Domesticated Me: Touch and Feel

And.... we're back. Hopefully for more than just once a quarter this time. ;)

With my original intention to use this blog as a way to share all things creative, innovative, resourceful or my attempts at such, here is my latest endeavor... creative maybe, but this wasn't my best budget conscious project. :)

Eli turned 1 on June 15th, 2012. I wanted his party to be something that would be meaningful to HIM and not just to me, so after months of having no idea what to do.. (what IS meaningful to a 1 year old anyway?) I settled on a "Touch and Feel" themed party. We read a lot in our house, and the touch and feel books have always been his favorite. In addition, like most one year olds, ANYTHING he can touch OR feel, is exciting. :)

Here are some of the things I did:

Invitations:

I decided to go with bright, basic, mainly primary colors (red, yellow and blue) to tie it all together. One day on one of our regular walks to the park, I put a bright red shirt on him, and stopped by the next door grocery store and bought a blue helium balloon. (Actually, they gave it to me for free... SCORE!) We had fun taking several fun shots at the park:

But I finally decided on this as my favorite... took it home and doctored it a little in Photoshop and in Microsoft Publisher (Thanks Laura Harper for the suggestion!)

(If anyone wants to stalk us or steal anything from us, this is NOT our current address so you can forget about it!)

From there:
I printed several copies at costco, and set to work, cutting it to pieces.

I started by cutting a large hole in the middle of the balloon, and then cutting out three ways from there, leaving about 1/2 cm around the edge of the balloon. This way I could cut without bending the picture too much.

Next I used a black marker to trace around the balloon to get rid of the white (not perfectly cut) edges and blend the picture back together:

Then I took several blue balloons, similarly colored to the one in the picture, and cut them in half along the seam:

Then I cut off the bottom, leaving just enough of the base to be able to secure behind the picture:

Then I took a small chunk of regular batting, and placed it in the pocket of the balloon: You could probably glue it to secure it there, but I didn't want to add one more step :)

Then I placed the balloon/batting in the hole I had cut from the picture.I think I was just lucky that it fit as well as it did!

I decided to use yellow cardstock as my background, since I had used bright red and blue on the actual invitation. I cut the cardstock to be slightly larger than the picture on all sides so it would create a nice border.

This, in my opinion, was the trickiest part! I used hot glue around all four edges of the picture. Then, quickly, before the glue dried, I flipped it over, centered it on the yellow cardstock, all the while making sure the balloon stayed in place. (I originally tried to glue the balloon to the back of the invite, but found it wasted WAY too much time and only created more puckers and glue spots anyway). So WITHOUT glueing the balloon to the invite, I tried to make sure all of the edges were even, and the balloon did not stick up above the invite onto the cardstock.

When it was done correctly, (trust me there were several mess ups :)) it ended up looking like this:

Last step: I bought some cheap blue ribbon to match the balloons. I cut the strands about 6 inches (total estimate) long, tied a knot in the center, ripped each side into several thinner strands, and curled them with scissors. Using the knot in the center, I hot glued the curly ribbon right below my balloon and...

VOILA! My completed "touch and feel" birthday invites!

Of course the sad thing is, as happy as I was with how they turned out, I have never really been able to enjoy them since. I was so morning sick while I was making them that I just get nauseated every time I look at one now. :) Oh well, we'll keep one in the scrapbook anyway. :)

For the actual party, I decided to do all kinds of "finger foods" to follow the touch and feel theme:

This included mini eggrolls (I learned how to make them from the fabulous Windelyn Spears)

Rice crispie treats (used cake pop dowels from walmart and blue ribbon... the chocolate is just melted chocolate chips)

Mini Pigs and Blankets (used little smokies and cut up crescent rolls)
The handsome husband is a bonus :)

Also served were chunks of pineapple, meatballs (in crockpot) recipe courtesy of the amazing Laura Minson, and mini bbq beef sandwiches (we got silver dollar rolls from Harmons and cut them in half).

