DIY Party Mom

Shindig Saturday Weekly Linky Party #43

Hubby's been out of town this week for training and I've been thinking alot about how hard it is to be without him.

Unfortunately, it hasn't always been that way. There was a time when we lived apart for a year with only occasional visits. That was hard, but I learned to just do it all.

I think we've both grown a lot since then and I've realized that I don't always need to do it all.

That was a hard realization for me.

I like to do it all.

That way I know it gets done...and (most of the time) done right.

But I'm learning to let go and let hubby be my partner.

So with him being gone, I'm struggling a little.

And missing him a lot.

Maybe with that thought in mind... or that fact that Valentine's is this week...

but my printable is a little personal to me today.

This picture was taken a few summers ago when we went to visit Nauvoo, Illinois and stopped to visit the temple. I am LDS and in my religion, in our temple, we can be married forever in temples.

This is My Happily Ever After...

Since it's obviously, not yours...here's a picture with the saying on the Salt Lake Temple.

I hope you all have a wonderful Valentine's day.

Show us your newest party or fun creations by sharing your favorite party themed craft, table scape, photo, favor, or whatever! I'm pretty flexible since just about everything can be used at a party...that's the great thing about us moms! We can see the potential in ANYTHING!

Linky Party Guidelines:

* Link up to your OWN project post, not just your blog, but your actual post. (We want to see it!)
*Grab a Shindig Saturday button for your post or blog page. (Hey, it benefits us all!)

*Stay and enjoy the party by visiting and commenting on other's projects. (It's fun to mix and mingle!)

Lifesaver Candy Tray

This Christmas I saw the most amazing idea of making serving trays with candy mints by Tutto Bella.

Since then, I've been looking for ~~an excuse~~ a reason to make some of these myself.

I thought a Valentine candy party would be the perfect place for these sweet trays.

It took me a couple of tries to get the system just right. I wanted the lifesavers to melt together, but not be indistinguishable as to what they were. (I was looking to try and have the "lifesaver" writing on it still visible.)

I found it best to unwrap the lifesavers and place them in your design on a cookie sheet topped with ALUMINUM FOIL (wax paper didn't work for me).

I did have to use my papered chef sheet so that it wouldn't shift around in the oven. (I guess I have old cookie sheets that are getting warped.)

I baked my tray at 325 degrees for 5 minutes and that seemed about right to get the design and still melt the candies together.

Once they are melted together, take the tray out of the oven and let it cool for 5-10 minutes.

I took my aluminum foil off the cookie sheet so it would cool faster.

When it was done, I sprayed it with a sealer to keep the lifesavers from getting "yucky."

These trays are VERY fragile, so you need to be careful with them.

But they look so cool.

I loved them so much, I decided to make a few coasters out of the lifesaver trays too.

Since they are so fragile, I'm going to run to Home Depot today and get some cork board to put on the back. Hopefully, that will help them stand a little more use.

In the meantime, I'm going to make a few more of these Lifesaver serving trays since they are just too fun.

Kiss Lips Chocolate Covered Oreos

I spent the day working on orders and was so excited to take a break when I got these amazing oreos molds in the mail today!

They are kiss lips shaped oreos for the double stuffed oreos and smaller chocolate oreos for the mini size!

I am donating these oreos to a fund raiser this weekend, so I've added this Lips candy topper to some of the oroes.

And I've added the Kiss candy topper to others.

We'll see which ones are more popular.

But either way, they are super cute and I'm so excited to be able to offer them.

Valentine Candy Party Invitation

I have 2 teenagers in the house with several more that come over on a pretty consistent basis. I LOVE it! I love having a houseful and enjoy the laughter and fun that is here.

So I was trying to come up with a Valentine's party that wasn't "too mushy" and didn't focus on love and couples for the holiday. So I decided to throw a party that was focused not on the heart part of Valentine's, but on the candy and sweet part of it.

So this week's party will be a Candy themed Valentines!

I loved the candy themed invitation we did for our M&M chocolate party last year, so I decided to do another one for this Valentine's party.

The invitation says:

There are many REISENS I want you to be mine for you always make me SNICKER and be JOLLY which makes me BURST with JOY! Join us for MOUNDS of fun. (party information) Say you'll be a SMARTIE and come. CONVERSATIONS welcome at (phone number)

I printed out the invitation card onto cardstock, added my party information and then tied it to a bag of candy with curly ribbon. Inside the bag there are Reisens, Snickers, Jolly Ranchers, Starburst, Almond Joy, Mounds, Smarties, and Conversation hearts.

If you want to have your own Candy themed party, here's the invite free printable!

Shingid Saturday Weekly Linky Party #42

I'm taking the Perfectionist up to Denver today to High Jump in the USA Track and Field Indoor Championship meet. He's super excited and I'm super "un-thrilled" about the prospect of driving to Denver. If you missed it, they've been slammed the last few days with snow. But as a parent, I think you do some dumb things sometimes to make your kids happy.

You see, he really is pretty good at High Jumping, so I'm driving 2 hours to let him jump.

