Pink Peppermint Blogger

The post I did on DIY marshmallow flowers went over so well that I decided to let the kids play around this weekend with some different approaches to the marshmallow flower. I am a little bit of a control freak when it comes to the kids in the kitchen. They like to look with their hands, sling batter all around, cough all over stuff (you are never going to eat anything produced in my kitchen again, are you? #moreforme). Breathe. Honestly though, this is something they can do with limited supervision. It’s just like a craft project using glue. My two were SO proud of themselves and the flowers they made.  They even came up with some new things to try!

I scored some Jett-Puffed pink heart marshmallows and some more of their regular strawberry marshmallows. We played with new combinations, new presentation and even did a few with colored sugar. I think the flower pot is a fun way to display these for a party. I’d love them in a long, skinny trough planter down the center of a party table as well. What a fun centerpiece! Just insert a piece of foam in your pot and arrange your marshmallow flowers. This would also be cute as shown a gift with your message written on a plant marker. OK, I’ll stop.

Here’s our star, the traditional version marshmallow flower. I decided to pink the leaves to add a little whimsy.

And here’s the same flower topped with a marshmallow heart.

You just draw a circle with the cookie icing to leave a space in the center, dip it in the nonpareils, and then insert the stick all the way through the top of the marshmallow flower and slightly into the heart marshmallow on top. Cute, no? My six-year-old came up with this next version.

It actually looks really cute with a single heart or with two, three or four heart marshmallows to a stick. It’s especially cute to use these for variety if you are doing an arrangement in a pot. Next, we played with some colored sugar, drawing a heart with the cookie icing and then dipping the marshmallow into the sugar. These are a cute and easy as individually-wrapped add-ons to a gift or classroom exchange card.

Finally, and since it was Super Bowl Sunday, (any excuse to make sweets, right?) I made a recipe of brownies. I did mine in a 9×13 glass dish because I wanted more surface area to play with using the various cookie cutter shapes in case there was a learning curve. I bought a pack of cute plastic Valentine’s cookie cutters from the Target Dollar Bins. ♥

I had great luck cutting perfect little heart-shaped brownies. I think I’ll double my recipe to make them thicker and give our teachers each a big fat stack of these–probably with a note about “brownie points,” an idea I got from Lauren McKinsey, who has some super cute printables to that effect. Genius!

How cute did they turn out with the little arrow pick? Right through the heart! Those are actually the tulip appetizer picks from Pick On Us. I think they look like arrows though and even recommended them in a party plan for an archery-themed birthday! You can get 50 of them for $5. The bad news is I BELIEVE their minimum order is $25, but if you do a lot of entertaining, they have enough varieties of adorable appetizer picks, that you can stock up with cute, colorful and even themed food picks to last you for a while. I’m still working on using the ones I bought when hosting Lauren’s Boy Meets World Sip and See. It’s a really simple way to add to your food presentation, I think.

That’s all I have for now. I hope you all give these a try. Super fun and totally, TOTALLY easy. Don’t forget to check out my free Valentine’s printables for classroom exchanges! Love is in the air!

I’m a bit on pink and red overload with Valentine’s. I’ve been wanting to create some new artwork. Decided I’d try something that feels sort of light and airy in comparison to all the heavy, saturated color we see this time of year. When I was reminded of these candy airplanes (instructions here) on Pinterest, it went perfectly with a theme I’d been batting around in my head, “Love is in the Air!” I decided I’d create a free printable collection along these lines in which the little candy airplane would make an appearance.

Here’s what I used, in specific, for my airplanes:

• Fruit Stripe Gum (still comes in an old-school pack WITH the white wrapper) and more appealing to kids than cinnamon gum in my opinion
• Red, pink, white or pale blue seamless ponytail holder (so the candy won’t taste all rubber bandy)
• Two cherry lifesavers (my kids would spit the white ones out pronto)
• One roll of Smarties
• Tiny Valentine’s stickers (these shown were 2/$1 at Walgreen’s)

Note: If you or your school is opposed to gum for kids this age, you can use a pack of Pez just as well (I’m thinking that an AirHead or mini Laffy Taffy might also work in the gum’s stead). There’s just no pretty white surface to sticker.

