Shark party!

So after Princess P's birthday, we went to Mexico for a week, and now we are gearing up for Boy Wonder's birthday. (This is what I get for having kids' birthdays back to back! Oh well.)

Boy Wonder has requested a SHARK themed party. To be honest I am still scratching my head, a little bit, trying to figure out how best to do this. So far we have given out invitations and are just waiting for our RSVPs to come in. Here is the invite:

I made these at work, so I didn't have my camera with me to take piece by piece photos for a real tutorial, but here's a quick & dirty one.

You need posterboard in medium blue, sky blue, grey, and white. You'll also need scissors (and if you have any pinking shears, those too), white glue, and a heavy black marker (I used a Sharpie.)

It's pretty simple - you need to cut out a medium blue rectangle for your background. Match the width of the blue background to the width of your shark's nose, and cut it from the grey. Cut another smaller piece from grey for the shark's mouth. Inside the mouth glue a piece of white paper cut to the same size and trimmed with pinking shears to make teeth (or cut the teeth in yourself with regular straight scissors.) Glue a sky blue wave along the top of the card for your kid's name & party name ("Dylan's 4th Birthday", etc.)

I put the party details inside the shark's mouth. According to my sister in law, my nephew loves his and made it chomp dinner after we gave it to him.

More to follow when I get some more sharky ideas figured out!

princess p's party pics

All my crafting of the jungle variety was put to use last weekend for Princess P's first birthday party. Pics:

Here's the table waiting for the party guests. Tissue pompoms from pendant light, palm trees on table, black, pink & zebra balloons tied to chairs, and Princess P had her own Happy Birthday! balloon.

Closeup of the table showing monkey plates at each place along with a jungle animal and a party blower.

Each guest got to keep their plate & animal.

Paper hibiscus flowers with pink and silver streamers.

Bigger tissue paper pompoms in doorway and enormous balloon bouquet behind it.

The star of the show about to dig in to her zebra cake!

The fruit elephant

Have you ever googled watermelon carvings? There are some incredibly talented people out there who can carve watermelons into amazing stuff, like flowers and designs.

I'm not one of them.

I CAN, however, make a watermelon into a fruit bowl, and use more fruit to give it a cute little elephant face. This is my fruit elephant tutorial.

Here's the final product:

Eat me! I'm fruity!



You need a watermelon and fruit. I used apples, blackberries, and pineapple - but there's no rules, here. Just find something to use for his head, and go from there.

First cut the top off your watermelon and carve it out like a pumpkin.

Then slice the end off an apple (or orange, or whatever) to make the head. Check to try to duplicate the curve of the watermelon in the cut end of your head piece.

I had to hollow mine out a little bit to get it to curve correctly.

Stick a bunch of toothpicks inside the melon through to the outside, then stab them into the head piece. Use as many as you need. I used my kitchen pliers (yes, I have a pair) to trim off the pokey bits.

Once the head is stuck, poke a few toothpicks into the head so that you can attach the trunk.

For the trunk, I peeled the skin off an apple in a coil shape to make it curl like an elephant's trunk. Word to the wise - make it thicker rather than thinner, to make it easier to stab the toothpicks into it.

Nose on!

Now you can do the face. I used slices of blackberries layered over apple pieces to make eyes (again, poked in to the apple with toothpicks) but there are loads of different ways to do this. Put your pachyderm into a dish and fill with fruit inside and around.

Aren't I cute?