Pink Peppermint Blogger

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

Please note these materials are copyrighted by Pink Peppermint Paper, LLC. and are meant for your personal use only. You may not alter, resell or claim as your own any part of these files available here for download. Thanks!

I can think of no other thought, spoken or unspoken, that gets me into more trouble than this one:

“Oh, wouldn’t it be cute…”

Oh, wouldn’t it be cute to tape off and paint a tone-on-tone diamond pattern in the phone booth-sized portion of the bathroom?

Oh, wouldn’t it be cute to make this 36 step recipe that I’ve never tried to take to the party tomorrow?

Oh, wouldn’t it be cute to put those pink sponge rollers in my not yet two-year-old’s hair for Halloween and paint her face with mud mask?

OK, that was cute, but still. That was a year ago, and I’ve just in the last few days gotten her to consent to a clip to keep her hair out of her eyes. Post traumatic stress? Who can really say?

Hello, room mother? What’s that? You say I signed up to help with the Harvest Party? Yes, I’d be happy to contribute. I’ll take the craft and cupcakes!

Oh, wouldn’t it be cute to scour the universe to come up with a super cute craft, one that’s unique AND easy for a bunch of four- and five-yr-olds to complete in 15 minutes time?

And cupcakes. I can totally make those. Nay, BUY those. AND make super festive toppers as an excuse to play with my new cutting apparatus. Drumrolllllllllll, please…

Pardon the picture {because my photos are usually so stellar}. As I mentioned, I have to pick up the cupcakes from the bakery! Halloween/Harvest toppers using the letters they’ve covered so far this year. It’s a sickness, really.

Happy Halloween!

We return for the final installment of our story to find our super friends eyeing the fantastic candy buffet.

A stroke of creative brilliance by no other than, you guessed it, supermom. Super candy with an element of danger and complete with superhero toothbrushes? Seriously, it doesn’t get much cuter than this.

Except for maybe this. Cityscape cake wrappers with hero and villain cake toppers. Complete with flying capes!! How did supermom make this work? Let’s just say, there is nothing Eleanor can’t make happen in her lab. A little fabric stiffener, a cup, a rubber band and BOOM! Perfection.

And yes, these cupcakes were as good as they looked thanks to Kristen of Crumb Gourmet. Check her out even if you are not local to the Jackson area. She also does cookies, and she ships!

There was even one specially designed for the birthday boy and placed on his own mini version of the industrial cupcake stand.

As this super day began to come to a close, guests were asked to fill their bags with goodies from the candy bar. They also grabbed a beginning reader comic book favor. Hero and villain options available, of course.

Truly, no ordinary day indeed. Bravo supermom and Happy 5^th Birthday to our hero, Reese.

Don’t miss the other installments of our heroic adventure.

Tables and balloons

Decorations and food

Invitations

Last week, I shared a little inspiration, both for party and for everyday life. If you missed my last post, check out a few new pictures from party day!

Here is Evie’s therapy room all done up party style. I LOVE the sandcastle bucket favors lining the window sills. How bright and cheerful!  All of those balloons on the ceiling really add to the underwater effect.

And here’s the birthday girl herself all done up in true Little Mermaid style.

I just love how the cake turned out as well as the cupcake with our bath foamies toppers. How fun!

Here’s a closer look. All the colors coordinate so nicely. And the different textures on the back of each topper is super cool. Love it. I hear everyone had a fab time. Thanks so much to Dee for sharing!

You know when you’ve never met someone, but you’ve seen lots of them or read and heard so much about them, that you feel like you know them? Well, I finally got to meet my someone, and I found myself kind of giddy. She’s a bit of a celebrity, you see, especially around these parts. She’s been on the news and in the papers. And she’s having a birthday soon. Her name is Evie. Her Aunt Letitia, and now her sweet mom, Dee, are friends of mine. Her 4th birthday party is this weekend, and I was asked (and honored really) to help.

The inspiration? This newly completed Under the Sea wall mural at their house.

I hear Evie is great in the water, and she loves princesses, so for the party we went with a mermaid theme. Here are the invitations I designed.

Well, wouldn’t you know I was headed to beautiful Orange Beach, Alabama that very next weekend after we spoke, so I dropped by a souvenir shop and picked up some nautilus shells for a party craft, Ariel-style. The kids are going to make their own necklaces.

And in a strange twist of fate, I had grabbed two sets of these foam bath toys months ago on clearance at Target.

They were just so festive that I could think of several “Aha!” uses, and I just loved the color combinations. Like a primate with shiny objects, I couldn’t pass them up. So I bought them, not really knowing when I’d get a chance to use them. Then, Evie’s party came up. Take bath toy, insert sucker stick and there you have it. Cupcake toppers!

I was so tickled to help with the fun. Party planning it just so catching. I love when everyone gets caught up in the enthusiasm.

This is sweet little Evie seeing the new mural in her therapy room for the first time. She and her family are a different kind of inspiration. You see, in addition to the most hypnotic blue-grey eyes and mile-long lashes, Evie has Spinal Muscular Atrophy. They have founded a non-profit called Stop SMA and tirelessly host events to raise money for research.