These cutie little airplanes fit perfectly into a 4 x 4 inch zipper bag (check your craft store’s jewelry section).  I’ve provided a sweetie pie printable bag topper which prints two to a page on a 4×6. There’s also a version with six to a letter page included. It’s very hard to tell from my fab photog, but the background is pale blue with clouds! Just trim in half and score down the middle of the red scallops to fold. Adhere with glue dots or double stick tape. I used some of each since my paper stock has an extra bit of body to it.

I also did a sort of girl and boy version of the flat Valentine’s handout cards–one with a heart balloon and another with the little plane skywriting “Love” in the clouds. Each has a place to write the names in.

I thought the balloon version lent itself well to a candy add-on. So using my rotary fabric cutter (or an Xacto knife), I cut a 3/4″ slit just below the red of the balloon tip and inserted this heart-shaped sucker. Cute, no? I trimmed some of the excess wrapper off to make it less bulky. If you like, you can score this card to fold in half, then seal it with a sticker. These also print on 4×6, but I have included a download for printing three on a letter-sized page as well.

Look at that happy little heart balloon/sucker! I secured the stick to the back of the card with a piece of clear tape.

Finally, available for free download are these sweet toppers. You can punch them with a 2 inch paper punch as shown here and use them as cupcake picks.

The same printable file also works well as straw toppers when using a 1 1/2 inch paper punch. Here, I freehand cut the 3/4″ slits with a my handheld rotary cutter and inserted festive paper drinking straws.

I am pleased as punch with the way these turned out, and I hope you will be too! You can download your free Valentine’s printables below or here. I can’t BELIEVE it’s almost February! Can’t you just smell the love that’s in the air? Or maybe it’s cupcakes. Either way, enjoy!

Valentine Cupcake+Straw Toppers

Airplane Valentine 4×6

Airplane Valentine Letter

Heart Balloon Valentine 4×6

Heart Balloon Valentine Letter

Airplane Bag Toppers 4×6

Airplane Bag Toppers Letter

I’m happy to report that despite the two weeks I had to put this party together, my daughter’s 4^th birthday was a smashing success! We invited some friends over to decorate candy houses.  Here’s the invitation.

I decorated the doors with paper medallions turned wrapped candy and made lollipops out of twisty balloons for the planters.

Inside, we set the scene with a candy house village made from cardboard gift boxes and decorated with candy.

I made the banner using scrapbook paper backed with felt and strung on candy necklaces. It read, “Happy 4^th Sweet Caroline.”

I used these cupcake wrappers topped off with peppermints to hide the hooks we hung it with! It turned out to be one of my favorite little details!

Now, goodness knows I am inclined to try some ridiculous things for party’s sake, but I know my limits. There was no way I was going to attempt to make 20 some odd gingerbread or graham cracker houses to decorate. No. Way. That is precisely the sort of effort that would have me in tears at 2 a.m. and wanting to pull my hair out.  Not gonna do it.

I bought these gable boxes from the bakery section at Michael’s, added a roof and lined the window with yellow tissue paper. Lauren put them together for me, God bless her. She adhered them to 10 inch cake bases decorated with Washi tape in our party colors—radish red, pale pink, lime green and sky blue–and she added silver pipe cleaner trim to the cardboard base. I thought they looked pretty cute even without the candy!  Having never worked with Washi tape before, I was thrilled with its ability to be repositioned and the ease of use. I can’t wait to figure out other party applications!  I ordered mine from leboxboutique on Etsy.

Each kiddo got their own bottle of royal icing, or as we called it Sugar cement.

There was an assortment of candy on each table. I tried to avoid overuse of Christmas colors because my daughter was born on Dec 27, so I try to be sure and make her birthday feel like a separate event. Given the time of year, I was able to find lots of candy in red and green. I added some pink and blue to the mix. We used M&Ms, holiday Lifesavers, pastel Starlight mints, pink and green peppermint sticks, spice drops, sugar wafers in vanilla, strawberry and chocolate, milk chocolate rocks, fruit loops, mini Nilla wafers, marshmallow ropes, lollipops, Hershey bars, gingerbread snowmen and trees, and even some gummy penguins!

Here’s the birthday girl hard at work on her candy house masterpiece!

If I ever host this event again, I’d either buy mini gumdrops or skip them altogether. They were heavy and wanted to slide off before the icing set. I’d also buy more sugar wafers. Lots more! The kids were funny. They’d each chosen their materials and then it was madness if they couldn’t finish that wall, door or rooftop like they’d started it. Here’s some of the kids’ handiwork.

They were all very proud of their work!

