Evelyn's First Birthday

Evie's first birthday was a couple weeks ago, and all the crafty preparation was worth it, because it turned out great!

Strawberry and yellow cake cupcakes, frosted with buttercream and sprinkled with colored sugar - yum! That's Evie's special cupcake in the middle ;)

The whole setup, minus the lemonade, which I didn't put out til the last minute so it'd be nice and cold!

Evie's cake with the sweet little bunting I made for it:

A tray of "popcorn" cupcakes - they turned out so cute! Sure, I had to cut and arrange 300(!) mini marshmallows, but at least I have pictures to show Evie when she's old enough to appreciate it ;)

The peanut treat bags turned out great too, and were a nice take-home snack for the guests:

Nothing goes better with a circus theme than iced animal crackers! And how nice of the people who make animal crackers to ice them in colors that worked with my theme ;)

Lemon drops! Because they matched and are delicious. Also, I wanted something people could scoop with the adorable little metal scoops I found at GFS.

The lemonade has arrived to join the party! Plain and raspberry, yum!

The lemon slice ice cubes I made a few days beforehand looked really cool floating in the lemonade (and served a purpose in keeping it nice and chilly while not watering it down):

Most importantly, the Birthday Girl had fun, even though she was on a nap strike that whole day :)

That cupcake sure was yummy!!

A banner year at the Crane household*

I wanted a cute birthday banner for Evie and found this lovely one on Etsy. Unfortunately, her shop is on vacation, so I used it as inspiration for my own version. I used some fun circular brushes in Photoshop and some circus animal images, printed them out on card stock, and tied them together with pretty grosgrain ribbon. Voila!

The banner circles turned out so cute I made some smaller versions and glued toothpicks to the back to use as cake/cupcake toppers!:

*10 points if you caught the paraphrased Breakfast Club quote ;)

Birthday Crafts, Continued!

Ever wonder if paper lunch sacks will feed through a printer? Turns out they will! I wanted to do bags of peanuts for Evie's party next weekend and knew I wanted to use paper lunch sacks, but wasn't sure how to decorate them. At first I was going to stamp them, but didn't relish the thought of stamping individual letters on 20 bags. Then I thought about using some labels we have here at home and designing something for them, but slapping white labels on these brown paper bags just seemed tacky. As I was sitting there holding a bag, thinking, it occurred to me to cut out the middle man and print right on them! A couple  minutes in Photoshop and I was in business! They've got some flaws where they didn't feed through quite evenly, but it just adds to the vintage theme, right? ;)

How very Pinteresting...

Hi, my name is Shana and I'm addicted to Pinterest. Until about 2 weeks ago I didn't even know it existed, but somebody mentioned it in one of my Etsy groups and I signed up and now I'm hooked! I've always been a little bookmark-happy (read: Bookmark Hoarder), saving so many links that I'd never go back to. Safari always has all 8 windows open on my phone because I can't bear to part with any of them lest I forget about them. But now there's Pinterest! It's so lovely and visual! I can pin things with a picture so when I look at my pins, I remember why I wanted to save that link in the first place. It's like a virtual scrapbook! Even better? There's an iPhone app. I spend entirely too much time re-pinning all sorts of craft ideas or projects I'd like to do with Evelyn when she's older or gorgeous kitchens I'll never have but lust after anyway...and it's glorious.