SMA was something I’d never heard of before it affected the family of someone I knew. It is the number ONE genetic killer of very young children.  There is currently no treatment and no cure, but researchers are close. They estimate that with funding they could find a cure in the next five years. So effected families all over are taking it to the streets to raise awareness and funds for the research to find a cure! Just like most of us, these moms and dads brought home happy, healthy, thriving babies, and then down the road received the SMA diagnosis. Can you imagine?

You can watch this video created by another SMA organization, The Gwendolyn Strong Foundation, for a better understanding. What else can we do? See below. Please vote and share this info with everyone you know.

• You can vote once EVERY DAY from now until September 29th at 5 PM EDT
• Go to VoteForSMA.com, select the Gwendolyn Strong Foundation, enter the two security words, check the Official Rules box, and then click “Vote Now!”
• That’s it! It’s really that simple.
• Don’t forget to add your name to the DailyVoteReminder.com list so you don’t miss a $20K vote.
• And…don’t stop there — SHARE!

Here’s wishing the birthday girl a wonderful deep sea adventure. Happy 4th birthday, Evie!

So my son fell in love with a toy garbage truck at the store over two months before his birthday. When he asked to bring it home, I quipped about how he had a birthday coming up and unknowingly sealed my fate—a garbage truck party. Rubbish! I angled for a heavy machinery theme. Rejected. So I took a deep breath and dug in. Way in. Knee deep in garbage and recycling!

I looked all over the Internet for ideas, and most of what I found was dozens of other moms asking for help throwing a garbage/garbage man/garbage truck party. Awesome. Where to begin?

I started thinking about all the things you would normally find at a party and attempted to trash them up. We set the tone for trash with these invitations I created. Check them out at www.pinkpeppermintpaper.com. I used paper grocery bags to make the envelopes and mailed them with coordinating return address labels that hinted at our theme.

I decided that we could turn our trash into decorations for the party.
I made flowers out of drink boxes and food boxes and used yogurt cups for the centers.

Our house is hard to spot until you’re right on top of it so I rolled our garbage can up to
the street and tied some balloons to it. We supplemented our planters with recycled flowers.

Pennant banners made from old drink pouches and scrapbook paper in our colors—
blue, green and orange—hung above the main table.

It was decorated with layers of vinyl tablecloths used to help create a cheerful garbage route.

Pages from old magazines trashed our party hats.

The iPod bellowed songs like Oscar The Grouch’s “I Love Trash,” “The Trash Can Band,”
Jack Johnson’s “The 3 R’s,” and “Stuck on Trash” by Recycleman & The Waste Band.

My son is always really interested when we see workers picking up trash on the side of the road. I found some inexpensive robot pincher claws online and added a sticker to make them Garbage Grabbers, and our garbage pick-up game was born. We told the kids that litterbugs had scattered trash all over our yard and asked for their help to make it all clean again. Some of them really got into it!

There was some spontaneous can-stomping fun too. What boy doesn’t like to do that?
I also made garbage truck coloring sheets for those not into picking up trash.

The summer camp at my son’s preschool gave me the idea to make bottle cap necklaces.

At the party, the kids got choose their necklace colors, look for the charms with their names and choose from other designs like ballet-themed, football teams and super heroes. We had some garbage and recycling charms too like the 3 R’s and a frog from one of my stationery designs that said “It’s not easy bein’ green.”

I created the designs, punched them with a one-inch circle punch and glued them into bottle caps I ordered from a home brewing supply place. I used jewelry glaze to give them their 3D effect without the smell or mess of resin.

We also used the bottle caps on the candles, for cupcake toppers, on the main table and as decorations on the seedling trees we sent home with the kids. They got a small reusable shopping bag to carry home all of their loot.

Small, galvanized trash cans held some of the party food and flowers.

Now for the junk food! We had Junkyard Dogs aka Pigs in a Blanket, Funky Chicken Salad, a Stinky Cheese Ball, Hubcaps with Cheese and Old Tires with Jelly—both Uncrustables sandwiches and the birthday boy’s favorite—Mini Mud (Meat) Pies and Fruit Fly Skewers.

Water bottle labels got people thinking about the potential after recycling.

The cake was a little garbage truck I attempted. Not my best work
(there were circumstances people), but the four-year-old thought it was the coolest!

And here are our bottle cap cupcake toppers!

I made the birthday boy a t-shirt for the big day using the garbage truck art from our invitation.
I used a dark t-shirt transfer with great results! It’s true. He’s quite the Trash Talker!

The other kiddos got garbage truck stickers that I printed for the end of the party.
It’s hard to pass up a good sticker.

Out-of-town family and friends shipped us Reese’s birthday presents so in keeping with our theme, we recycled newspaper and magazines into wrapping paper and bows. And, let me tell you when you can get away with it, a trash bag made the perfect gift bag for an oversized toy!

We thanked our guests with these garbage truck folding note cards.

And since we clearly hadn’t trash talked enough, later that week we made dirt cups to celebrate with his classroom friends.

Whew! Happy 4th Birthday to my little Garbage Man!

Source List

Bottle caps: online from a home brewing supply store

Choker Necklaces: Etsy

Garbage Grabbers: eBay

Galvanized Garbage Cans: www.galvanizedpail.com