After they’d finished their masterpieces (and eaten way too much candy), we put the candy house aside to give them time to set up before our guests left. Then, we broke out the real food.

I am a fool for brunch foods, and since it was early on a Saturday, we did ChicFila chicken minis, sausage balls, pinwheels, mini cinnamon rolls, yogurt covered snowflake pretzels, sweet breads, and fresh fruit. We served coffee and, for the kids, a frothy pink punch made with raspberry sorbet, cranberry juice and gingerale.

Candy bracelet napkin rings!

These cups are my new go-to for beverage service.

Nothing Earth-shattering, but I think they are versatile for any theme, easy to dress up with straws like these I used from Shop Sweet Lulu or a themed cup wrap, and the lids makes them great for kids. It’s also fun to do a straw flag for guests to write their names on so drinks don’t get mixed up.

And then it was time for cupcakes! I ordered half chocolate and half vanilla from a local bakery, Cakes and Candles, and added these adorable fondant toppers from Edible Details. Brittany did an assortment of color combinations based on our party scheme. Love!

It was a great time! Everyone really did seem to have fun, and it made me smile to see how tickled each child was with his/her candy house creation! If you’ve always wanted to host a gingerbread house party but were hesitant to bake or buy all those houses, I highly recommend this fun and easy alternative. Happy 4th Sweet Caroline!

My silly girl’s 4th birthday is coming up on December 27th. Last year I thought I’d be all smart at wait ’til late January to throw her a party. Then, I was sad because I missed out on that lovely January lull with the fresh starts and the getting things accomplished. This year, I’ve decided to go a little early and try to squeeze one in before Christmas. Crazy, I know. We are going to have a candy house party though so pre-holidays seems right. Notice I said “candy house” and not “gingerbread house”. What’s the difference, you ask?

Well, instead of pulling my hair our making my own gingerbread/graham cracker forms or spending a small fortune on store bought ones, we’re making our candy houses using these.

This is a standard gable box with an oval window from your craft store’s cake section. I added the window square and the roof, and ta-da! A naked little house just waiting for a 4-year old to smear it with icing and candy. We are going to mount them on cake boards for the party and for easy transport.

I went to a party years ago where we used cardboard forms, which I found odd at the time. Now, it makes perfect sense to me. It will sit on the counter for two weeks while the kids pick the candy off, and then chunk. Into the trash. Anyhoo, I’ve been busily amassing an assortment of candy and honestly, I’d better get busy on the rest of the party. T-minus five days and counting!

Before I go, I’d love to share a little inspiration with you. Over the Thanksgiving holiday I closed up shop, and my husband and I snuck away for a few days sans kiddos to The Grove Park Inn in Asheville, NC. We recently celebrated our 10th anniversary, and the GPI is where we went on our honeymoon. It is absolutely amazing–this huge stone mass overlooking the most beautiful mountains, enormous stone fireplaces, a state-of-the-art spa. Here was our view from the restaurant on their terrace.

When we last visited it was early November, so we missed the GPI’s Annual National Gingerbread House Competition and Display, now in its 19th year. What luck that we’d timed it right this time!  I was excited about the chance to get some inspiration for materials to use on our own houses. Here are a few of my favorites.

OK. After I saw this one, I had to know what the contest rules were. Entries had to be 75% gingerbread and entirely edible, I believe. Participants were encouraged to get creative with their interpretations.

I loved the Ritz cracker roof on this one. Sweet little birdies!

This tree lot entry was pretty stinking cute, too. There were DOZENS more to see including some pretty amazing entries in the Teen category–an Eiffel Tower and the Despicable Me house. Too cute, and so artful! This year the Grove Park Inn is adding a Grove “Bark” Inn Gingerbread Dog House competition, which is on display now! Just wanted to share this fun with you before you see our house artwork. I am so in awe of bakers and their mad engineering and decorating skills.

If you’re even in that area during the holidays, you should check it out!

Was this card your favorite? If so, you may have been the winner of the $50 store credit! If you haven’t yet, go check out all of our photo cards, holiday gift tags and stickers here. Heck, we’ll even do coordinating return address labels. They are $10 for the first sheet of 20 and $5 for each additional sheet of the same design. They typically come in squares, but I CAN do circles as long as you don’t mind peeling the backing off before adhering them. Just shoot me an email at info@pinkpeppermintpaper.com or you can leave any special requests in the comment section during checkout.

