How-To-Tuesday: Paper Flag Banner

For Razz and Shrimpie’s Birthday Party, I wanted one of those pennent-flag-banner type thingies that are just too cute.  Since I have a lot of paper lying around, I decided I would do it myself instead of buying one.

First, decide on the color / theme and find 12×12 paper that fits that scheme.  Depending on how many letters, decide how many 12×12 sheets you need.  The way I did it, each 12×12 sheet made 6 flags.  There are other ways, but I thought this was more efficient (SAVE for MEXICO – running joke with my family b/c we are all trying to limit our expenses so we can all go to Mexico for a family reunion).

Because I’m a dork and had no ruler (a scrapper with no ruler, what-what???), here’s how I did measurements to create the flag.

Fold it in half:

Fold it in half again, making a square.  Don’t fold too hard so you won’t get harsh lines on your end result.

Fold it into quarters:

Get something with a straight edge and draw a diagonal line from far left corner to first corner of the 1^st quarter edge.  Now, if you have a ruler, you can go straight to this step after folding in half.  Just mark every 3 inches.  So, you would mark, it at 3”, 6” and 9” then draw the diagonal lines:

It should look like this when done (it was so hard to see the pencil lines so I edited the photo and darkened the lines and also put the markers for 3”, 6” and 9”):

 

Cut along the triangles and then the ones that are on the fold (diamond shape), cut through the center:

 

To create the circles, I actually had a circle cutter with a setting on 3 for diameter.  I’m sure you can use any round thing, trace and cut.

I wrote the letters freehand using a big Sharpie – you can use stickers, stencils, Sizzix, Cricut, etc.

To make the circles “POP”, I ran the edges along ink from a stamp pad.

 

To make them pop even more, I mounted them on using the foam mounting squares.

 

Fold the backs a little at the top, maybe a quarter of an inch.  That’s where you’re going to put the string.  The string I used was just kitchen twine I had lying around.

Assemble your letters backwards!  Ha, I learned this the hard way!!!  I started spelling out “HAP” moving left to right hot gluing backwards and then I looked and it say PAH!  Oops.

So, I made sure to stack my letters spelling HAPPY BIRTHDAY Backwards ie:  YADHTRIB  YPPAH for one flag and then NICA & SHRIMPIE flag was stacked as:  EIPMIRHS & ACIN.

You can also just glue/string everything and put all the letters later…Up to you…or glue it in a different fashion…whatever works 🙂

Make sure you have enough slack on both ends to tie it wherever you need to tie it.  I spaced the letters about a quarter of an inch and the words about 3 inches…voila!

PS – I have a ruler now. Clearance for $0.29….yeah bossss….!!!  SAVE FOR MEXICO!

WW: {red velvet} Cake Poppers – Take 2…3 years later

It’s been over 3 years since my first and last attempt at making cake pops/cupcake pops and the likes (pic on left). I made them for Razz’ 2nd Birthday party…Well, 3 years and 2 moves later – out of state nonetheless – I tried again!  So, the moves made it inevitable that I would lose one of my molds (or maybe it’s still packed in some box somewhere)…the one that actually makes the cupcake bottom and the only ones I can find are too big, but we didn’t roll our balls out big enough this time around (wait, that sounded weird).  Anyway, so we didn’t make cupcake pops this time and just made a few cakepops (the ones on a stick) and the rest as cakepoppers / cake pop bites or whatever you want to call them.  Recipe used was by none other than Miss Bakerella.

They turned out quite yum, but weren’t as solid and I know that’s probably because I only used 3/4 of the cream cheese frosting. I held off using the whole thing b/c I recall them being really sweet the last time I did this. I think now, it was probably the chocolate I used the last time. I used the Wilton Candy Wafers (pretty thick and hard to handle, if you ask me) last time and this time I used a grocery store brand like Bakerella and stuck to the chocolate and white chocolate colors. Wilton is cool though b/c they already come in such great colors. I tried using it again last night – orange – still too thick. I guess I could figure out a way to thin it out, but I had 3 very eager girls ready to sprinkle and decorate away! Maybe I’ll just go ahead and add food coloring to the white store brand chocloate or figure out a way to thin out the Wilton ones…I heard you can use shortening or something.

Anyway, I figured I’d used WordPress’ cool gallery feature to show our pics of our cake-popping adventure 🙂 You can hover over the pictures to see the captions or you can click and it will bring you to the gallery itself.

Cakeball mix and Bakerella’s web recipe on the iPad….

She wouldn’t stop whining/crying until she could see what I was doing.

BEST Shrimpie pic ever…b/c I wouldn’t let her have a cakeball

Beans helping roll cakeballs…Shrimp before and after having one…Razz was still being Sleeping Beauty.

Yup, she got her cakeball

mmm…cakeballs

Finished products w/my girls 🙂

 

 

I also bought this puppy, but ended up not using it because I felt like it was cheating and the instruction manual had a lot of typos. I don’t know why that bothered me so much b/c it’s not like I’m perfect. I guess it’s because it’s a mass produced product and things like that should be looked upon more closely…especially for those who actually need to follow the instructions!

