Hot Cocoa Stand Holiday Photos

Just wanted to share the sweet little hot cocoa set I created for a holiday photo backdrop!

xo Lizzie

Little Blue Truck Party Confetti

Little Blue Truck Party Confetti is now in the shop!

Shop here!

xo Lizzie

Look What You Made Me Do Cocktail

I saw these huge gummy snakes at Target and I instantly knew what I wanted to do with them. I am a big fan of Taylor Swift and love her new song Look What You Made Me Do. The music video is filled with snakes and I wanted to make a Look What You Made Me Do cocktail!

The drink is a green apple martini rimmed in red caramel... dripping down the glass! I topped it with a gummy snake and a Look What You Made Me Do food pick!

I'll be sipping one of these tomorrow on Halloween and singing...

But I got smarter, I got harder in the nick of time

Honey, I rose up from the dead, I do it all the time

I've got a list of names and yours is in red, underlined

I check it once, then I check it twice, oh!

;)

xo Lizzie

Pumpkin Painting

My son Jude is a year old. He knows what a pumpkin is and even knows the stem is called a stem. He gets pretty excited about them! I think that maybe it is because they look like a ball or a balloon and he can beat on it like drum (he's been banging on all of our pumpkins in the house). But whatever the case, he's very into pumpkins! 

He's done sensory activities and a few have involved painting. So I knew he could handle painting his own pumpkin this year. 

I made vinyl letters to spell out his name and stuck them to the pumpkin. After he covered the pumpkin in paint, I removed them  so that the orange of the pumpkin would show through!

I pre-dipped every brush in a different paint color, so that he could just grab them and get to work! 

He had so much fun!!!

His finished masterpiece! 

I love it!!!

Happy Halloween!

Lizzie

Little Blue Truck Halloween Costume

My son's favorite book is Little Blue Truck  written by Alice Schertle  and illustrated by Jill McElmurry. He asks us to read it to him every day and it's a book that I never get sick of because it's well written and has a great message.

Since he loves the book so much, I decided he needed to be the Big Green Toad driving the Little Blue Truck for Halloween this year!

I first got to work on the Toad costume. I found green basics at Primary. I purchased sweatpants and a hooded sweatshirt. I used adhesive backed felt to create the belly and bumps on the toad. Using adhesive backed felt means that I can remove them and he can wear the pants and sweatshirt again after Halloween! The eyes of the toad are 3 inch white styrofoam balls attached to the hoodie. To attach them I cut a 2 inch circle of the adhesive backed green felt and super glued the styrofoam to the circle. Once the eye was stuck to the felt, I removed the paper backing on the felt and just stuck the circle to the hood.

With the Toad costume completed, I moved on to creating the Little Blue Truck!

My husband found this Little Tikes Cozy Truck listed very cheap on Craigslist and I thought it was perfect for what I wanted to do!

For the truck makeover, I stripped all of the sticker decals off of the entire truck and gave it a good bath. Once it was dry I covered the wheels and steering wheel with plastic bags and spray painted the entire truck blue.

I let the blue paint dry for 2 days, then I taped off the bumper and sprayed it silver.

I cut the shape of the front grill/hood ornament piece out of cardboard. I glued several layers of the cutout cardboard together so that it would be thicker and stronger. I sprayed it sliver and painted black lines on it for the grill. I attached it to the truck with 3M adhesive strips.

The truck eyes or headlights actually work! They are 2 touch activated battery operated LED lights mounted to the truck.

And the last little detail... that has nothing to do with the book... I added a new personalized license plate decal to back of the truck!

The Little Blue Truck's book cover has all of the animals piled in the back of the truck. To get that look, I tied 4 animal shaped balloons to the back handle of the truck. The balloons can be found HERE.

This was fun to make and was so happy I could do this for my son! 

xo Lizzie

DIY Pizza Party Baby Pants

Just wanted to share these pizza party pants I made for my son! I bought puffy paints ($1 for each color), and painted a pair of cheap pants from Target!

He looked so adorable at our ice cream and pizza party!

xo Lizzie

Sensory Sunday Funday: Little Blue Truck

My son LOVES the book, Little Blue Truck. So this weekend's Sensory Sunday Funday was Little Blue Truck themed!

