Small Moments Big Joy: parties

A while back I pinned - this - pin on Pinterest. (Boy, that could be a tongue-twister.)

I waited anxiously for an opportunity to re-create that awesome display.

We decided to throw our pastor's wife a surprise birthday party, so THAT was my opportunity! :)

I was able to find black-and-white polka-dotted balloons at Hobby Lobby, so it wasn't hard to gather my supplies together. If I hadn't been able to find polka-dotted balloons, I was going to buy black balloons and draw dots on with a white paint pen.

This is how mine turned out:

The wall color doesn't match too well, but there wasn't much I could do about that. ;)

Here's a close-up of one of the balloon flowers:

I created the flowers by blowing up the balloons, and then attaching each balloon to each other with a long string. The string was long enough so that there was room in the middle for the black balloon. (I wish I had taken more pictures of the step-by-step process, but I was in a hurry and didn't have time.) A string attached to the black balloon was tied to the middle of the other strings. Then I attached the flower to the wall using tape and thumb tacks. That whole thing was very unscientific. ;) I just taped and pinned until it stuck to the wall. Of course I was pinning and taping the strings, not the balloons themselves. ;)

It was a little more nerve-wracking than I expected it to be, getting the balloons to lie still and not bob and roll everywhere while I was attaching strings, but I just persevered until I got it to work.

Everyone was suitably impressed with the balloon flowers. ;) Our pastor's wife loved them and the party.

It was fun having something besides 'just balloons' at a party. Give them a try! People will be impressed with your creativity. :)

My baby just turned ten. She plans for her birthday parties for months in advance. :)

Frozen yogurt bars are all the rage these days, and one day while at one I got the idea of doing an ice cream bar for her birthday party. It turned out very well, and was a lot of fun.

To simplify things I decided to have only vanilla ice cream. Then went with a variety of toppings.

I found the little ice cream sundae cups at a local party store. It was less than $2 for a package of 12, and they worked perfectly for the toppings.

Our topping choices were sprinkles, cherries, walnuts, almonds, mini M&Ms, mini chocolate chips, jelly beans, crushed cookies, coconut, sour gummy worms, bananas, strawberries, chocolate and caramel sauces and whipped cream.

I dumped the ice cream into the glass bowls to make a more attractive display.

I was so excited to find these waffle bowls at Aldi:

They may have been around forever, but I'd never seen them before. So much easier than a waffle cone, and so much more fun than plastic bowls.

Instead of getting a traditional cake to go with the ice cream, she decided on cake pops. I was trying to figure out a way to display them, besides simply putting them in a jar or vase. I decided to buy a styrofoam ball, and stick them through that. I found one at Hobby Lobby that was already cut in half, so that worked perfectly.

I used an ice pick to make the holes first, and then pushed them through. She was wondering how she was going to have candles to blow out, so I thought I'd just stick those into the ball, too.

I had thirty cake pops, and I thought those would completely cover the ball. Surprisingly, I was wrong. It ended up with quite a bit of the ball still showing. Next time I do this, I will paint, or otherwise cover, the ball first. I would have painted this one black or hot pink if I had known it wouldn't be completely covered.

I found the two feathers at Hobby Lobby and thought they would add some oomph to the display. :)