Cupcake Pallozza!

Today is the final day of prep for little miss Haleys birthday party! We have the place, the invites sent, and the goody bags ready! The last step is….THE CAKE!!!


Now anyone who knows me knows I am a birthday cake snob! I love to have the most original and fun cakes for my kids parties and have a GREAT lady who makes them for me.

(She doesn’t have a website but if you are in the Atlanta area and want her info let me know! )

However this year the budget is VERY tight and even though my cake lady would have given me a great deal I decided it would be better to attempt to make them myself. Usually before I call her about a party I search the internet for cake ideas, email her the pictures, and end up with cakes that looks like THIS:

YES that is Spiderman climbing up the cake!!!

So I searched the internet for ideas and came across:

HERE

HERE

HERE

HERE

I can do THAT…right?????

I got my cake mix and icing for about $0.40 each so that saved a good deal of money! I them purchased the following:

Tinkerbelle cupcake liners $2.00
Pink Sprinkles $2.00
Wilton 10 color pack (a bit of a splurge but I have been wanting these and they will last FOREVER!) $10.00

Fondant Items:
Marshmallows $0.89
2lb powder sugar $1.20


So total spent is $18.00 (including my lifetime supply of color)

Now I decided to venture into Homemade Fondant thanks to

HERE is her SUPER easy recipe!

I will update as I go but here are the first pictures…fondant is DONE!

I asked him to smile and got THIS.....

For the record we have owned this sifter thing since we got married 7 years ago...and today is the FIRST time I have used it!

Is it just me or does she look older...{{crying}}

Next while hubby made…

And what happens when you have too many cupcakes and left over fondant…

and don't forget Quality Control

So the GRAND total was $6.oo for over 30 super cute custom cupcakes! (since I didn't end up using the $2 sprinkles)

Don't forget! If you are alreayd a follower all comments count towards an entry to win a birthday prize pack complete with Tink Necklace, Tutu, and a FREE custom invite design by Amber!

DIY No Sew TuTu's

I am counting down the days till my sweet baby girl turns 4! I have already posted about the party plans and how to make a custom invite here but NOW I am going to finish the week with how to…

Make Tinkerbelle Necklaces

Make No Sew TuTu’s

Make Tinkerbelle Cupcakes

AND THEN

On Saturday I will be giving away a Tinkerbelle Necklace, a no sew Tutu AND a custom invitation (or card) design by Amber! It will be just like you were there! All you have to do is be a follower AND comment! You can leave one comment per post and each comment will count as an entry! Also, if you are a fan of Atl Mom Guide of Facebook then you get ANOTHER entry…just let me know (in the comments) that you are!

Now for today’s post

How to Make {CHEAP} No Sew Tutu’s

Once again I checked Etsy for tutu’s but the cheapest one I could find was $5 and that’s a little pricey (in addition to the necklaces) for a party favor so I ventured off to figure it out for myself! I looked at a bunch of different sites for the general ideas but honestly I kinda had to figure it out for myself in the end. LOTS of trial and error! I did however determine that it takes approx. 1.5 yards of tulle to make a toddler/youth size moderately fluffy tutu. I say moderately fluffy because you could def use MORE and make it MORE fluffy but I thought the fluff was enough for a party favor!

Does that make sense?

Oh and the tulle at my Hobby Lobby was on sale for $1.30 a yard.

You will need:

Tulle (at least 1.5 yards per tutu)

Elastic (I bought elastic at the store. Each pack has a yard in it which makes 2. HOWEVER I also saw someone who used elastic headbands which may be cheaper and would cut out a step!)

scissors

Step 1:

Lay out the tulle and cut it (does not need to be straight line) in 2-4 inch strips twice as long as you want the skirt to be. For example if you want the skirt to me 4 inches long cut it 8…make sense?

Step 2:

I bought the elastic at the fabric store so I had to cut it in half then get it back together. I sewed it together with a needle and thread (if I can do it so can you!) but if you used an elastic headband you could skip this step!

Step 3:

Fold the tulle in half making a loop. You can use as many strips as you want depending on how fluffy you want it.

Step 4:

Put the loop through the middle of the elastic circle then pull the end up through the loop in the tulle.

Step 5:

Repeat…repeat…repeat…repeat!

It took a little getting use to but after a couple I can make one in about 5 minutes (after step 1-2 are done). My favorite part is that it is VERY artistic. You can add or change the lengths to make it look so different and EVERYTHING is fixable! It is IMPOSSIBLE to screw this up…trust me! My hubby cut the yellow tulle WAY to short so I just used it with the orange which he cut a little long (FYI he is no longer helping) to make a very unique looking sun tutu!

Any questions?

Ask away!

OH and the final cost was approx. $2.50 each! Not too shabby!

Be sure to check back tomorrow for Tinkerbelle Cupcakes…and order some Tastefully Simple to support St. Jude Children’s Hospital!

What is the BEST birthday party your kids have been to or had?

DIY {CHEAP} Tinkerbelle Necklaces

I am counting down the days till my sweet baby girl turns 4! I have already posted about the party plans and how to make a custom invite here but NOW I am going to finish the week with how to…


Make Tinkerbelle Necklaces

Make No Sew TuTu’s

Make Tinkerbelle Cupcakes

AND THEN

On Saturday I will be giving away a Tinkerbelle Necklace, a no sew Tutu AND a custom invitation (or card) design by Amber! It will be just like you were there! All you have to do is be a follower AND comment! You can leave one comment per post and each comment will count as an entry! Also, if you are a fan of Atl Mom Guide on Facebook then you get ANOTHER entry…just let me know (in the comments) that you are!

