Happy Birthday To Us!

Oooooooooof...  Happy Tuesday! Wow. I'm back. Took an unexpected bloggy break there...

That's because I just said hasta la vista to a jam-packed birthday week and weekend.  Over the last few days, The Boy, Dia and I celebrated our 8th, 20th and um... OLDer birthdays respectively. The week started out with a whirlwind road trip to visit my girls, Elle and Dia, who share living quarters in Toronto. We spent a lovely afternoon with them catching up on life, school and work, and chatting about food and movies over the yummy vegetarian offerings at a small local restaurant. The service was great and the staff let us linger. We had a really really nice time. Despite the fact that they flew the coop a few years ago now, I still think it strange to visit these adults (!!!) that are my children, and see them living independently from us. Working. Learning. All by themselves. They seem to be handling it just fine. How does this happen, I often wonder. How's it even possible?... I guess that's just what kids do, eh?

Here's a pic of my beautiful Dia taken at the aforementioned lunch.

The next few days I spent getting ready for The Boy's Bowling Birthday party which we celebrated this past Sunday afternoon with 12 of his friends (boys only as he stipulated). The pizza meal was held upstairs in the bowling building and we only had a few minutes to spruce up the space so I wanted the decorations to be effective yet super-simple at the same time.

We needed balloons o' course... So I concocted these balloon trees which The Boy dubbed "balloon supernovae". That name rocks my socks so it stuck! I made the trees two days prior, and the day of the party we just plunked the gravel-filled plastic jugs down in the center of the tables and stabbed in the stems. Nice and easy!

The Boy is a huge fan of airplanes so I rummaged through my garland box for the colourful paper airplane garland from last year (he digs it) and divided the lengths into two batches. Then I hung the lengths with bread wrappers onto two wire hangers. When we got to the bowling alley I simply hung the hangers lickety-split on an overhead beam.

For cake, The Boy requested chocolate. I chose to do the chocolate cupcake thing and I'm so glad I did because they were tast-EE! I baked the cupcakes the day before the party and iced them the morning of. I topped them with piped buttercream frosting and finished them off with one upside-down red candy wafer (used as is) and a Smartie. Delicious and do-able (even for a non-cook like me)...

The little personalized handmade goodie bags Lo and I put together (using this template) for each guest went over well too. I made the bags a few at a time over the two weeks prior to the big day. We filled them with candy, notepads, pencils, erasers, hockey cards and one of my all-time favourite origami gizmos.

When we sent out invitations we specified "no gifts" because our little one has more than enough. We were overjoyed by all the lovely handmade cards that each child brought instead. Reading through them at the end of the day was definitely a highlight for me. They were just so sweet!

I can't say the day wasn't without its challenges. Kids playing catch with 10 lb bowling balls, for instance. Kids running down bowling lanes. And there was that one tiny injury too. Small hand caught in swivel chair... Oooooweeeee... But after the obvious pain and the gush of tears, the little guy bucked up and kept playing. Kids are amazing, aren't they?

But on the whole, the party was a success, I think. We're not used to having 13 boy-children in tow, you know? But they had fun and Lo and I managed well in my opinion. We stayed pretty relaxed through it all. And The Boy had a blast which was the ultimate goal!

So the week of birthdays is taken care of for another year, can't believe it. Everyone's happy. I know I am. Happy Birthday to me!

Well, you have a lovely day now. I will be back!

♥M

Tutorial: Sunkissed Heart Wreath

Lo and I celebrated 15 years of togetherness last Monday. My heart feels like it's been kissed by the sun since I've known him. I dedicate this post, the result, and my very heart to him.

This wreath is inspired by those beautiful string wedding balloon displays, like THIS one, for example.