But I'll tell you a secret...I LOVE to watch him jump.

He just takes my breath away watching him do it and knowing he can totally jump over me!

I guess that's the crazy mom part of me showing through.

I am SUPER proud of him and excited to see how he'll do.

So this week's printable is one that I found on pinterest, but I didn't pin it...and now I'm kicking myself. So I had to make my own, because it sums up how I feel about ALL my kids.

So what has taken your breath away this week?

Linky Party Guidelines:

* Link up to your OWN project post, not just your blog, but your actual post. (We want to see it!)
*Grab a Shindig Saturday button for your post or blog page. (Hey, it benefits us all!)

*Stay and enjoy the party by visiting and commenting on other's projects. (It's fun to mix and mingle!)

Love Bug Valentine Lady Bug Dinner Party

Since my Hubby is going out of town on Monday for 2 weeks and will be gone for Valentine's Day, we decided to have a dinner party tonight to celebrate the holiday as a family.

So we chose to have a Love Bug Valentine party based on Lady bugs.

It was a pretty simple set up with a red table cloth and black table runner down the middle.

Each place setting got a red charger (on Clearance right now at Walmart from Christmas), a white plate, and a red dessert plate.

I'm super excited about how cute the silverware turned out.

I purchased some black silverware from Walmart and used a pencil eraser and red paint to put red polka dots on each of the silverware to go with the theme.

I used some black napkins and the water bottle labels from my Lady Bug printable collections as napkin holders.

Plus, each plate got a special treat consisting of our Love Bug candy topper and a bag filled with Lady Bug Oreo cookies.

The center of our table had more treats inside our Lady Bug cake party favor boxes. (Lots of yummy M&Ms for the boys who stop by after!)

The salt and pepper Lady Bugs were a fun find at Dollar general last summer and I am so glad that I found and actually bought them!

Plus, I scattered York Peppermint Patties with the free lady bug printable I shared yesterday for a little bit of fun along the table.

I used the Lady Bug cupcake wrappers to wrap some blueberry muffins since my family LOVES these.

I also had to include the Lady bug Jello Jigglers I made from the football mold.

And ALL the boys have been drooling over the Lady Bug cake balls all week. I had to hide them so they would make it to tonight.

It was a simple dinner party, but turned out really cute.

You can purchase any of these and more Lady Bug printables in our store HERE.

Lady Bug Peppermint Patties Free Printable

Sometimes all it takes is a little thing to make a big impact on your party dessert table.

I purchased a case of these York Peppermint Patties from my local Sams Club and added a simple lady bug sticker to the front.

The sticker is a 1.5 inch size and completely covers the front of the patty making it look like a little bug. I plan to use these cute bugs as decorating accents and sweet treats around the party tables in my lady bug party.

If you want to try, here's the free printable.

If you're interested in other sizes, you can get them from my online store HERE. The ladybug is available in Hershey kiss size (3/4 inch), 1 inch, 1.25 inch, 1.5 inch, 2 inch, 2.5 inch, 3 inch, 4 inch, and 6 inch.

Hopefully, that will cover all your party treats in any size.

Simply print them out onto sticker paper and use an appropriate size punch to cut the ladybug circle out. Pretty simple, but awesome!

Lady Bug Jello Jigglers

There are ALOT of really cute Lady Bug food out there if your planning a Lady Bug party. I've been looking at so many lately trying to get ideas for my dessert table that I'm surprised this idea didn't come to me sooner.

When I was a child, we had Jello at our Sunday dinners. My mom was the pro at making those jello rings with fruit inside. It was one of my favorite parts of the meal.

I don't know why I have never really made Jello with diner before, but recently I "rediscovered" the joy and yumminess. (Is that a word?)

And so have my kids...so we've had Jello alot recently. Yesterday as I was making it for dinner, I had a brainstorm.

Why not use my football jello jiggler mold (you can see it in action at last years Superbowl party here) as a Lady bug?

So I got busy making some strawberry jello jigglers.

When you pop the jigglers out of the mold, I REALLY recommend placing the mold in a little bit of warm water to help release it. In my case, I used some VERY warm water and it melted the NFL and Jello designs off the sides of the helmet.

When I went to the store this morning, I bought some of this sparkle gel to try and make the dots on my ladybug, but it turned out BAD....really Bad. Like this bad...

He looks a little like a porcupine...a masked porcupine. Maybe he's a Superhero in disguise...if so, then he has a problem with Kryptonite or something because after 10 minutes, he looked like this...

A pretty sad ladybug.

So instead, I filled the cap of a decorating bottle with cool whip.

(I didn't fill the whole thing because it was a "little" difficult to get the cool whip into the bottle and I didn't want to waste any that could be eaten later.)

I used the cool whip to add dots on top. Then I added ovals on the front for eyes and a little half circle for a smile.

I wish I could have found some of that Chocolate cool whip at my store, but I'm not sure if they even make it anymore. The darker color might have made it look less like a porcupine and more like a ladybug, but what do you do?

And I'm not sure my party guests will even care!

After all, who doesn't love jello in whatever shape it comes?

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