Mrs. Geek

The Party Wrap Up

Saturday was party day at the Geek Household. I think it went great! Everyone had a great time including Dr. Geek & I. Last year we were so rushed that Dr. Geek didn't get a chance to jump into the shower before the first guests arrived. My goal was to have everything done prior to the guests getting here AND for us to both be showered. Keep the goals simple I say!

We hit a few bumps along the way, trying to determine the right amount of batter to fill a cupcake liner so that we can come up with the two dozen the recipe calls for, but we got it all together.

 
After making a second batch of cupcakes early in the morning we ended up with a total of 3 dozen cupcakes. Dr. Geek will be sharing the leftovers at the office.

I made the goodie bags with the help of Oriental Trading, felt and a glue gun.

Inside each bag was a water bottle with the first initial of the party goer, ears and two custom Mickey Mouse crayons.

I saw a banner like this one on Etsy, so I fired up the Cricut and the Mickey Font cartridge and made my own.

While searching Pinterest for ideas for the party I saw a sign similar to this and put Dr. Geek to work making the sign. I cut the letters on the Cricut with Sure Cuts A Lot software. The fonts are Jumping Beans and Mousebats, the arrow is from the standard shapes library.

The gate to our back yard greeted the party goers. I used the text from the Seek & Find book Baby Geek got as a gift last year.

Parade of characters greet the guests.

We are now having a restful post-party morning. Baby Geek is exploring one of his presents. We're going to store the gifts and introduce the new toys gradualy over the next few weeks, no sense in completing overwhelming the kid.

The paper crafting continues

I loved working with the Digicute shop on Etsy. She quickly came up with a PNG file of Toodles that turned out as an awesome paper piecing file after I worked some Inkscape magic on it. I've made a large Toodles and Clubhouse paper piecing to add to the character decorations around our yard.

For the background I omitted the half tone circles from the PNG when I converted it to an SVG file. I used a Martha Stewart circle tool to create the inner circle designs. For the "mouseketools" I used the Sweet Treat & Mickey Font cartridges. I mounted the images with foam squares to add dimension. I think it looks awesome!

 

I also used the files as PNG's with some Avery 1.5" circle labels to make the cupcake toppers. After I printed the desings onto the label paper, I cut pinked 2" circles with two slits in the middle with Sure Cuts A Lot. I inserted a lollipop stick into the slits and then placed the label sticker over the circle.

I'm loving how everything is turning out. I hope once it is all put together the party will look how I imagine it in my head!

Mickey Font Cartridge

Cricut Sweet Treat Cartridge

Martha Stewart Circle Cutter

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Cast of Characters

Continuing the overview of birthday party preparations are the decorations. I plan to have the six main characters from Mickey Mouse Clubhouse decorating our back yard. I bought the 12 x 24 size Cricut mat and found a retailer that sold the sheets of cardstock in the same size. I set the machine to "Fit to Page", but forgot one important thing, always start with the biggest piece. In this case that would be the background image for each character. I ended up just cutting another solid base and offsetting the grey to look like a shadow instead of a complete outline. Another lesson learned was to pay attention to the width of the character as well as the height. for Donald and Goofy they were both wide characters. I should have picked different images that were a bit more narrow and they could have been made taller. If I were going to group the characters together I would have also paid more attention to the ratio of heights. Goofy should be the tallest character and then set the rest accordingly. Since I'm going to scatter the images around our yard it won't be as obvious as if they were right next to each other. Overall I'm pretty happy with how they all turned out.

Mickey & Friends

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The invite

 

Baby Geek is his mama's son. He loves Mickey Mouse Clubhouse, so it was a perfect theme for the party.

I saw a bunch of ideas online and have a Pinterest board full of  inspiration. I knew that I wanted to make as much of the party decor as I could. I have the skills, I have the supplies and, for the most part, I have the time. I toyed with trying to create the Clubhouse logo myself but quickly found that to be too difficult. I searched online for an SVG file or a clean image to use to trace in Sure Cuts A Lot. I struck out until I stumbled onto an Etsy shop called Digicute. She has awesome files and I was able to convert the PNG file she created into an SVG using Inkscape, and some instruction from a YouTube video.

I created the paper piecing for the front of the invitation and then did lettering announcing it was "Baby Geek's Clubhouse" I used the fonts Tristan & Jumping Bean to replicate the fonts from the TV show for the front and for the lettering on the inside of the invitation. I bought 5x7 folded cards at the Paper Source and printed the inside and then did the paper pieceings on the cover.

The invites have been very well received and I hope that I'm able to live up to the expectations I've set.

 

Note: To create the windows I made a shape that was a combination of the ovals in the shorts and the individual pieces of window pane. I first used a Cri-Kits pen to draw the window panes. I then turned that layer off and then cut the outline of the window. Much easier than trying to glue down 12 tiny pieces per clubhouse!

Prep for the 2nd Annual Baby Geek Birthday Celebration

I've been prepping for Baby Geek's 2nd Birthday. Last evening I made a test batch of cupcakes so I could see how this little gizmo would do on frosting the cupcakes. I have to say I loved  how it worked. The remainig cupcakes from this batch will go to work with Dr. Geek and I'll make another batch Friday night and frost them Saturday morning. As the week continues I'll share some more of the prep for our birthday celebration!

Paper crafting for fun and profit

A few weeks ago I was asked to make a baby shower banner. Once I completed the banner the two co-hosts asked if I could whip up some favor tags and cupcake toppers. It was most definatly a learning experience. Based on the complexity of the design I under estimated the amount of time it would take to assembly line the pieces. The final product was a huge success! I created one banner with 21 pieces, 4 center pieces (these were a bonus becasue I hade made the critters too big for the banner at first) 24 cupcake toppers and 24 favor tags.

The original hostess was throwing another shower and asked me to make another banner, centerpieces, 18 favor tags, and 18 cupcake toppers.

The second attempt went much smoother I figured out a few better ways to streamline the process. I'm now trying to figure out how to create an online store that I can combine with my blog. I'll keep you posted here.