An Indoor Beach Party For Elmo's Birthday

Elmo's Birthday is February 3rd and we decided to throw him an indoor beach party to celebrate!

 Jude and I decorated a plain cake from Wegmans (our favorite grocery store). We used blue frosting, gummy candies, graham cracker crumbs (for the sand) and a few bath toys (they were clean!).

This adorable tote is from The Land of Nod.

Vintage sand toys.

Our indoor beach party! Jude LOVED this and played for hours! We will be setting up the indoor beach again, it was a big hit and such a great way to kick those winter blues!

Kinetic sand is less messy for indoor play and still a great sensory activity!

 Vintage Sesame Street toys.

Happy Birthday Elmo! Jude loves you!

xo

Jude's Mama

Christmas Red Truck Footprint Craft

Just wanted to share the Christmas footprint craft I made with Jude. Our holiday card photos were taken in a red truck so I thought this twist on the Christmas tree footprint was perfect!

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

DIY Gold Animal Balloons

A few months ago I shared an image of these gold safari balloon animals that I made for a shower. I was flooded with messages asking how I made them. I figured I do a quick blog post to help others who want these pretty animals for their shower.

Using gold animals for shower decor is pretty popular right now. When I was planning my event, I was looking for simple gold mylar safari animal balloons. They didn't exist. Then I saw these inflatable zoo animals at Oriental Trading and thought a coat of metallic gold spray paint would make them exactly what I was looking for!

All I did was spray paint them, and they were perfect!

xo Lizzie

Peter Rabbit Garden Cake

I put this cake together for Easter and thought I'd share it since I know Beatrix Potter and Peter Rabbit themed baby showers are very popular right now!

I didn't bake the cake... I just decorated it. I took a Chocolate Malt Layer Cake purchased from MILK BAR and decorated it with a fondant Peter Rabbit and royal icing veggies.

xo Lizzie

Jude's Nursey

Before we even knew the gender of our baby, my husband and I had a good idea of what we wanted the nursery to look like. We wanted it to be happy, colorful and playful. We didn't want a theme nursery and we wanted something that could grow with him and his interests.

We found the Oh Joy bedding at Target and thought it fit perfectly with what we had in mind. Then we found toys and accessories that we just really liked and when we put it all together... we LOVED the end result!

I painted this airplane shelf to match our nursery colors.

I decided to use this ABC Dresser from Pottery Barn Kids as a changing table.

My husband and I each painted a canvas for the nursery. My husband did this space picture, and I did a lion.

For the shelves over the changing table, my husband spray painted the hardware with neon paint and then cut wood boards.

This spaceship night light above the changing table is one of my favorite details in the room! 

He also spray painted this basket to use as a diaper caddy.

When I saw Honest made a space theme printed diaper, I had to get them!

We purchased cordless blackout roman shades, which I thought were a little too plain. I decided to create my own window treatment by hanging a string of felt balls over the windows with wooden cloud pegs.

This space ceiling light turned out to be a great pick... our son loves it! He is always staring up at it!

I also painted the fronts of these bins. I felt they needed some color :)

The book shelves are actually spice racks from Ikea!

This is the lion picture that I painted for the nursery!

Jude's nursery is now my favorite room in our house. It's filled with lions, elephants, airplanes, books, and all the colors of the rainbow. I can't wait to see what he decides needs to be added to it! 

Below is a source list for some of the items in Jude's nursery.

xo Lizzie

Dot Bedding - Oh Joy

Dot Wall Decals - Oh Joy

Airplane Shelf - Becky The Builder

Cloud Pegs - La La Loves Decor

Rug - PB Teen

Navy Pouf - Land Of Nod

Aqua Hamper - PB Teen

Book Shelves - Ikea

Space Ship Night Light - Lighting By Sara

Toy Bin Shelf - Land Of Nod 

Rocking Lion - Steiff

ABC Dresser - Pottery Barn Kids

Lolly Crib - Babyletto

Wooden Name Sign - Moon Snail Creations

Pillows - PinkNouNou

Navy Pouf - Land of Nod