Who's Ready to Light the Grill?!

Today we have another box to share with you. This one can be used for different things, like most of our little boxes. It would be a cute place to put salt and pepper shakers at a picnic if you take out the grill rack, or as a gift box, or favor. I guess it doesn't have one specific use, which is great! I love how one cut can be used for so many different things. (The tool box for Father's Day week was the same.) I wonder what else it can be used for??
Anyway, here it is.

Thanks for stopping by!

Today's Party Trivia:
- Everyone's favorite lunch meat, Spam, was introduced in 1937. (I'm sure there's an original can somewhere...)
- The BBC broadcasted its first televised news bulletin in 1954.
- In 1996, Dolly the sheep was the first mammal to be cloned.
- Today is National Apple Turnover Day- yum!

Happy Birthday, America!

It's hard to believe that last summer we were only 10 days into our cross-country road trip and spending the 4th of July at Mount Rushmore, which was pretty cool (Day 9 and Day 10 from that trip). A lot of things have changed since then, but some things haven't, like our charcoal grilling. Ok, it's gotten a little bit better than that first hot dog experience, but still. (We are much better with a gas grill.)
Anyway, since it is July 4th and we are having a picnic later, we needed a little decoration for it! So here is our tablescape.

We wrapped the table with stars.

Our Firework Flowers

 Flag placemats with napkin rings and clothespin place cards.

Hope everyone enjoys their day off today!

Thanks for stopping by!

Today's Party Trivia:
- Unsurprisingly, today is also "National Barbeque Day" and "National Country Music Day". Sounds like a pretty good day!!
- The US Military Academy opened in 1802
- In 1862, Lewis Carroll told the story that would become Alice's Adventures in Wonderland. The book was published three years later.
- Today's flag, with all 50 stars, was introduced in 1960, ten months after Hawaii became a state

Picnic Basket and Sandwich

We have two projects to share with you today. When you go on a picnic, you need a basket and food. Well, we have paper versions of both today!

The first one is the picnic basket. It opens up and everything! I'm very excited about it. The weaving was harder than I thought it would be, but definitely worth it!

The second part is the sandwich. This was a fun project to make and I think it came out really cute! I inked the edges around to make the box look like crust, filled it with cheese, lettuce, and tomato (paper of course), and "cut" it down the diagonal. The hardest part was making my cheese slices the right size, go figure! This box was cut out small, but if it was cut to to 4.5 or 8 in, it would make a great napkin holder!

 Thanks for stopping by!

Today's Party Trivia:
- Samuel de Champlain founded Quebec in 1608
- The US first savings bank opened in New York City in 1819
- Idaho became the country's 43rd state today in 1890. Ooh, we'll be there in a few days... 

You Light My Fire!!

Happy Monday! Thanks for stopping by today. Going along with our picnic theme for the week, we have a scrapbook layout, perfect for a backyard barbeque.

This layout features the "King of the Grill", who is taken aback, to say the least. All he can do is watch as the little ants take off with his lunch!! What's a guy to do?! They're getting away with everything! Here are some close-ups of each page:

If you click on the pictures, you can view a bigger picture. You can see the little ants getting away with all of the food! The grass on both pages are also embossed and the paper is trimmed- it was just mowed ;) The clouds and sun are also inked around the edges.

Thank you and have a great day!!

Today's Party Trivia:
- The Continental Congress adopted the Declaration of Independence today, in 1776, but it wasn't approved for another two days
- In 1937, during her attempt for the first round-the-world flight, Amelia Earhart lost contact with teh ground and was never heard from again.
- Wal-Mart's first store opened for business in 1962, one month after the first Target was opened.

Let's Have a Picnic!

Happy Sunday! We hope everyone is having a nice, relaxing weekend. Today is also the half-way point of 2012- how crazy is that?! Where did the time go?? Anyway, since today is the start of another week, that means we have a new theme. This week's projects, in (somewhat) conjunction with 4th of July, follow a picnic theme. Like most of our Sunday posts, today's post is an invitation. This invitation would work nicely for any sort of cooking/kitchen party. It is a little apron:

 It's a little hard to see, but there is a little pocket, where the ribbon meets the "waist" of the apron. There is a little piece of green paper peeking out.

And there is the information. It is a bit small, but that's OK. It  wouldn't be too hard to make it bigger. The nice thing about it is that it can be designed to fit any occasion. I'd love if this was a real apron... I love the colors together!!
Thanks for looking and enjoy!

Today's Party Trivia:
- In 1874, the first successful typewriter went on sale
- The international distress signal, SOS, was adopted in 1908
- The United States introduced zip codes in 1963.
- Today is "Build a Scarecrow" Day. Have to keep them away from the corn...

Cupcake Saturday!

Welcome to another Cupcake Saturday! We hope you have had a great week and are enjoying the weekend. I can't believe it's the end of another week. Unfortunately, yesterday wasn't very nice and today isn't looking much better. But next week looks so much nicer, and I think summer is coming! To bad we won't be here to enjoy it....Anyway, today's cupcakes can brighten anyone's gloomy day and get you into a beach-y mood!

Today's cupcakes are just vanilla cupcakes with a bit of vanilla cream in the middle. Since we didn't want to make them too fancy, we decided to decorate them with fondant, medallions, I guess you can call them. They fit rather nicely right on top of the cupcakes. As you can tell, hopefully, we decorated one with a palm tree and the other with a beach ball. Not too shabby for using a knife and a cookie cutter. I'm really happy with the way the palm tree came out. It looks so much better up close, with all of the little marks on the palms and the trunk.
Thanks for stopping by. We'll have a new theme tomorrow, which will be perfect for the up-coming holiday!

Today's Party Trivia:
- In 1859, a Frenchman was the first to tightrope across Niagara Falls.
- Albert Einstein introduced his theory of relativity in an article published in 1905.
- The telephone number 999 became the world's first emergency number. It was in London.

Kid-Friendly Friday!

Here it is, another weekend! I'm really excited to share today's Kid-Friendly project. Since our theme was beach this week, we are going to make some sculpting sand. It's like moon sand, but much cheaper and really easy to make. You just need some kitchen items and sand.

Materials:

Bowls
Sand
Cornstarch
Water





We found this really cool sparkle sand at Michaels. Since we don't have any kids to use it, I didn't want to make too much, so these packets were perfect, and pretty! They also sell larger bottles and bags of single colors.

Step One:
Mix cornstarch and sand in a 2:1 ratio sand to cornstarch (ie, 2 cups of sand to 1 cup of cornstarch).

 Step Two:
Add water. You'll need about 1/2 cup for the above amounts, but add a little at a time until you reach the desired consistency.

 Here are two diffrent consistencies. The pink one didn't have quite as much water and looked more like sand. It was moldable like beach sand. The green one had more water and was actually pretty cool. It didn't look like sand, but more like oobleck. It looked wet, but didn't feel wet. And it was clean. Either way, I think kids would love it! I wish I had found this last year for my sand station at school.

 If it dries out, add a little water to bring it back to life.

Thanks for stopping by! Come back tomorrow for Cupcake Saturday!

Today's Party Trivia:
- The first European settler reached Prince Edward Island in 1534.
- In 1889, several little townships in Illinois were annexed by Chicago. At the time, this formed the largest US city in area, and the second-largest in population.
- The US Interstate Highway system was officially created in 1956.