Birthday Boy Weekend & ScrapTiffany Monday

Last week got away from me, and I didn't get a chance to post the winner for my drawing from the ScrapTiffany Holiday Blog Hop.  So without further delay the winner is (as picked by Random.org)...

 Scrapfaire said...

Red Velvet Cake is a must for Christmas! Love your recipe file!

November 8, 2010 4:58 AM

Congratulations!  E-mail me here to claim your box of goodies.  

Mike and I did some Christmas shopping on Friday night at Toys R Us. Our first date night in about a year. Santa will be making 2 little boys very happy this year.

After shopping, we did get to go out to a grown up dinner at Dvine Wine and Bistro. It was fabulous. We splurged and had bruschetta for an appetizer, shared a bowl of potato bacon soup, and then we both ordered the filet mingon for dinner. We finished it off with a Kahlua Mouse Chocolate Cake.  And to go with dinner we had a fantastic bottle of wine, Opolo Moutain Zin - '06 Paso Robles. Oh to be a grown up again.

Jackson's birthday party was this weekend.  He really loves the Yo Gabba Gabba show on Nick Jr. I bought tickets last week to take him to the live show coming in a few weeks. When the music starts for the show, it doesn't matter where he is in the house, he comes running to watch.

I had the "brilliant" idea to make Yo Gabba Gabba the party theme. Of course that was before I realized that there were no themed decorations to go with said theme.  Add this to the ton of hours I have been working, and it leaves me in a jam. I didn't have much creative time to make decorations, but I had bought a couple of things to go with the theme already.

So we improvised with printable decorations from the Nick Jr site, a few scrap supplies and some colorful decorations from the disco and general birthday sections at Party City.

I attempted to make the cake match the theme.

I was pretty happy with the banner.

Even the birthday cards were Yo Gabba Gabba (printables and wrapping paper on a card base, with StayzOn ink for the stamped message).

Party time...while Daddy grilled dinner, we played outside...

Nicholas worked on his picture taking skills....

As taken by Nicholas....

After dinner was presents....

Then of course cake....

I made a pumpkin spice cake with pumpkin cinnamon cream cheese frosting. Jackson ate 2 pieces. So I guess he liked it as much as the rest of us.

And I need to dig out the camera manual because of all the pictures that should have been great turned out blurry. I am blurring the focal point and getting the background sharp. Not sure what I did to the settings to make that happen. But it is frustrating.

Last week the ScrapTiffany team participated in the Hippity Hop Blog Hop, which was a collaboration of a few challenge blog sites. The hop is over but you can still check out the posts starting here at the Sassy Lil' Sketches blog.  I didn't have any time to post anything as the week progressed. But I will now share the layout I did for the Blog Hop challenge. 

It was a recipe challenge where each blog added one ingredient to the "recipe" to use for your layout:

Ingredients:

Sketch from Sassy Lil' Sketches

Use 3 of the same thing from ScrapFit

Use ink paint or mist or all 3 from Crop Suey

Use some Lace from ScrapTiffany

Use some texture or embossing from Cuttlebug Spot

So here is mine....

How I made mine...

Sketch - Kept the overall general design in tact

Use 3 of the same thing - Stars were my pick for 3

Use ink paint or mist or all 3 - I chose some Studio Calico Mr. Huey's for my banner with a base coat and a spritz of white on top for a splattered look.

Use some Lace from ScrapTiffany - Lace designed paper

Use some texture or embossing from Cuttlebug Spot -  Circle journal spot embossed with my Cuttlebug

And finally, this weeks challenge for ScrapTiffany was to use crepe paper. So I bought some to decorate for Jackson's party so I would have some for a layout.

Here is what I did...

I stitched the crepe paper down to make my sky background. I thought it would rip, but it worked just fine. I found some vellum in my stash and used my new Fiskars Cloud punches to make my clouds.

I also played with some new Martha Stewart punches I have recently picked up on clearance and during last weeks Veterans Day sale at Michaels.  Martha Stewart now has some punch anywhere punches in some basic shapes and designs so I punched out my journaling spot and added some paper behind it. There are a few other newer Martha punches I am going to have to get my hands on one coupon at a time, of course.

Now it is time to get ready for work, and another busy full week. Hope you have a great one!