Toy Story Birthday

My sons are HUGE fans of all things Toy Story.  We have watched Toy Story 1 and 2 countless times, and Toy Story 3 was the first movie they saw in the movie theater.  We've had to role play Toy Story characters and they both had to be Buzz Lightyear for Halloween.  So of course for their birthday it had to be a Toy Story theme.  You can imagine my excitement when Provo Craft announced a Toy Story cartridge this past summer!  I just knew it would be perfect for their birthday and couldn't wait to get it.  Even with all the delays in getting this cartridge, it still managed to get to me on time, although my work time was cut short.  So I had to work some magic to get everything done, but I did it and I love how everything turned out.

I used my Gypsy for most of the cuts because I had to make everything a certain size and the Gyspy makes everything so easy for that!  Plus I was able to use the hide contour feature on a couple of things, which helped save an enourmous amount of paper.

This is just an overview of the kids table

I made 2 toy story signs and we taped then back to back so no matter what side you were on you could see the sign.  We then hung it from the ceiling in the middle of the room.  Hanging from the sign is the 3D alien cut.  We used a piece of a toy from my one son to be "the claw" and had the alien hanging from the claw.  He had been chosen!!

Beneath that on the table I had 2 aliens from the trio alien cut (I didn't cut out the middle one), and had one on each side of the alien in the claw pointing up, almost like they are saying "oooooohhhhhh, the claw!"  The aliens are taped to a covered up wooden block to hold them up, and there is an alien on the opposite side as well so both sides of the table had a view!

Here is a view of the whole thing together

On another wall I had Jessie, Buzz, Woody, and Bullseye.  The Happy Birthday letters were cut from the Old West cartridge.

closer view of the gang

Here are more cuts I did that we just put up as decoration.  The only thing I didn't cut was Zurg, because I needed him to be bigger than what I was able to cut.  Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head was part of the game "pin the parts on the potato heads"   I also cut out the individual pieces from Mr. and Mrs. Potato Head and then the kids had to try to stick the part where it belonged.  Zurg was a "defeat zurg" game where the kids got to throw balls at Zurg!  I made him by tracing a picture from a projector onto poster board and then coloring him in.  Then velcro sticky tabs were stuck to him for the felt balls to stick to.

This sign obviously has nothing to do with Toy Story, but I made this little sign to hang in their bathroom so it was the first thing they saw when they woke up the morning of their birthday.  All the cuts for this sign was from the Celebrations cartridge.


The boys loved all the decorations for their party and now all the cuts are in their room.  I am so happy that it worked out and they had a great party, and I loved seeing everyones reactions to all the things I made

Sports Birthday Party

What do you do when you have an all sports birthday before the Sports Mania cartridge even existed? You improvise! Boy, do I wish that cartridge was out when my boys had their 3rd birthday with a sports theme.

I bought the sports theme plates and napkins at Party City, along with the happy birthday banner. Those were my color inspirations. I then made the All Stars Brandon & Connor in publisher using the Collegiate font. I printed it out on my color printer and then cut each letter out.

For this hockey table cloth and the football one above, I used a plain green and white plastic table cloth. Then I took electrical tape in white, red, and blue to make the markings on the table cloth to look like the field/rink. The circles on the hockey rink are made out of cardstock. So are are the number on the football field. I used the font, garamond, and printed that out in publisher as well and cut them out individually.

For their birthday cake I made chocolate and vanilla cupcakes (since each son has a different preference) and decorated the tops to look like a football, basketball, soccer ball, baseball, and hockey puck (kinda). I set them up on what is supposed to represent bleacher type seating. I made those out of stacked cassette tapes (remember those!) then wrapped in white wrapping paper. The wrapping paper was the only long paper I had, but I should have used a bit more heavy duty paper.

Please excuse the messy decorated frosting job, this was before I got my cake decorating kit with pastry bags (thanks Mom!)

Other things I had were bowls shaped like a football, soccer ball, and baseball that came from Party City as well. The food consisted of ball game concession stand or tailgating type food like hot dogs, buffalo wings, peanuts, popcorn, etc.

I made the thank you notes in photoshop using digital paper from Atomic Cupcake.

I thought I had more pictures of all the other little details but I guess I forgot to take pictures of that!

I still haven't done their 3rd birthday scrapbook pages yet, but when I do I know I will definitely be using Sports Mania!