Personalize a Backpack & Lunchbox

So, I'm finally getting around to telling you about my SCORE!!! for my daughter's school backpack and lunch bag. DownEast had [and maybe still has so go RUN now if you need something] piles of Pottery Barn gear at ridiculous low prices. (read to the end to see the unbelievable price I paid!) The catch is they're already monogrammed ... hmmm ... so what good is a steal if your child's name isn't Madison, Cami, Aidan or whoever else is hangin' out on the shelves? You PATCH IT!!

Yup, I tried to pick off the monogram ... which might work for you, but I was worried about the reverse/inside plastic lining starting to rip.

So, I went to plan B. I Etsy'd and googled for embroidered applique and found a gazillion adorable shops selling any design you could imagine. Super cute styles and designer fabrics. Unfortunately for me, I had very little time left before school was to begin, so I had fewer store options. Tip: plan ahead or find someone local, as few shops could mail me an iron-on applique quickly. Still, with my limited choices/sizing I think they turned out cute. A friend had her son's monogram embroidered locally on a sewn-on patch. In the end my iron-ons didn't adhere perfectly in every spot, so I also dabbed on a little super glue to be safe!  :-)

Now, can you believe, I paid less than $7 for the backpack and lunch bag combined!!! Then about $5 including shipping for my two appliques! Pottery Barn Fairfax collection is $48 retail plus $13 monogramming!

Go stock up if you have a DownEast near you. Backpacks, luggage & lunch bags in loads of styles!!

Adding an Inspirational Magnet to a Vase

My lovely family bought me a beautiful fresh flower bouquet the other day. I put them in a gorgeous vase and embellished it with one of the magnets from my Simply Inspiring collection at Hallmark:

It looked lovely on our kitchen island, but when I finally got around to taking pics for you ... well half the flowers had passed on ...  Here's my vase with the remaining stems now moved to my office:

But the neat thing is I figured out how to embellish a glass vase! I put one heavy duty magnet on the inside of the vase and stuck another one to it through the glass! Then my pretty, although less powerful, magnet stuck to it!!

A couple years ago I posted a different magnet/vase idea:

"Messy Boy Party" Part 3: Ice Cream Cake!

If you've followed my previous two posts, you knew what was coming. The "cake" portion of the Messy Boy Party that I threw for my son's 4th birthday.

Part 1: The Messy Theme and Part 2: The Games] I made an ice cream cake and here's the finished product:

Here's how it looked before the boys helped decorate it:  :-)

That was part of the entertainment! Each little guy picked something from the topping bar and they took turns decorating the birthday cake!

They chose blue sugar, lots of assorted sprinkles and some generous dumpings of chocolate and caramel sauces... most of which landed on the table cloth! But they did love participating and, after all, this was a "Messy Boy Party!"

Here's how I made the cake. Which happened to be my first homemade ice cream cake, but I think first of many to come!!  :-)  It's my version of this recipe from allrecipes.com (thank you ARVILLALAR)

Crust of 25 crushed Oreo cookies with 1/4 cup melted butter. I used low-fat Oreos but not sure of the logic in that. :-) Pressed into bottom of my 9 inch springform pan. Standing around the rim are 10 chocolate covered graham cracker/cookies.

Cover crust with almost a jar (or maybe a whole jar next time!) of hot fudge topping. Nuke it first for easy pouring. Pop in the freezer for 15 minutes:

Soften 1 1/2 quarts of chocolate ice cream. I used Edy's Limited Edition S'mores flavor, so the lumps you see are mini marshmallows. Pick a flava flav you like. (I guess my Edy's was VERY melted because it seeped behind the grahams and that's the line you see from the outside. It doesn't bother me, but if you don't want that, don't soften too much, just enough to mush it into a layer.):

Spread out evenly and pop back into the freezer for 30 minutes:

Your second layer of ice cream is scoops. I used Target's Cookies & Cream, scooped using a medium size scooper. It's from Pampered Chef and I always use it to when filling muffin and cupcake batters. I could have squeezed my scoops closer together. I didn't like seeing any gaps, so I "infilled" with all the Cookies & Cream that had melted while scooping the balls:

Freeze 4 hours or overnight. Top with anything and everything you find worthy! About the only things we didn't top ours with were the whipped cream and cherries mentioned in the original recipe! And here is one slice of heavenly Chocolate Ice Cream Cake melting in the August heat:

Ours tasted VERY sweet, so slice thin! With those tall grahams, next time I'll double the ice cream quantities, too! Hmmm, do I need another occasion to make my second Ice Cream Cake???? How about 'Just Finished First Week of School Occasion?!"

"Messy Boy Party" Part 2: Let the GAMES begin!!!

WooHoo!!! Messy Boy Party is all about the games!!!

My previous post was about my son's 4th birthday party, a Messy Boy Party to be exact. This post is all the fun messy games!

We started out loooooow on the messiness scale. None of the boys are super messies, so we didn't get too far to the top of the scale either. Here's our first game - The Jello Toss:

We had an odd number of guests, so instead of tossing to each other, we used a traditional bull's eye target on the ground ... which was covered with heavy duty tarp to contain the spillage. They took turn throwing jello jiggler squares at the target, trying for the most points total. 

Note: none of our games had "winners." The boys were going for total points in order to win - as a group - the chance to uncover the secret prizes. More on that later. I had my hubby man the chalkboard scoreboard and "tally" up at the end of each game. Remember, these are (mostly) 4 year olds, so he was free to score at whim as they eagerly awaited the results after each game! Adorable.

Next up was the Spaghetti Bowl Relay:

The kiddos lined up across the tarp. One full bowl of noodles (cooked and drizzled with olive oil) at one end, and an empty bowl at the other. They had to pass the spaghetti hands to hands down the line to fill the empty bowl. We had a (pretend) timer and cheered them on to work speedily. Score another hundred points for making it in just under the buzzer!  :-)

Shaving Cream Fight:

OK, no. There was no shaving cream fight. These little guys were way too nice for that!

We simply filled pie tins with the shaving cream and sat them each down to play as they so choose. Now, the funny part was, the boys really didn't get too messy with it!! BUT, birthday boy's sister and one of the guest's sister who joined in went HOG WILD!! Is this a girl thing? The boys covered some arms, legs, hair, but not a spec of clothing, while the girls covered EVERYTHING!!

The shaving cream play time scored well, but not quite enough for the big prize. So we needed another game to earn points. Since they were asking to get cleaned up, I had the perfect solution – WATER BALLOONS!:

Once again, these sweet boys were too sweet!! They loved throwing them, but mostly just at the grass or rocks!  :-)

Finally, the party boys had scored enough points for the BIG PRIZE!  They went over to the giant bucket and remove the covering sheet ... where they found one giant squirt gun/water blaster for each = WATER FIGHT!!:

NOW they were ready for some serious action! They could clean the remaining shaving cream off each other all they wanted!

After that they were ready for cake! I had made an ice cream cake and the boys were to finish decorating it for me! That'll be in my next post! Then off to the trampoline, then gifts, then a couple more games. Like the Cheerios Face Off:

We buttered their faces, then filled a paper plate with Cheerios. Let them see who could get the most to stick on! Next - TARGET PRACTICE:

Meanwhile, the 2 girls (and 1 boy) had headed back to the tramp. What do you think they soon asked for? MORE SHAVING CREAM!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Pretty soon everyone was back on the tramp, slipping, sliding, spraying, running and jumping!

After most of the messy shaving cream had evaporated or been wiped off, they jumped in the pool!

Happy, giggly, little boys = successful party!  :-)

Please, share your fun game ideas in the comments so this post will be a good resource for others wanting to do a "Messy Party" theme for their event!
Next time: the ICE CREAM BIRTHDAY CAKE and the recipe so you can make one, too!