s out there.

Chace has a pretty awesome Dad and now Daddy has the rock to prove it.

My last post was all about my rockin’ Carlos Bakery cupcake (yes, THE Cake Boss)! And this post is about the favour I did that brought that little cupcake into my life (oh cupcake, how I miss thee).

My favour was … well favours! At least the tags anyway.

During the cupcake carnage Natalie tied the tags to the suckers and these suckers were done!

Sweet success (get it… chocolate, sweet…. ). Stick to my day job?

Anyway, the shower was a great hit and mama-to-be was very surprised. Here are a few detail shots of the night.

I love how Natalie made ‘wine charms’ out of ribbon that matched the theme. So simple yet so pretty!

… again with the cupcakes…

I loved this pattern on the napkins. I want drapes made out of it. But fabric please. I don’t think paper napkin drapes wash well.

Loved the little onesie garland. They were hung on a ribbon attached to her mantle.

no shower is complete without tissue poofs 😉

This little baby happens to be due on my birthday. I can’t wait to meet him – I’m already one of his biggest fans 😉

Speaking of fans – are you a fan of the favours? If so, you may like these too if you missed them. A sweet tea party themed favour for a special little baby girl.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some chocolate with my name on it. Well, not MY name but know what I mean.

My task? The favours. And what better favour for a tea party than some tea!?

Pink and girly? check. Tea bag holding? check. Tags that look like the end of tea bag? checkity check.

Interested in how I made them? This could serve as invaluable information should you ever find yourself lunching with the Queen or hanging poolside with Wils and Waity Katey KMid. What? It could happen.

First off was the contents. One of my other shower planner gals picked up the tea and chose a nice assortment of a great brand. We wanted to give them a tea that could be as good as what we had at the shower and this variety is Mighty (ha, get it?) high on the yummy-scale.

Each guest got a selection and they were placed in to the pink pillow boxes that you see in the top pic. Which, by the way I found for steal. $5 on clearance at Michaels for a pack of 20! They were in the wedding favour section but I think they work just perfectly to celebrate a pretty baby girl.

Next up was to design and print the label tags. I designed them to look like the ends of tea bags (the part at the end of the string that hangs out of the cup). On them they say “Thank you for attending Julia’s first tea party” along with the shower date.

For those wondering, I designed the tags in my graphic design layout program – Adobe Indesign – but I’m sure you could mock up something similar in your program of choice.

Once printed, I began trimming. First the flat horizontal and vertical cuts on my small cutter. A cutter like this can be found in the scrapbook section of a craft store.

And then I simply freehand cut the little notched edges with regular scissors.

Then I was on to creating the ‘string’ part of the tea bag tag (say that five time fast – tea bag tag. tea bag tag. tea ba…). Knowing that I wanted the ‘string’ to have some life (more on that later) I used pink wire (again, found at the craft store for $5 – deal!). Yes, you read that right, pink! And it must have been meant to be as I got the last roll. Somewhere Molly Ringwald is smiling down. Did I just date myself? “Pretty in Pink”… anyone? <crickets>. Dang.

To create the hole I needed something small. It was at this point I decide that in the future I was going to buy a teeny tiny hole punch because this project marked the 537th time that I wished I had one. But I don’t so I came up with ‘plan B’.

Yes, cardboard and a picture hanging nail. And a very complicated trades skill known as “poking nail through paper in to cardboard”. True story.

After my highly technical hole making I needed to loop my string wire in to the tags.

I used to make jewellery so have some old tools from my teenage bead days. To make a wire loop you:

a) start by bending your wire at a 90° angle (with pliers is easier than by hand)

b) grasp the end with some round nose pliers (like the ones here – I got mine at a bead store) and begin rolling in towards your bended angle (you will be rolling counter clockwise). Only roll the pliers, hold the wire still.

With your loop almost closed you will want to slip in your tag and then tighten up your loop by gently squeezing the outer edges with your pliers.

Now, back to the part about giving the string wire some ‘life’. The reason I used the pink wire was so that my string wire could have some curl and ‘flow’ to it. I didn’t want it to lay flat on the pillow boxes but rather have a little flair – as if the tag had just floated down and landed on the box.

