Cupcake topper DIY

I love making these quick and easy toppers for cupcakes for the kids birthday parties. It allows me to personalize things a bit more and they are so pretty on the cakes and lots of other things as well.  All you need are the following:

1. lollipop sticks
2. glue stick
3. liquid glue
4. Circle Paper Punch with scallop profile
5. Circle Paper Punch
6. 2-4 sheets 8.5"x11" colored card stock
7. 2-4 sheets 8.5"x11" plain card stock

I have had the paper punch for years since Arielle was born so it was a good investment since I use it quite a bit. 

In Adobe Illustrator, I made a sheet of the same repeated outline (dotted line)as a border then put in text of what would be printed on the white card stock. I made some the circles messages say "thank you", "Happy first birthday" whatever..really. Of course there are people who sell these templates on Etsy for people who don't feel the need to layout themselves...whichever works. 

I let my 4 year old punch out as many scalloped circles as she could from there shades of pink 8.5"x 11" card stock sheets (she got about 12 per sheet).  While she did that, I printed and cut out the white circles for the center. We glued the white circles into the pink ones varying the colors and the messages (with the glue stick not liquid glue..or it will wrinkle.)

 

Once they were dry, we flipped them a few at a time and using a drop of liquid glue affixed the sticks to the back. Because the stick has some weight, it needs some time to completely dry. For a finished look, we took plain white circles and glued them to the back of the sticks as well. Let them sit for about an hour to dry and the lift them up.

I also like to use stickers which match the theme of the party so I got these single candle stickers from Michael's and used those on some of the toppers. They actually became the logo for the party, so the were not only toppers but also on the favor bags, pinata candy bags and candy milk jars.

A few years back, Arielle had a carnival party and I made these for the party hats and cupcakes as well..With different paper, colors and stick on shapes, theses can be a really fun addition to your party.

Backyard Farming Part II

About three months ago, we decided to start growing some vegetable in the backyard. It sounded like a good idea, how hard could it be right? Well, I will tell you that it is pretty hard! Just making neat little rows of planted seeds and building a fancy box around them does not ensure that anything will grow! Even after experiencing a pretty mild summer, lots of rain, nothing is really growing except for these mutant melons/squashes! They grew so wild, they even crawled out of the box and spread into the grass until we put them back in. Now about a week later they have wilted and are no longer really flourishing. We had planted carrots, lettuce, cucumbers,  and more and I expected to at least harvest one cucumber or something...no such luck. So now as summer comes to a close , I conclude that neither of us have a green thumb.