Spa Party Fun!

It's party time....oh, it's party time!

My Silhouette blogging buddies and I are at it again with this month's challenge -- Parties!  Not just birthday parties, any kind of party.  If you want to celebrate it, then it qualifies for this month's challenge.  18 participating bloggers let their imaginations run wild with decor, invitations, favors...you name it, we've done it.  The creativity is endless.

But before you get to the clickable link {below} to see the other projects, check out the great Spa Party birthday celebration my best customer threw for her sweet daughter's 7th birthday.

The party was held at a local spa party salon.  My customer loves to add a few extra special touches to her parties so she asked me to recreate a backdrop she found online.

Using foam core board as a base, I covered it with fabric and hot glued the flowers on top.  Each flower was made with cardstock paper {three 12x12 sheets per flower}, curled using a spatula {yup, a kitchen utensil} and glued together.  Lots of work, but worth it in the end, it really turned out beautiful!

Next on the list -- a birthday banner to cover a very large wall in the salon.  I found coordinating black and white stripe scrapbook paper and cut them into banners.  I then cut out the words in hot pink, lime green and lavender. Cute, right!?!

I made a few smaller flowers to create the party table centerpiece.  I really nailed the colors perfectly {smile}!

Birthday bundt cake from a local bakery.

Monogrammed cookies...yummy!

The girls wearing their party gift {personalized spa robes} and sitting at the nail bar.  They were so excited!

What fun!  Thanks so much to the Glenn family for allowing me to assist them in making this party so great and for taking all of the pictures as well.

Click your way to more inspiration below

My Silhouette Challenge buddies and I are all sharing projects on our blogs today, so peruse the projects below for a wealth of Silhouette inspiration!


1. Two Purple Couches // 2. Practically Functional // 3. Crafty Bonds // 4. Dragonfly & Lily Pads // 5. From Whine to Whine // 6. Simply Kelly Designs // 7. unOriginal Mom // 8. MamaSonshine // 9. Get Silvered // 10. Made in a Day // 11. Weekend Craft // 12. Little Blue's Room // 13. The Stamp Doc // 14. The Thinking Closet // 15. Cupcakes&Crowbars // 16. Where The Smiles Have Been // 17. DIYJustCuz // 18. My Paper Craze

Welcome Spring...Garden!

Happy Spring!  At least that's what the calendar says but the weather outside is still making up its mind.  The last few days have been warmer here so I decided to take the opportunity to help my little guy with the garden that he has been asking me to do for him for over a year now.

Let me start by saying -- I really hate dislike the outdoors.  Nothing about being outside with the bugs flying in my face and being hot makes me excited.  I don't mind going for long walks but that's about where my love for nature begins and ends, but I digress.  My son has changed his mama in many ways.  I have found myself doing things that are clearly outside of my comfort zone and gardening is way out!  Telling him that he can't try to grow plants and veggies was simply out of the question so I took to my computer and surfed the web to come up with not only ideas but tips on how to do this DIY style.

The backyard.  Short story -- it is uneven and there are very limited level spaces out there (including the space I chose to use).  The problem.  Hard ground and little time to get this project finished before heading out of town.  The solution.  Get creative and work with it as is!

The little prince watering the marked off area while pretending to be Rescue Squad Mater  :-)

The original plan was to dig out the space to create a level bed so I had my little guy get the hose and begin watering the area to moisten the ground for digging.  Well, that plan changed as soon as I realized how hard the ground was and exactly how much work doing that was going to take.  Time for plan B.

A trip to Walmart and I purchased a roll of weed cover, laid it in the marked off area and then placed his raised bed where we wanted it.

Marked off an area with brick pavers and filled with paver sand and pea gravel.  I used the sand as a base because of the unevenness of the ground.  This area will make it easy for my little guy to water his garden.

Added the flowers to the bed and some garden soil to the back area.  It's beginning to look like a garden!

My son picked out several plants that he liked but we also had vegetables to plant as well.  The raised bed is called 'My First Garden' that we found at Lowes Home Improvement and it's pretty small {2x2}.We quickly realized there would be no room for the veggies so back to the store to buy another bed.

We made a matching pea gravel area on the other side of the new bed and filled the entire back area with garden soil {I plan to add some bulbs back there}.  We planted seeds -- green beans, carrots and cucumbers and he wanted his strawberry plant to go right up front {we have a tomato plant that we'll put in a vertical hanger to grow that way}.  My son insists that we have signs for the veggies so people will know what we have growing, so I'll be working on that soon.

Welcome to our garden!

I found this sign last year in the dollar store.  What a sweet little addition and we lucked out, it even matched the garden beds.

Here is the final product.  As you can see it isn't level {we'll work on fixing that later} but we are so proud of what we accomplished as a family!

His beautiful flowers!

And his fruits & veggies!

His watering can hanging above for easy access.

We even thought about our little bird friends and bought this colorful feeder.  I found a cute bird bath idea on Pinterest that I think we'll incorporate some time in the future.

Garden area DIY and a feeling of complete satisfaction that we did it ourselves!  What a great way to spend our Easter weekend.  It wasn't conventional but it was filled with family and that to me is how you celebrate a holiday!

***PHOTO UPDATE***

Time to show the progress of our little garden.  We are very happy with how well things have progressed so far -- as the saying goes 'so far, so good' {smile}.

April 13, 2013 - the beginning of green beans.  YAY!

April 13, 2013 - we even have cucumbers.

We don't have any carrots yet, but the seed package said 75 days, so we still have some time for those but we are hoping that they are as hearty as the other two.

April 25, 2013 - Look at all the growth! YIPPEE!

April 25, 2013 - they are more than just green bean sprouts now.

April 25, 2013 - the cucumbers have grown too. 

April 25, 2013 - our strawberries look good.

April 25, 2013 - our tomato plant in the Topsy Turvy

April 25, 2013 - Flower bulbs beginning to grow

I have a confession to make -- I'm more excited about this garden than I ever thought I would be.  My son's enthusiasm for growing food we can actually eat has me hoping and praying each day for a good outcome with our garden experiment.  As you can see from the pics, our veggies/fruit are growing well.  I do have some concerns such as spacing of the veggies {too much/too little??}, the depth of the container for the carrots {learned that when they hit the bottom of the container that they stop growing}, and the coloring {white-ish} on the leaves of the cucumbers, but we plan to see this thing out to the end.

Stay tuned...our next update will be a post showing us harvesting some good veggies and fruit {we pray!}


Where we like to party!