Now for today’s post

How to Make {CHEAP} Party Favor Necklaces

Our theme this year is Tinkerbelle! So I first searched Etsy and Ebay for cute cheap necklaces. Last year I found SUPER cute bottle cap Ariel necklaces for a great price! To bad this year I had no such luck so I was forced got to make them myself.

First I found these on Etsy for $0.80 each!

PLUS since I was ordering 14 of them the seller gave me a discount on shipping…this is one of the GREAT things about Etsy! If you are buying in bulk a lot of sellers will give you some kind of discount. I figure that it doesn’t hurt to ask! The worst they could say is no right?!

Next I had to decide what to make the necklaces out of. Luckily while walking around hobby lobby looking for ribbon for Cora I found THIS:

How perfect!

So I bought 3 rolls for less than $3 each.

I happen to have the circle link things (so professional I know) so I did not have to buy them but I can’t imagine they would be more than $2…maybe?

All I did was add the circle link thing to the charm

Fold the ribbon to fit through the circle

And VOILA!

Total Cost: $1.60 each

I made the ribbon long enough to tie and I think it turned our pretty cute. I may also secure the edges somehow…if you have worked with ribbon before and have a suggestion I would GREATLY appreciate it!

Be sure to check back tomorrow for No Sew TuTu’s!

and order some Tastefully Simple to support St. Judes!

What is something YOU have made for a birthday party?

How to Create an AWESOME {cheap} Birthday Invite

The FUN has begun! My Lou is turning 4 next month which means…birthday planning time! Planning my kids birthday parties has to be one of my favorite things to do HANDS DOWN. Most years I get to talk her into the kind of party I want her to have but this year she is getting to do most some of the deciding. Over the next couple of weeks I am going to be updating on how the planning is going. I considered posting all the party planning information on my party planning page however I REALLY don’t want to open THAT can of worms. Therefore I will post it here then report it over there as well. NOW for this years theme….

::DRUMROLL PLEASE::

TINKERBELLE!

Why Tinkerbelle?

I’m not really sure but that’s what she wanted..and she’s really cute and pretty much gets what she wants..




Last year she had a Little Mermaid pool party at a local indoor pool and that is what she wants to do again. The indoor pool near our house has an AMAZING kids area complete with kids slide, REALLY shallow water and lots of cool water sprayers. The pool ALSO has a 2 story adult water slide and a lazy river of sorts. It is AWESOME anyways but the fact that it cost approx. $2 per kid makes it unbeatable! We had over 20 kids there last year and paid less than $70 INCLUDING adults! Another great thing about the pool party is that you don’t have to plan anything. The kids swim the whole time then come to the party room for food (PB&J) and Cake (cupcakes) and you are DONE! The only things I really have to plan are:

Invitations

Cake

Goody bags

So THAT is what I will be posting about. Obviously this pool is a hot commodity so if you have one in your area be sure to contact them in advance to see when and how to reserve the party room. Haley’s party is in the middle of March and they started taking reservations on February 1st at 8:00am. I showed up at about 5 till and was 3rd in line! I cannot stress the importance of acting fast!

I am currently awaiting my invitations in the mail but let me tell you how I got CUSTOM designed invitations for $3.00!

I wanted to make them myself however I am graphically challenged so I ended up getting help from an AWESOME friend! I first googled “how to make a custom birthday invitation” and ended up on http://www.ehow.com/. From there it instructed me to pick a couple pictures that I went to http://www.bing.com/ and searched their images for Tinkerbelle and water pictures. I found a TON but these are the ones I chose:

I then attempted to cut and paste using http://www.picnik.com/ http://www.gimp.com/ and http://www.photofiltre.com/ (which are all free) but since I had never used them before I was pretty much lost and could not get them to do what I wanted them to….here’s where Amber came in! I sent her these pictures:

And gave her a description of what I wanted it to look liked and she sent me THIS




NOW she did charge me a VERY small fee to do this but I am sure that if you can’t do it yourself you know of someone who could help you too! (TWITTER is GREAT for this!) I then searched the internet (well really my fhttp://www.southernsavers.com/riend’s blogs) for sites that are offering FREE photo prints! Turns out http://www.snapfish.com/ was having a special last week for 50 free prints when you signed up for a new account (which took literally 2 seconds) so I got my 50 4x6 photo cards for the cost of shipping ($3.00) You CANNOT beat that! In the past I have been known to pay $1 EACH for a similar card!


What are some ways you have made/purchased photo cards in the past?

Can I be YOUR Party Planner????

Party planning is something I have always LOVED doing for my kids and friends! I was always complimented on how fun, nice, creative, etc. my parties were which was ALWAYS followed by “you should be a party planner!” OK! So here is my attempt at being a party planner! Have a planned a party for someone besides my close family and friends…no…but I REALLY wants to! That’s where you come in! I can plan a local party (in Atlanta area) or I can plan it for you across the country (yay for e-mail and internet!) I am currently offering the following services:


Invitations

Location

Food

Entertainment

Decorations

Crafts

Games

Pictures

Goodie bags

Are you looking for some hands on help at your party? I can do that too! Have an out of this world idea but not sure how to make it happen? I bet I can! Take a look a my pictures from previous parties and let me know what you think!

Past Parties