 

I just feel it necessary to post this pic on it’s own…it cracks me up each time I see it! Beans showing that she’s helping roll the cakeballs and Shrimpie realizing it was CAAAAAAAAAAAAKE and I wasn’t letting her have any…

BEST Shrimpie pic ever…b/c I wouldn’t let her have a cakeball

 
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for more wordful wednesdays, head over to angie’s blog!

WW: Bean’s 100 Days of School

This past Monday, January 30th, Beans had her 100th Day of School. What the heck? Already? I can’t believe how fast time flies. Didn’t I just give birth to this girl???

Anyway, the kids were asked to bring in 100 “somethings”. 100 m&ms, 100 skittles, 100 paperclips, 100 popsicle sticks, etc. At first, we were going to make a necklace w/100 beads…Beans didn’t want to do that. So I suggested a house made out of popsicle sticks…she didn’t want that either. Then, thought about making “pasta art” (faces or people or things or shapes glued onto poster board with 100 pieces of pasta). She wanted to do that, but somehow, pDaddy convinced her to do the popsicle stick thing…Maybe because instead of a “house”, he said “castle”. Castle-schmastle.

Anyway, here it is, our castle made out of 100 popsicle sticks 🙂

It was actually 103, but then again, pDaddy said “well, some aren’t whole pieces. We had to trim a few.” Still, I just randomly took off 3. I didn’t know if they were going to take turns presenting and practicing their counting throughout the week (note: submitted on Monday, back home on Wednesday). I was so happy to see pDaddy so involved w/helping her build this 😉 Now, we’ve set the bar pretty high for her future projects and her sisters’ 100 Day Projects. Crap…

Anywho…She said her classmates all loved it and we think it turned out great, but apparently, her teacher didn’t say much about it?!? I can’t believe it came home already…I thought there would be some kind of display…maybe keep them out until parent-teacher conferences? Whatevs. I’m still trying to read her teacher and I really can’t. Can’t say I blame her though. She was a last minute addition to the staff.

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For more Wordful Wednesday entries and to add your own, check out Angie’s Blog over at sevenclowncircus.com

PS: hahah! I just noticed her drawbridge-door looks like it’s giving the finger! oopsies…

WW: Father’s Day Edition

Here are the cards the girls made for Father’s Day…
Beans making her card:

Razz making her card:

Finished Products…pretty cute, if I should say so myself.

I’ll have to take a pic of the inside of Razz’ card. I was pretty impressed w/her writing 🙂 I helped her spell and she just wrote away…

So for Father’s Day, it was really all about what pDaddy wanted to do, as it should be. The girls slept over Mama and Papa’s house Saturday night b/c pDaddy and I had datenight…which had us walking in our door past 5am. Waking up Sunday morning was painful, to say the least. I woke up at 11:15, but 6 hours was just not enough after being out all night and having some drinks. Let’s just say I have a 2 shot limit when it comes to Patron. Actually, I wasn’t hung over, it was more on the fact that I just needed more sleep, but we had to get up and at ’em to pick up the girls b/c pDaddy had a bball game at 2:30pm and Mama and Papa had to be somewhere by 5pm. I couldn’t eat and all I wanted to do was nap. Thank goodness the girls napped on the way to the bball game so we all got to nap in the van…After pDaddy’s game, we hung around and played at the playground and then headed home. My Dad came to our house and I took everyone out to eat at our local Chevy’s. I still couldn’t eat much, but finally had more than bread and water in my system.

How did you spend your Father’s Day?

For more Wordful Wednesday entries and to submit your own, head on over to Angie’s at sevenclowncircus.com

What a lazy weekend (again)…

This weekend was spent vegging out on the couch, taking naps, watching TV (olympics, all star game/contests, movies, etc.). We did absotutely NOTHING the WHOLE weekend – even on Valentine’s Day. We planned to go out and take the girls to lunch or the mall, but that just didn’t happen b/c of weird naptimes, cold weather and sheer laziness. We were just all fine and dandy at home. We weren’t even going to bother to attempt going out to dinner so we thought maybe we’d order something nice or cook. We had Burger King. Do we oooooze romance or what? lol

pDaddy and I didn’t get each other anything for Valentine’s Day for the first time ever. No cards, no gifts, no flowers and you know what? We were both totally ok with it. He did keep asking me if I wanted anything b/c he felt bad, but all I kept saying was that I’ve been wanting a Whopper Jr. since Friday. So, that explains the BK for din-din.

Just spending time relaxing with our girls was perfect. We didn’t have to rush to go anywhere or do anything. We just napped when we wanted, watched TV when we wanted, read and played w/the girls and he got his dose of playing is Modern Warfare on PS3. We figured we know we love each other and the girls know it too. Plus, they are still young enough to not know the material aspect of this holiday so why not just greet each other, hug and kiss each other and relax…That is the true meaning of the holiday anyway.

I do have to say that Beans put us to shame though…All week last week, she was asking me to help her make cards. So I did and then she hid them and gave them to us yesterday 🙂 Is she sweet or what? I wish I had all my scrapbooking stuff here instead of my parents’ house – she wanted to go all out and have stamps and glitter and stickers, etc…, but I like these too. Nice and Simple and straight TO and FROM the HEART ❤