Also served was red punch with yellow cups (plates and napkins were blue)

...And monkey cupcakes, since Eli's favorite stuffed animal was his monkey. The cupcake stand was an idea I stole off another blog: I bought thick colored posterboard from Walmart, traced different sized circles (using patterns such as my pizza stone, bowls, etc) and used a straight edge to cut them out (HUGE PAIN). The ribbon was hot glued around the edges, conveniently hiding my jagged edges :), and the center was made from full soda cans, wrapped in colored card stock paper and hot glued together. The tiers were hot glued to the soda cans. Don't look too closely, it looks great from a distance but isn't very straight up close. :)

Up close the monkey cupcakes (made from chocolate frosting, nilla wafers and black and white frosting) looked like this:

(This was an idea I stole from a site online and I can't remember what it is anymore!)

Just so he could have the full "touch and feel" experience (as well as the full one year old experience) I made him a full monkey cake that he could enjoy:

.... and I think he did. :)

For decorations I did the following:

1st I took a plain white onesie, (Walmart) and bought some blue fuzzy fabric. I chose a font for a "1" on Microsoft Word, blew it up, traced around it with cardstock (straight off of my computer screen) and cut it out to make a pattern. Then I cut a "1" out of the fuzzy blue fabric, pinned it to the onesie, and sewed it on in the middle. Then I took some iron on letters that said, "I am" and ironed them above the "1". Then we had a photoshoot. (A few days before the party).

Here are some of my favorite results:

Now that we had a touch and feel onesie for the occasion, I took my favorite picture of the shoot, blew it up, cut out the "1" and hot glued it to a posterboard with more of the fuzzy fabric behind the cutout, creating a touch and feel welcome poster for the front door of Eli turning one. Here is what it looked like:

In addition to the front door sign, I chose 5 of Eli's favorite things, took pictures of the ones I didn't already have good shots of, blew up the pictures, and made touch and feel posters out of them as well. The ones I chose were:

1. Dog (He LOVES dogs)
I used a fuzzy material leftover from making stockings last Christmas for the fur:

2. Bathtime
I used bubble wrap to make the bubble bath touch and feel

3.The park
I used actual bark from the playground to make this shot of him at the park touch and feel

4. Monkey (His favorite stuffed animal, and probably my favorite picture)
I used a tan rag to make the monkey's fur

5. Outside (my other favorite picture)
I used some kind of turf material that Otto geniusly found at Walmart to create the grass:

All together the display looked like this:

The pictures are now up in Eli's room, where he can play with the touch and feel pictures anytime he wants!

Other touch and feel decorations used were:

This Happy Birthday Sign I made out of cut up white card stock, and pieces of all kinds of things I had around the house from tin foil to tissue paper to fabric to cotton balls, to ribbons to raffia, and I strung it all together with twine:

I bought a plastic red tablecloth at the dollar store and hot glued red yellow and blue pom poms to make a touch and feel tablecloth:

I put out on display some of Eli's favorite touch and feel books (with the idea that people could read them to him if he wanted... but he was always much too busy :))

I put on display a "matching" game that I grew up playing (thanks mom for lending it to me!) with different textured fabrics to match up:

I made red, yellow and blue pom poms out of tissue paper to hang from the ceiling:

In hindsight... I needed more tissue paper. But I was too tired to go to the store again. So such as they are... they were still fun. :)

Also on display (but not touch and feel) were his 1-11 month pictures in the chair with Kody bear (my childhood teddy bear) to mark how much he was changing (also displayed on the wall in his bedroom now) along with his baby books, his Elijah letters (paper, wood and idea from wood connection, modge podge and paints from Michaels) and his board for above his crib with this saying that I love: (Vinyl lettering from Vinyl4decor, http://vinyl4decor.com/ and wooden board from the wood connection: http://www.thewoodconnection.com/). (Also the tutorial I used for how to do the distressing was from the wood connection's blog)