Our oldest turned 4 a couple of weeks ago...hard to imagine. He said he wanted a train party, and I was happy to oblige! I got right to work on my Cricut, using My Commuity, Everyday Paper Dolls, Mickey Font, and SCAL. Here's a sampling of the decorations:
Railroad crossing sign. Letters cut with SCAL using Lucida Grande true type font:
RR crossing sign using SCAL (Lucida Grande again):
All Aboard sign using Everyday Paper Dolls (cut at 8 1/4") and Mickey Font:
"Happy Birthday Jonah" sign using Mickey Font (letters cut at 3") and embossed with Cuttlebug's Happy Birthday folder. I ran a black inkpad over the raised image to get the look. I forgot to take a close-up of a letter to show the detail. Next time.
We played a variation of "Pin the Tail on the Donkey"...Pin the Caboose on the Train! Here's the engine, cut from My Community, and the engineer from Everyday Paper Dolls. He's supposed to look like Jonah (well, as much as a paper doll can, anyway):
Here's the passenger car using the same cartridges.
And here's one of the cabooses. The cabooses served as the child's placemat as they arrived to the party. We served lunch first. The kids had pb&j sandwiches cut into train shapes with a cookie cutter. My wonderful hubby was in charge of lunch for the adults...delicious BBQ pulled pork sandwiches with broccoli salad, potato salad, fruit salad, and deviled eggs. Sooo yummy! Anyway, after lunch we played the game and the kids used their cabooses.
Each caboose was personalized with a paper doll representing each child in attendance. My dad got one, too, since he's a train fanatic...hence the "Grandpa" doll with gray hair. Here's a picture of all of the dolls before they were attached to their caboose:
And here's the game ready to go. Letters are from Mickey font. I traced the caboose with a Sharpie marker so the kids could know where to aim:
I made cupcakes for dessert, and continuing with the train theme, here are the toppers with toothpicks glued in between the shadow layer and the top layer (again used My Community and Mickey Font):
And here they are displayed in the cupcakes. The letters kind of get lost in the picture but I think they were easier to see in real life:
And...how could I not include a picture? Here is Jonah and his friends!
And
here is a link to our friend's website who is a photographer. She was kind enough to come take some pictures for us! Didn't Rachel do a fantastic job? By way of background, we were going to have his party at a local train park museum where there are real locomotives for the kids to climb on and run through. However, rain was forecast so we had to have the party at our place. Our living room is not big enough for the number of guests, and we knew kids at a party would want to run around and have a good time...so we converted our garage into the party area. A garage is not the easiest place to take pictures and I was so happy when I saw how well these turned out!
Thanks for looking!
Monday was my Dad's birthday, and my boys got him flower seeds to plant in his garden. I whipped up a little gift basket to put the seeds in and a quick card to complete the garden look. Here are the results:
Side 3:
Side 4:
I used A Child's Year on all 4 sides of the basket. Two of the images are with the icon feature selected.
Speaking of card, have you neglected (like I did) the card feature on A Child's Year?? This card was super easy to make...no welding necessary. It is straight from the cartridge and was cut with a simple press of the button! I thought it would be cute to have the card in the shape of a butterfly so it could be fluttering above the garden scenes. I added stickles to embellish it to look somewhat like a monarch and voila! Easy gift-giving. The entire project took probably close to an hour but could be replicated in less time (except for waiting for the stickles to dry).
Thanks for looking!
