Make a wish, Annika!

Check out my shirt and fun hairdo.

Pinwheel party time is over but the pinwheels are still spinning around the house. We had such a lovely time!
 Here is Annika in the shirt and headband I made. Already stained with berry juice and pizza! Annika loved all of the attention at her party and made the rounds sitting with just about everyone.

Aunt Susan made the cake. There are three layers forming a Neapolitan cake. I made the pinwheels and the pennant banner name. I love that cake!  We all loved eating it with Neapolitan ice cream (well, separate half gallons of each flavor).

Did I mention that I spent a late night plus some extra hours creating a pinwheel photo-op structure?  We had an extra large piece of cardboard lying around so it was an easy paint-up job. This is Annika with Maddison and Audrey.

The games were fun. Apparently Audrey and Maddison spent some time talking with their mom before bed about the fun they had. "All the games had pinwheels!"  Talk about your greasy heart- that's mine- all happy and greasy. :)  Annika did pull out a few of the strings on the pinata and then she watched the older kids swing the bat around. It didn't take long to bust it!

The pull-string failed but the baseball bat got the job done!

Morning after rainbow fruit (with no raspberries).

 Oh, if only I had the photos of the food!  I just never got around to it on the day of the party. We hollowed out this gynormous zucchini that we accidentally let get to be too large to eat. Steve wanted to let it make it to the compost pile with dignity but I said no way. We halved it, hollowed it out and then filled it with cut veggies. It looked really cool and almost yin and yang like on the tray. Next to it we had a deep dish pizza pan loaded up with wedges of fruits in a rainbow of colors. Steve forgot to buy blueberries but the effect was still quite awesome. We had leftovers so we enjoyed the rainbow the next day except that raspberries were a favorite with my oldest daighter and her friends so they were missing. But you get the idea!  Pinterest got me hooked on the idea but the pictures I saw were not done in a circle.

Annika's birthday pinwheel cake on her actual birthday.

Check out this site for the recipe for this cake roll. It was fantastic!

Pinwheel party prep

My baby girl turns one on Sunday and I am twirling, whirling, wheeling.  One year? I can't believe it.
I decided on a pinwheel theme with pennant banners, AKA bunting decorations, too. Pinterest became my new best friend throughout that decision process and on into the specifics.

Examples of the invites minus the party specifics.

I made pinwheel invites/announcements that actually spin!  My favorite part.  We want Annika to be swirled in wishes and hopes and dreams and not necessarily mounds of gift. So we asked people to send or bring their wishes; we want to create a pennant banner decoration for her room and eventually turn it into a quilt.  How to make this happen is still plaguing me!

Emma's and Annika's shirts

I followed The Copycat Crafter to make a bday shirt for Annika.  Her instructions link to The Pinwheel Bib on another blog for the instructions on how to make a fabric pinwheel. BUt it also has another idea! A whole bib with a pinwheel. So great I had to do it- all. :)

Finished bib

So I decorated a onesie for Annika, a shirt for Emma (per her request), and made a birthday bib.  The bib has a purple PUL back fabric with a layer of thin cotton batting in the middle since the top fabric was so thin. I used a pattern that came with the PUL book but made it a bit smaller to fit the birthday girl.

A pennant banner name for the cake topper had to be done so I did it using scraps from the stained glass bunting made by following the artful parent site instructions.  Emma helped grate some crayons and made most of the sprinkled creations.  (I did the ironing  and sewing part.). Can't wait to see them in action!

I tried to tear off the wax paper rectangles into roughly the same size sheets. So after folding and ironing they were then about the same size. To make sure I ended up with similar sized triangles I marked one side of each completed sheet at 3 inches and 9 inches (the wax paper is 12 inches wide) along one edge.

Then along the opposite side I made a mark at 6 inches (the center).  With a pencil and a ruler (for a straight-edge) I connected the left corner to the 3 inch mark and from there to the center. Then from the center to the 9 inch mark and then up to the right corner. I cut on the lines and voila!  Due to some variation in the length of wax paper sheets torn off the roll, some triangles were a tad shorter or longer than the average. That just added interest!

SO now I had a huge stack of triangles to create the bunting plus some extra pieces. I sewed two chains of 12 each, one of 13 and one of 17 pennants.  I added the words "happy birthday!" to the 12 pennant chains, centering the letters as best I could. I used the leftover scraps to make a mini-pennant banner for the cake that had Annika spelled out.


I have cut out a lot of squares and made diagonal cuts in order to make pinwheels.  A lot.  We might play "find the matching pinwheels" game.  And color or draw a pinwheel contest.  Sidewalk chalk and triangle stencils are the preference if the weather is nice.  Pinwheel corn hole anyone?
At the last minute my hubby make a corn hole game with some extra plywood we had lying around. I bought some fabric to make bean bags and made some quick pinwheel bags. First I cut rectangles out of the pink and purple (4 each) accounting for a half inch seam on all sides (to end up with a finished square about 4x4 inches). Sorry, no details on measurements. Oops. Anyway, I folded the rectangles right sides together and stitched along two sides and part of the third, leaving an opening for filling the bag with small white beans.

Here you can kind of see the seams and open edge.

I weighed out 5 ounces of beans per bag using our kitchen scale.

Then I sewed the opening closed by top stitching. Since they are only for a game I didn't worry about making the seam pretty with hand stitching it closed to hide the stitches. This way was very fast!

Couton

Couton rhymes with coupon and crouton. It came about completely by mistake this past Sunday when I was clipping a coupon from the slick section.  What is a couton?  Well, it is similar to a coupon in that it reduces the overall cost of something. In this case the cost is calories to ones body.  It is like a crouton in that it is crunchy and you sprinkle it on food such as salad.  Some people are known to eat them just for their crunchy yet oily, tasty flavors. 1 bag of coutons hold the salad.

Or take this example of a typical order a your favorite national chain restaurant:  I'd like the Cobb salad but with no peppers, onions, cucumbers, avocado or tomatoes.  keep all of the luncheon meats, hard boiled eggs, add extra cheese and wirh full-fat ranch dressing on the side.  Oh and please add coutons.

Here is the thought process behind that order: okay, Hmm, what do i want to eat?  i should probably watch what I eat so maybe I will order a salad.  Cobb salad sounds nice. Oh but I can't eat peppers because they give me indigestion. I hope to kiss my significant other later so scratch the onions. It is not cucumber season; ugh, they probably came from somewhere south of the border.  Guess that's true for the tomatoes and avocados. There is nothing like a CA avocado...Okay you can't have everything. Focus. Think about the salad.  What else?  I feel like meat! Okay, all the meats sound good and the egg but maybe more cheese for color. And mmmm...ranch but not the watered down crap. Okay, that all sounds good. Hmm, maybe it is a little too fatteneing, better add some coutons to counteract all the protein and fat!  Alright. 

Out loud: okay, I know what I want!

Oh, couton. If only you could enter our lives and sprinkle our salads with delightfully sinless crunch!