Where did September go?

So September flew right past me and I don't have anything to show for it. I guess that is not totally true as I did make some curtains for my brother and I have been cross stitching on my daughter's Christmas stocking. And I intend on finishing it tonight!!! I just have the reins left. And the lines on the drum. Oh, and the lines above and below her name, but that is it!!!

This past weekend I completed one more of my Pay-It-Forwards for 2013. When I post these things on Facebook, I take it seriously! I will send you something if you respond.

My sister was one of the 3 that replied and since this past weekend I was going visiting her (Ladies Night!) I thought it would be the perfect time to deliver her gift. She had been wanting to make bath salts for a couple months now, but we just never got around to doing it. I made up a batch and divided it in to 4 different scents.

Everyone always makes fun of me for saving boxes, but I can't help it! They are just so useful! Especially when you can make them into pretty gift boxes.

Then I decided it would be fun to put a little twist on it since I was going to be at her place. I made it into a treasure hunt for her to do after I left.

I folded up the clues like secret notes. It took me back to grade 5 when we passed notes constantly and this was how we folded them. I couldn't remember how to do it so I had to look it up!

Who wouldn't want to find this?

It's a LEGO Birthday - Getting Ready

My son loves LEGO. Long ago he decided he wanted a LEGO cake for his birthday. I searched the internet for cakes but couldn't find one I liked. I really wanted to combine pirates and LEGO since Seth really likes the LEGO pirate ships and we have the play ship in the backyard. Then I came across these silicone forms.



Now this was something I could work with! First off I made LEGO chocolates. I've melted chocolate many times, however this time I thought maybe I should do it the correct way using boiling water. Does it ever work well!! I shouldn't be surprised I guess, but I always thought just doing it on the stove top was quicker and easier. Never again!





This is the first time I've ever used silicone moulds. I couldn't believe how easy it was to get the chocolates out! Just turn them inside out! So much easier then the plastic moulds I have.

They turned out so well that I didn't want to stop at chocolates! So with the mini figure moulds I made candles for the cake, and crayons for the loot bags.



For the candles I just melted some cheap tea lights I had and used some wicks I had left over from a couple of years ago. I tried to dye the wax but the wax just burnt to the bottom of the tin I was using. Probably should have added it a little later. I ended up using a permanent marker and coloured them to match a pirate mini figure.



For the crayons I dug through the crayon box looking for broken crayons of similar colours and melted them together. I made 4 different colours and each kid got 3 crayons.



Since I bought that Shrinky Dink plastic before Christmas for my Advent calendar I've wanted to make key chains. This was the perfect opportunity. I found a website that had the LEGO font and printed out the names of all the kids coming to Seth's birthday party, traced them on to the plastic, and shrunk them in the oven.



For the loot bag I also put together a collection of LEGO colouring pages for a colouring book, added a fun water bottle and a little bag of LEGO candy with a few chocolate toonies.



Since I was going for a pirate LEGO theme I thought it would be fun to do a treasure hunt with the loot bags being the treasure. I drew 10 clues and put them in little LEGO boxes to hide around the yard. My drawing skills are not very good at the best of times, and since I was doing this at 11:00 the night before I wasn't very worried about how they looked! (The kids didn't have any trouble locating the treasure, so they couldn't have been that bad!)



I got the idea for a utensil holder from this blog and made a napkin holder to match!



This is the most effort I have ever put into a birthday party and it actually wasn't that hard. Everything I made was fairly simple, just required a little bit of time, with the exception of the cake. And it turned out so well it deserves it's own post! :)
Stay tuned!