To do that I stole the wooden dowel from one of Chace’s toy flags (What? He was sleeping. I returned it before he woke up) and twisted my wire up the dowel.

Then I slipped the dowel out and pulled/loosened the curl so it wasn’t so rigid and uniform looking.

Then I used a ‘glue dot’ and stuck my tag to the top of my pillow box full of tea. For those not familiar with what a glue dot is you can see some here. They are basically little strong adhesive dots of glue that roll on like tape from a tape runner.

I placed the tag off centre and on an angle.

Then I simply bent my string wire and tucked it in to a corner of the box.

And faster than you could say ‘orange pekoe’ we were done!

The tea party was a great success and everyone seemed to really enjoy the favours.

However, no matter how cute they were, they paled in comparison to the whole reason we were gathering to celebrate…

HOW CUTE IS SHE!? adorable. … squishy, sweet, serene, breathtakingly adorable.

It was a great afternoon.

A few more shots of our fancy little tea party.

As recently mentioned, we’ve been brightening up our main floor. On a recent trip to Home Depot with my toddler in tow the new adorable Disney paint chips from Behr caught my eye. And my little guy Chace’s eye too!

He started pointing out the colours – on repeat (he’s almost 2 1/2 so you can imagine that “green” is a very exciting topic with a high priority rating) and it got me thinking… Free. Excitable to little one. Colours… A perfect match!

So two each of select colours came home with me and now we have a free, new, fun matching game.

I chose very obvious colours – bright green, red etc so that the game was easy and fun for such a young guy. Making him match “persimmon” seemed a bit out of his comfort zone at this stage.

The new match game was an instant hit! “Mommy green mouse, green mouse, two!”. What a sweet sweet sound.

One of my favouritest people in the whole world has a little girl who just turned two on Friday. The birthday girl’s name is Sophia but we all affectionately call her Miss S.

Since Miss S is (theoretically) entering the terrible two’s I thought we might as well teach her how to spell it. What’s better than art that functions as a teaching tool? Not much. (hold your sarcasm please) A teaching tool? Isn’t that like giving a 7 year old boy socks for Christmas rather than the toy he really wanted? Perhaps, but I think Miss S’s mommy will appreciate the gift and plus, a homemade gift shows how much you care. And it’s pretty too! Behold!

Now, I can’t in all conscience take credit for the great concept here. That will have to go to Destri over at The Mother Huddle. Gotta give props where props are due. Check her out. That girl’s got some mad skillz.

Anyway, first step was to find a stencil. I was thinking of doing a shape – butterfly, flower etc. but just was so in love with the alphabet that I had to go that route.

Next I grabbed a frame. Okay, question. Why do they sell white frames with off-white matts? Don’t they know that clashes and is highly annoying? Perhaps that is why this frame, instead of coming with the typical smiling family comes with this depressed looking chick. What’s her problem anyway?

So I decided to spray both the frame AND matt while spraying the stencil. Yes, I decided to spray the matt. Why not? I wasn’t going to use it as is so worst case, I ruined it. But guess what, I didn’t. (yay for trying something new and it working on the first try).

After those all dried the next step was to find some paper to go in behind the letters. I dove into my scrap booking paper stash and came up with this bright (hopefully toddler loving) palette.

And then because I am too lazy to cut squares (which would totally work) I used my circle punch and went to town.

Happy with my colours I started to lay them out over the letters. I laid them out face up and then simply flipped each colour over (these are the backs of each piece – the paper is double sided) and taped them all in place. Here is what it looked like at this point.

Now see that pesky hook/hole at top that messed up my chances of having this fit perfectly in the space created by the matt? My first thought was to trim that off and mount it on white paper. But as we all know, no white is created equal so it looked awful. Ummm, no thanks. So, a new solution was born – hence moving it all up and adding a cheery strip at bottom. Which, when it was all said and done, I think I prefer. Yay for happy accidents.

So there you go. A personal DIY gift that is functional, fun, easy and heartfelt.

HAPPY 2nd BIRTHDAY MISS S!