Decorations and Party Favors For My Daughter's Party

My hubby and I threw my daughter a b-day party two weeks ago at our house to celebrate her 7th b-day.  The theme was of course Monster High.  (The Monster High dolls are her favorite.) She wanted a party with that theme that including some crafting. We spent an entire week after work and stayed up two nights in a row until 2am making and/or putting together decorations and party favors.  We decorated take out boxes from Michaels and put her favorite candy inside (M&Ms),

made signs that resemble a chalk board (We decided to make chalk boards to resemble a school since the Monster High DVDs are usually based around a school setting.)  for the names of the games and food (The games and food were all named after what the Monster High dolls like.),

made signs for different areas of the house that we turned into a "school",

made "Monster High tulips" to include with the centerpiece,

made a banner, 

and colored a cover for her party favor bags.

 Each of the girls got to decorate a foam board with letters to spell their name and with some cute foam stickers. Here's how we displayed everything for my daughter's party.

We set up a table in our backyard for my daughter's friends to draw her a picture and write her a message. 

(I am going to make a book for her with all the pages in it.) This activity was given to them to work on while we were waiting for all the guests to arrive.

At the end of the party all the girls got to take home a bag full of goodies and their foam plaque (as picture above).  All in all the party turned out great and everyone had a good time.  Seeing how happy our daughter was with her buddies made all the hard work and lost of sleep prepping for her party worth it.  Those of you are celebrate Chinese New Year, Happy Year of the Horse!  Stay tune for some fun crafty items for Chinese New Year.  I haven't made any of them yet because I am still waiting for my "Year of the Horse" stamp to arrive.  Everyone have a wonderful weekend!

Finally, After 12 Years

A week ago a friend (Cathy) and I finally met each in person after knowing each other for 12 years.  It is always lots of fun chatting with her online and on the phone and e-mailing each other, but of course it was much more fun getting to talk to her face to face.  We had a grand old time having dinner together at Claimjumpers and

had a blast chatting for 2 and a half hours.  It didn't feel like it was our first time meeting at all.  Here's a picture of what we ordered (besides their super scrumptious onion rings).

Before dinner I gave Cathy a gift- a box of chocolates and a handmade flower.

Here is a close up picture of the flower.

After dropping Cathy off at her hotel she gave me three bags of goodies that she received from the Craft and Hobby Show that she attended while she was visiting.

I was amazed at all the awesome items that were in the bags.  As I sorted through the bags I put items into two piles- items that I like and would find them useful now and items that I like, but won't find useful at this time.  The items in the second pile I decided to give to friends that would find them useful.  I would love to keep them, but don't think it would be wise to start other hobbies.    Here are the items that I kept that are my favorites.

Before giving each other a big hug and saying "good-bye" Cathy and I took one more picture together.

It has been such a blessing having Cathy as a friend for the past 12 years and I am truly grateful that we were able to meet last week.

Visiting With Brenda and Her Daughter

I hope that everyone is having a fun and crafty month so far.  Mine has been lots of fun.  My current project is making decorations, party favors, etc. for my daughter's Monster High B-day party.  Stay tune for pictures of everything.  I have also been working on finishing "thank you" cards for my Christmas gifts.  Yes, I'm a bit slow in getting them done.  Other than my projects I have been having fun spending time with friends that are visiting SoCal.  Last weekend my family and I had the pleasure of having lunch with my friend Brenda and her daughter at Rainforest Cafe.

We thought it would nice to have lunch with them at the Rainforest Cafe since it's such a fun restaurant.  The entire restaurant is decorated as a rainforest with vines, trees, animals, butterflies, etc.  Every half an hour their is a thunder storm and the animals come to life.  Here is a picture of one of the animals.

Of course the time that Brenda and I had to together would not totally be complete without surprising each other with a fun gift.  This is what I gave to her.

Her favorite color is purple (just like mine) so I thought it would be fun to give her a gift with a "purple" theme to it.  Unfortunately I was not able to find a tablet that has purple in it. This is ono, fun, and fabulous gift that she gave to me.