Tutorial ♥ A Sunkissed Heart Wreath

You will need:

• 2 long skinny balloons (the type used to make balloon animals)
• balloon pump (unless you have gorilla lungs)
• white (PVA) glue
• water
• container for glue
• yarn
• pair of scissors
• pin or sharp thing
• length of ribbon (optional)
• drop cloth or newspaper

Step 1. Using the pump, blow up the two skinny balloons. Try making them of equal size or as close to it as possible leaving tails a few inches long. Knot them.
Step 2. Gently tie the knotted end to the tail end to create two loopy balloons as shown.
Step 3. Cut up your yarn into several 2-3 ft (60-90 cm) lengths. Pour some glue out into the container. Add a little water to the glue to make it a little runnier than normal. Say 4:1 glue to water.
Step 4. Now to the messy part. One at a time, drop your yarn pieces into the glue, coating them fully and removing any excess dripping glue. Wrap your gluey yarn around a balloon. Continue in this way, wrapping your balloons with gluey yarn, criss-crossing over lower layers and building up a web of yarn around each balloon. Note that in photo 4, my balloons still require more yarn as they would NOT be strong enough to hold the shape if left as shown. However you do not want to fully cover the balloons either. You want the sun to shine through your heart (words of wisdom my friend)... Let these dry overnight on clean glass or plastic. Do not dry it on paper or you'll wind up with gobs of paper permanently attached to your heart. No no.

Step 5. The next day: Prick the balloons with a pin (or sharp thing) and gently pull out the balloon carcasses. It's cool how hard your pieces are, once dry. Now, you want to place your balloons side by side to see if they need to be trimmed or not, and to figure out the best way to join them into a heart shape.

Here's what I did: 

Step 6. I started with the bottom joint. I butted the two ends together as shown. No glue yet.
Step 7. And for the top joint, I cut away half the cylinder (equal in length to the diameter of the cylinder).
Step 8. This made a recess into which the other end fit nicely. Now I checked to be sure that with both sides butted together my heart was actually heart-shaped. I had to trim a little off the bottom of one side so it all looked hunky dory.
Step 9. I then strengthened both joints with several lengths of gluey yarn. Notice the many overlaps. Once dry, these joints are strong like bull. At this point, I also added a few lengths of yarn over the rest of the heart to make it extra robust. Allow your heart to dry out overnight on glass or plastic.

The next morning, find your heart ready to be hung up and admired!

String it up with a ribbon, place it in a window and let the sun beam through it. Just LOVE-ly!...

Happy anniversary Lo. My heart is yours. Let's keep up the good work, okay?

♥M

Oh! And speaking of wreaths, check out my latest project. It's a blog! I call it:

Halloween Juggling Eyeballs

This is a Halloween craft but it's also a love craft. See, when Lo and I first met way back when, we both worked at Science North, a children's science museum in Sudbury, Ontario. Learning to juggle, and teaching others how, was part of the job description. It was our way of breaking the ice with the visitors and getting them involved in the whole museum experience. On top of that, we taught people how to make these balloon and rice juggling balls so they could go home, throw some together, and keep honing their juggling skills.

Science North is where Lo and I first made eyes at each other. And it's pretty much guaranteed that we fell in love whilst learning to juggle (and flirting our pants off) over a shared trio of balloon and rice juggling balls. So today's craft is dedicated to Lo and his blue-green eyes: the sweetest pair of eyes I ever did see.

Balloon and rice juggling balls have been around for eons. HERE is a fine tutorial by the Ontario Science Center's SciZone already done up and ready to go. It shows how to make the basic juggling balls. Today I'm adding my very own Halloween twist on this tried and true craft.

Tutorial  ✂  Halloween Juggling Eyeballs

Start by making the basic juggling balls as per the OSC tutorial.

Note that the juggling balls are made of 3 layers of balloons with rice as the filler. The colour of the first layer doesn't matter; it'll be completely covered. However to produce the eye effect, I used black and white balloons as my second and third layers respectively. 

Starting to look like eyeballs, eh? You could leave them just like this, but I chose to add a little flavour to them by painting in some irises and drawing on some tiny red veins.

And there you have them! Sweet and juicy juggling eyeballs. Does it feel like you're being watched?... Spooky...

Here's Lo now testing them out. They work like a charm! See that? He's still got it after all this time.

Make a few as Halloween decorations or have a go at juggling yourself! It's surprisingly relaxing once you figure it out. It only took me 24 days to learn!

Have yourself a fantastic weekend. Eye'll be back here on Tuesday!