Diaper Cake with Bonus Wreath

I made a diaper cake (or as we call them, nappy cakes) for someone Mr. PP works with and another co-worker asked if I would make one for her as she wanted to give one to a friend of hers. She provided the basic materials, and we all get to benefit! Isn't that ribbon cute? I love the gender-neutral colors! Anyway, they are SO easy to make so I thought I would share the basics, although if you google the term, you will find a ton of great ideas! You can leave them plain like I have here, or embellish by tying and poking in all kinds of things a new mother may need. Here are the things you need although you will probably need more than one package of nappies- I used one and a half for this cake:
Were you wondering what I was doing with all the random kitchen vessels? They were all the sizes I wanted for my cake and it is so much easier to use a "mold" than to try to tie them all together without one!
To begin, take your nappies, 1 at a time and roll them up tightly and secure it with some tape or a small rubber band. Then place them in one of your round "molds". Oh! I forgot to include "tape helper" in the materials shot. As anyone who has ever wrapped a gift can attest to, a "tape helper" is an indispensable tool. It's one of my daughter's favorite jobs.
After you have squished enough in, tightly tie them all together with some ribbon or twine.
Continue the same way until you have all of your layers made:
Then, the fun begins: Tie your ribbon around the layers to hide the twine and embellish as you please. This one was left plain for our friend to finish but there is something nice about "simple" I think.
I did add a few flowers because they were so yellow and happy making.

BONUS: I had a half of a package of nappies left over from the cake project so I made a wreath with the left-overs. These are even easier! The best wreath form for these are simple cardboard ones. You can trace one you already have or just trace around round objects you have around the house. The outside diameter of this one is 10 inches- they will be quite a bit larger (and heavier) when you get the nappies on so keep that in mind when you choose your size.
You will need some lengths of skinnier ribbon for this as well. So, to begin, wrap your nappy around the form and tie a ribbon tightly at the top. In hind-sight, I think I would have faced the white side toward the front instead of the printed side.
Overlap your next nappy by about half and do the same as the last and so on and so forth.
To make an easy hanger, just staple a ribbon to your cardboard form and cover it with a nappy.
So simple and really easy to embellish with sample sized baby products, small toys, feeding accessories, the baby's name, etc. I love these because they're easy, they always turn out and you can tweak them to fit any baby shower theme and gender! Plus, these make easy, useful shower decorations. Have fun creating! I'd love to see what you do/have done so hook a girl up with photos and links!

Linking to:

Ribbon Flag Hanging

I saw this idea on the FamilyFun website and had to try it. It looked simple and you know what? It really was! Here's what I used:First cut the ribbon to the following lengths:

Red: four 14 1/2 inches and three 24 inches
White: three 14 1/2 inches and three 24 inches
Blue: seven 10 1/2 inches

Then, glue your blue and shorter red and white ribbons together with about a half inch overlap. Using an American flag as your guide, glue all the ribbons onto your 12 inch stick. I used a dowel but they suggest using a paint stick which, in hind sight, would have been better and easier. I found it helpful to weigh it down with books while drying. After it's dry, add a length of blue ribbon all across the top for a more finished look. To finish, even the ends out with pinking shears and glue your "stars" on. I decided to use 13 buttons like on the original flag. I tried to make some finials for the dowel using clay... um... there's a reason there is no photo of that ( the key word being "tried"). You can weight the ribbons by gluing pennies or buttons on the bottom backs of the ribbons, but I liked the way it looked blowing around in the breeze. Add ribbon to the top to hang, and that's about it. I love FamilyFun. They have the best projects/games/ideas for any day your kids are claiming they're bored. Although, when my daughter claims boredom, I usually just apologize for having such boring toys around and tell her I am happy to get rid of them all. She usually can find something to do after that!

Smurfday Party- part 1- Decorations

My sister had a birthday in February but was living across the country with plans to move back here in the summer. She really wanted these Smurf mushroom house sets (she is in her early thirties, but used the excuse of being a teacher for wanting them... she's just always loved the Smurfs) but didn't want the hassel of having them sent there only to have to move them back so we ended up doing nothing for her birthday. Well, summer arrived and we were so excited to have her home again, we decided to throw a "smurf-prise" Happy Smurf-day Party to welcome her back and to celebrate the birthday we weren't able to earlier in the year. Note: it is WAY easier to make a surprise party for someone when they don't even know there is something to celebrate. We ended up going really overboard with the theme and it was a total success! It has been a secret for so long, it is nice to finally be able to talk about it. The decorations were started early in the planning process- my poor hubby has been living with smurfs for weeks now. Here are some highlights:
Smurf Wreath
I cut out a wreath form from a heavy-duty cardboard box and gathered the supplies (basically, a rotary cutter and some coordinating smurfy fabrics. The fabric was cut into 2 inch strips and wrapped around the wreath form tying simple square knots to join the fabric strips together carefully keeping the knots on the front. Afterwards, my sister's old Schliech Smurf figurines from her childhood were tucked into the knots. My mom spent hours meticulously cleaning each one and they looked great! A hanger was attached by threading ribbon through an over-sized button and that was it. Fast, easy and smurf-tastic.Life-sized Smurf Diorama
As everyone knows, smurfs are 3 apples high. I wanted to invite a few to join in the festivities so I scoured the internet for images of our favourite characters, blew them up to the desired height and printed them out on cardstock. Well, that WOULD have been easy-peasy except for the fact that we ran out of colour ink so we ended up fixing the half-colour ones and just flat-out colouring the rest with coloured pencils. That took a bit longer. My 6-year-old really helped out and did such a great job colouring- she did Brainy here all by herself! To make them stand, I attached them to clear baby food jars. Then, I just free-handed a mushroom house and a little bush to really make a proper diorama. I think the results were smurf-a-rific!Happy Smurf-day Banner with Crepe Paper Rosettes
I could not believe how much the "Cuttin' Up" Cricut font cartridge looks just like the official smurf font! Totally lucked-out there, so I HAD to make a big banner. The sides looked a bit plain, so that issue was remedied with Crepe Paper Rosettes. Here is a pictorial tutorial (hey, that rhymes!): If that was confusing (I think I'm confused and I'm the one who made it) you can find better instructions HERE and HERE. I love these because you could use them for so many things like awards or hair accessories, etc. AND you can make them as plain or as fancy as you want to.

Sooooo, getting back to the party; The gifts were all wrapped up in smurfy colours as well (and they were all smurf stuff). Like I said, we went WAY overboard with the theme and to hit the point home even further, there will be smurf-day posts the rest of the week - YAY!!!