I am always amazed at Brenda comes up with.  Here is a close up of two of the pages of the calendar.

Pretty awesome, yeah.  My family and I had a wonderful time visiting with Brenda and her daughter and appreciate them for taking time during their vacation to spend some time with us.  We hope that they had a fab time here and look forward to seeing them again one day soon.

My Time Off and a Beautiful Bow

Having too much fun and not enough rest finally caught up to me last Monday.  I was out of commission until Thursday.  I was a bit sad to have to spend the last half of my time off from work in bed, but I am thankful that I the chance to rest to recover without needing to take time off from work.  The fun that I had prior to getting sick included going after Christmas shopping at some of my favorite stores- The Loft, JoAnns and Hobby Lobby. (I coundn't resist taking a picture with this sign.)

Here are a few of the embossing folders that I purchased from Hobby Lobby.  

That is sure a dangerous store.  Next time I go there I should only bring cash because it has such a huge selection of crafty stuff..  LOL!  I also got to hang out with family and friends and enjoying some ono food, (My kids like to eat dim sum so we had that almost 3 days in a row.  Even after eating it 3 days in a row they still didn't get sick of it.  Here is a picture if three of my favorite desserts- snow mountain (it's a bun with a light crusted fronting on top and filled with red bean), sesame balls, and red bean jello.))

and visiting an exhibit called "Chill" where everything is made out of ice.  It was super fun, but freezing.  I don't think I have ever worn so much clothes or been so cold in my life.

In terms of crafting, I didn't do any  in the past two weeks besides making Christmas tags.  I was hoping to do play with some of my new craft items last week until I caught a bug.  Hopefully I'll get to play with some of them soon.  :)  The last project that I worked on before making Christmas tags was making a bow using my new bow die from Stampin Up.

I attached it to a box that I purchased.  I was pretty proud with how my turned out. I liked it so much that I actually wanted to keep it.  I didn't keep it though since my intention of making it was to give to a friend for her b-day.  Thanks for stopping by to see what I have to share today.  

My Christmas and Some Awesome Cards

Happy New Year's Eve everyone!  I hope that everyone had a wonderful time celebrating Christmas with family and friends last week.  Mine was pretty good especially because God gave me the opportunity to share God's love with one of Benson's relatives.

It's always an honor and privilege to get to do that.  For brunch my family and I had dim sum with my side of the family

and then opened our presents.  For dinner we spent the evening with my hubby's family.  The food that we enjoyed was ono too. After dinner we took family pictures,

watched a slide show to recap 2013, and played some games. The entire day was lots of fun.  In closing I would like to share one of my favorite Christmas gifts

and some crafty Christmas cards made by some very talented friends.

Have a blessed 2014!

Tags and Decorations to Celebrate Jesus' Birthday

This month has been a busy one.  I am very grateful for some time off from work to spend time with friends, family, and to prep for Christmas.  Each year I come up with two different tags. This year I made three different ones.  I usually put the presents in a gift bag so my personal touch to the gifts is attaching a handmade tag to them. The tags that I choose to make always have a religious meaning to them to honor the reason why Christmas is celebrated.  Here are the tags that I made for this year.

Did you know that a wreath has a religious meaning?  I also made one tag for a friend that loves USC.

Besides making tags, I made some bows

and a gift card holder.

Before I end I wanted to share a few pictures of how I decorated our house this year.  It was a bit of a challenge since for over 10 years I've decorated our house the same way.  This year was different though because we are living in our new place to call home. This is how our house looks outside.

This is my favorite part of how we decorated the inside of our house

and some pictures of my favorite ornaments.

Thanks for taking time out of your busy holiday schedule to see what I have to share today.  I am looking forward to celebrating Jesus' B-day tomorrow and hope that all of you are having a  Happy Christmas Eve and will have a Merry CHRISTmas tomorrow!