The "mud" was actually oobleck! Oobleck is both a liquid and a solid. And it's just cornstarch and water! I used 2, 16 oz boxes of cornstarch and a little over 2 cups of water. You can play around, adding water until you get it the consistency you like. I added a little bit of cocoa powder to make it look more like mud.

This was a really fun activity for Jude! He loved pulling the animals out of the mud and "washing" them off in the little bucket of water. He did stick his feet in the "mud" and even sat in it. We had a great time!

xo Lizzie

Ghost Emoji Cookie Cutter

I told my husband I needed a ghost emoji cookie cutter... and he made me one! 

He designed it in SketchUp and then 3D printed it!

Need your own ghost emoji cutter?If you're into 3D printing (or have a friend who is), you can get the design files to print your own here: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2561645  It's free!

I had fun making these cuties!

xo Lizzie

Sensory Sunday Funday: Paint Camp

I set up a "paint camp" for Jude's latest Sensory Sunday Funday activity.

I purchased non toxic Eco finger paints. They use fruits and veggies to dye their paints!

I also bought large paint brushes that would be easy for Jude to use. He loved these Alex Toy Little Hand Funky Brushes! 

He had so much fun and I was amazed that he instantly knew what to do with both the paint and the brushes (he's only 13 months old!). I just put some paint on the paper and he spread it around with his finger and smushed it with the paint brushes.

Working on his masterpiece!

This was a great activity for him and it was well worth taking a few minutes to set it up nice for him!

xo Lizzie

Union Hill Farms In Denville NJ

 I took The Babe to Union Hill Farms in Denville, New Jersey to pick flowers. They have a decent sized patch filled with colorful zinnias of various sizes. They charge 35 cents a stem... which is awesome! They give you clippers to cut your flowers and you just bring them back to the farm stand to be counted. We also picked up fresh veggies on our way out!

I had to make a few stops before going home with our flowers. Some of the flowers broke. I just floated them in this heart shaped dish so that they could still fulfill their flower arrangement destiny!

Zinnias are so colorful, gorgeous and fun to arrange!

xo Lizzie

JT's Birthday!

My husband's birthday was a few weeks ago and we had a little fiesta on our deck. It was just him, me our babe, a lot of take out and some jar cakes. It was a really nice night!

 Fresh strawberry lemonade!

His birthday cake consisted of Milk Bar's birthday truffles and jar cakes from Jars By Dani!

Happy Birthday JT!

xo Lizzie

Sensory Sunday Funday: The Refreshing Rainbow Spaghetti Dig

I have started doing sensory activites with my son, who is now 1 year old. This one was hugely sucessful! He LOVED it! We played for over an hour and he was really into it.

For this, all I did was cook 3 pounds of spaghetti (3 boxes)... let it cool, and then divide it into ziplock bags. Once I had the pasta in the bags I added a few drops of food coloring to each bag. I shook the bags until the color was mixed in well.

After they were mixed, I placed them on cookie sheets and let them sit for about 30 mins,to let the dye dry and absorb into the pasta. This way it doesn't stain baby's hands!

Then I put the spaghetti back in the bags and into the fridge. We were playing outside and I wanted the spaghetti to be nice and cold for him to play with.

Once the spaghetti was cold, I put it in a shallow plastic drawer/container. I wanted him to be able to sit and play.

 I hid a few of his favorite small toys in the spaghetti and gave him differnt spoons and kitchens tools to play and dig in the spaghetti.

When he was done playing, I bagged the spaghetti and put it the fridge. We will get at least one more playtime with it!

This was such a wonderful activity for him, I am so glad I did it!

xo Lizzie

HGTV Magazine Block Party

Monday I hit up the HGTV Magazine Block Party Social Media Mixer in NYC! It was a fun, colorful afternoon and I had such a great time!

Coffee, notebook... I was ready to listen  and soak up the knowledge and insight presented by  HGTV's awesome lineup of guest speakers.

Those stairs!

The best part of the event for me, were the talks given by Sam Ushiro of Aww.Sam and Joy Cho of Oh Joy! Annnd I got to talk to them both!!! It was wonderful to meet two of my favorite creative people!

HGTV put together a great event!

xo Lizzie