Also, please note that I will be offering custom color changes for FREE through Sunday, December 4, 2011. So if you have a unique color scheme or are having a hard time matching your photo to a card, I can help!

Thanks to everyone who participated in the giveaway! Congrats to Carol Alford, the winner of a $50 store credit for her comment: “Christmas Plaid is my favorite! Classic, beautiful, and it says “Merry Christmas!”This was her favorite card. At least, I think this was the one Carol meant. I’m sleep-deprived.

At long last, the new Christmas designs are up! Here are a few of my new faves, and it has nothing to do with my adorable kids. Wink, wink. They are your adorable kids too! Some of the beautiful shots were submitted by you for the holiday card photo contest!

These first two are by Sweet Magnolia Photography in the Jackson area.

This next one is by Ashley Warren Studios in Birmingham. Love!

So, which one’s your favorite? This is just a VERY small sampling of what’s in store now. Go here and check out all our card designs. Come back here, tell us which one is your fave, and we’ll enter you to win! That’s right. In the giving spirit of the Season, one lucky winner will be drawn at random to win a $50 store credit to Pink Peppermint Paper! One comment per person ON THE BLOG only {feel free to comment all over the place but this is the only place I’m counting} before midnight CST November 30, 2011. The BIG winner will be announced later this week!  Good luck, and Happy Holidays!

Last weekend some friends and I threw a sip and see for our neighbor, Christy, and her new baby boy, Bennett. Fall is her favorite time of year and since they both share October as their birthday month, I thought a Little Pumpkin theme would be fun! Here’s a sample of the invitation.

I whipped up this quick letter “b” wreath for baby Bennett’s debut. It was super easy to make with a letter form, a hot glue gun and some Spanish moss.

We had the party at our neighbor Sherry’s house. She made this fabulous diaper cake to be used as the centerpiece on the main buffet table. We used burlap and orange throughout.

Polka dot paper pumpkin lanterns hung above the table,

and a double-sided burlap banner reading “Welcome Bennett” hung in the archway.

The silverware came right out of the pumpkin patch!

In keeping with our Fall theme, we went mostly with warm and savory dishes. There were lots of hot dips on hand. We also had a great hot apple cider.

There were some tasty sweets on hand too like these pumpkin-themed petit fours and some crazy good pumpkin pie dip from Pinterest served with apple slices and graham crackers. Look it up. Seriously.

There’s the little pumpkin now! Sweet baby. So glad you’re here, Baby Bennett!

Another year has flown past and my first born is now six! This year was a big deal for us. We’ve always had birthday celebrations at home, but the birthday boy requested we have his party at a local bouncy house place, and after the pressure from last year of styling the party compounded with getting the house in order for entertaining, I readily gave in. I am used to having days (if I want or need) to hang things and play around with placement of party decor, but this year I’d have only 30 minutes. While I was making the decorations, I just kept repeating it to myself. 30 minutes. 30 minutes.

He wanted an Angry Birds party like his cousin had. Since there is not much available in the way of licensed partyware, I knew we’d be making a lot of it ourselves. I think this is what helped to make the party seem special and one-of-a-kind even though we were going the whole party package route. Here’s the invitation we used. You may know that I’m a sucker for a clever verse. This may be one of my favorites!

“Just who are these birds and why are they sore?

‘Cause those pigs stole their eggs! It’s happened before.

Revenge is a dish best served cold.

Come celebrate! Reese is turning six years old!”

The entry to the bouncy place is a little hard to pick out, so we marked the doorway with these mylar balloons, AB-style. I thought these might hold up better outside than the standard latex ones.

There are two party rooms and two gift tables, so we made sure everyone knew where to go with these Angry Birds balloons I made using these downloadable templates from The Party Animal.

The balloons were weighted with a nest full of golden eggs being guarded by the blue Angry Bird.

I made this sign for the party room with a small poster I scored at Dollar Tree.

We used bright Angry Birds colors for the paper plates chargers, napkins and drinks. The food went on smaller clear plates to let the birds’ and pig faces show through.

Polka dot napkins were done up Angry Birds-style with googly eyes, furrowed brows, and even a few pig noses.

Here’s the birthday boy’s special seat with a crown like the pig king’s.

At each place there was also a pair of Angry Bird or Pig glasses.

These turned out hilarious. The kids thought so too!

The party was mid-afternoon so we kept the food light, serving chicken nuggets, fruit skewers and these grody giant gummy fried eggs, the surprise hit of the party!

The fruit was skewered on these funny little guys.

They look more menacing in numbers, no?

Here’s our “Happy Angry Birdsday” banner above the main table.

The party table was set up with scenes from the game.

Here’s the awesome cake made by Kristen of Crumb Gourmet in Jackson.

There’s my big boy making his birthday wish. We found him a shirt with the black Angry Bird on it that said, “I’m the bomb!” Hehe. Angry Birds humor.

These were the other surprise hit of the day–WalMart bouncy balls that I drew Angry Birds faces on. We turned them loose in the jump area with these, and the kids were all over them!

We had an assortment of favors in these Angry Birds bags, which were also made with The Party Animal’s templates and printed on labels for easy application.

Each had some combination of the following favors included candy tubes filled with gumballs or mini gumball Angry Bird eggs, water bomb slingshots, wind-up toucans, stickers and golden egg silly putty. They also each got to take home their pair of bird of pig glasses.

Happy Angry Birdsday to my favorite 6-year-old!

If you like what you see here, check out this summertime Angry Birds Splash Party!

Thought I’d share some inspiration for Halloween this year. I think I shared these, but maybe not on the blog so here goes. First up was a sweet and simple kid’s party craft found here. I was in charge of a craft for my son’s classroom “harvest” party last year. We made these with 4- and 5-year olds, but I really think it works for anywhere from age 2 and up.

Aren’t they cute?

Then, I decided to try carving personalized pumpkins for the kiddos. Here’s how they turned out!

Want to make your own templates? Download a happy face pumpkin name stencil or a  creepy face pumpkin name stencil here.

You can use a pencil to draw your own kiddo’s name into the smile. Just make sure you don’t transfer the lines that attach the letters to the smile. Here’s what my template looked like.

I’m attempting some this weekend for my sister’s kids using reusable craft pumpkins. Wish me luck!

Back in late summer when football season was threatening, a group of my pledge sisters started working on a game date for us too rendezvous in Tuscaloosa. We thought it might be fun to have a little tailgate reunion and cheer on The University of Alabama Crimson Tide. It had been FAR too long since we’d all seen one another. We picked a few dates, polled everyone on Facebook and went with the weekend that the most people could come. It just so happened to be Homecoming Week at the Capstone!

I designed these invitations, which were emailed out to help us get a count for the tailgate tent we rented, as well as for food and drink.

The girls asked me to whip up some quick decorations for game day. I knew I wanted to try some paper pennants, but I was stuck on what to put them in that would be tall and skinny enough to support the sticks without tipping over. They had to be inexpensive, easy to carry, easy to toss and kid-friendly. Here’s what I came up with!

You will laugh when I tell you what these are. Last week I had to make a batch of HUGE oatmeal cookies for a fundraiser at my husband’s office. I had two small oatmeal containers left over. I wrapped them in houndstooth wrapping paper, added a pop of red with some leftover satin ribbon, and finished them off with some red thumbtacks I had lying around. Not bad, huh?

To give each arrangement some weight {and to keep everyone from having dragon breath}, I filled the containers with red and white peppermints. It really helped to keep the pennants in place, which was good because it was so windy out there! Which brings me to why these photos are taken on my back patio and not at the tailgate tent. We got stuck in game day traffic and were running late. In addition to the wind, it was hot, I was flustered, in need of beverage,  and I had my kids with me. Need I say more?

Here’s the finished product.

I made the pennants with scrapbook paper that I cut with my plotter and glued on super inexpensive dowels that I bought long and cut to varying lengths.

I added these paper mache elephants from the Michael’s dollar bin that I was hoarding for a rainy day.

Here’s an actual photo from the day of. I found a TON of different team-related downloadable coloring pages for the kids. There were even versions with practice handwriting lines where the kids could write “Roll Tide” over and over. I think they are readily available via Google search for any team and you can customize the wording on many of them. If I had it to do over again, I’d have brought clip boards or something hard they could each have colored on as surface area was at a minimum.I also made some little stickers for the kids to wear.

RTR! That’s “Roll Tide Roll” for the uninitiated.

We had a great time visiting and catching up, seeing each other children, many for the first time. I was struck by how much and how little everything had changed. Parts of campus and other places I spent so many hours all those years ago were virtually unrecognizable. And then I met up with a great group of friends who were all just as I had remembered them.

That’s me in the middle with two of them!