Octonauts! Birthday Party

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Explore! Rescue! Protect!

Octonauts!

How To Create Your Own Octonauts  
Themed Party

It's been a while since I've posted anything on the blog, so this is a bit of a flashback.  Well worth it, nonetheless!  We did an Octonauts theme for my son's 4th birthday celebration.  For those of you who don't yet know the Octonauts, they are creature guardians of the seas- a fairly new addition to the Disney channel & Disney Junior channel.

In researching party ideas, I found quite the lack of anything Octonauts available in the U.S. and found many other mommies voicing the same disappointment online.  I took this as a challenge to get creative!

 

I was able to find a few choices on Etsy for party invitations, but nothing was quite what I had in mind.  So I used a template for a party invitation in Word, added my info, & copied and pasted an Octonauts image I found online into the pre-made template.  Printed, stamped and mailed.  I really do enjoy the old snail mail method for party invitations.  Besides, who doesn't feel extra special to receive a fun party invitation in the mail?

Also on Etsy, I was able to connect with Julie at CakesAndKids who does amazing & adorable work with fondant!  I approached her about doing some "Octonauts Inspired" cupcake toppers & boy, did she deliver!  I would encourage you to take a peek at her shop on Esty CakesAndKids, as she really does have something for any type of party one could imagine, and she was lovely to work with.

For more Cupcake toppers, I found some more Octonauts images online, copied & pasted into a word document, printed them out on cardstock, cut them out & taped them to striped paper straws.  The straws were also ordered from an Esty shop and were fairly inexpensive.

     

    

    

The food was a special creative challenge and treat!  

I did quite a bit of surfing online and found some great inspiration for underwater themed parties. 

 

First, I made some heart-stealing & adorable Oyster Cookies.  I used store-bought shortbread cookies, pink frosting inside, yogurt raisins for the "pearl", and ready-made eyes in the cake decorating aisle.

Also, I made a trio of bell pepper octopus on plates of dip, with black olives for eyes. Another snack was a stalk of celery, dipped in peanut butter to "fish" for goldfish crackers on a plate.

The most substantial snack we offered was "mini-sub" sandwiches.  To make these I made simple sandwiches (with deli meat and sliced cheese) on hot dog buns, bendy straws for the "periscope", and cheese cubes on toothpicks inserted along the sides to look like portholes.

Since Octonauts party decorations are non-existent, I printed some coloring pages that I found online and strung them together with ribbon to make a banner.  Also, we hung some green paper streamers to look a little like kelp.

Below are the coloring pages I used:

 

 

 

Homemade: Fresh Organic Peach BBQ Sauce!

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 I love barbeque sauce. Love.  So when I came across a recipe in my inbox for peach BBQ sauce I was all over it.  Our tiny peach produced it's largest crop of peaches this year.  We had to fight the squirrels for our harvest and ended up splitting the crop with the squirrels 50/50.  Even still, it was quite a haul for us.  Our peaches were still on the tiny side, but were sweet, juicy and delicious!

The following recipe is quite large as I wanted to can quite a few jars. This recipe, yield: 6 pints

You could certainly half the measurements for a small batch.

Ingredients:

• 5 lbs fresh organic peaches
• 2 organic white onions
• 3-4 cloves garlic (I like a lot of garlic, but prepare your sauce to your own taste)
• 1 1/2 cups organic brown sugar
• 1 tsp cayenne pepper (This gives a nice little kick of an aftertaste- again, to your own taste)
• 4 tsp paprika
• 3 tsp sea salt
• 3/4 cup apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 balsamic vinegar
• 5 tsp molasses

Instructions:

1. First blanch the peaches and remove the pits.  To blanch the peaches put them in boiling water for 60-90 seconds, remove with a slotted spoon and immediately submerge in ice water.  Drain and remove the skin with your fingers or a paring knife.  Discard the peach pits (at this point when I glanced down at my pile of peach pits I had the urge to indulge in a 90210 marathon... Get it? Peach Pit?).
2. Next, puree the peach flesh, onions and garlic in a food processor.  Combine all ingredients in a pot and simmer, loosely covered, on medium heat for about 20 minutes.
3. Then, prepare/sanitize jars and lids.  You could do either pints or half pint jars as you prefer.  I chose to do a combination of both.  Ladle the sauce into the jars and process in a hot water bath for 25 minutes.

Recipe adapted from: simplebites.net

A Perfect Disney Wedding Gift

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Disney Love

 

As children, my sister and I grew up going to Disneyland. A lot. Our grandparents bought annual passes for us and Disneyland is where we spent time on weekends, after school and summer days.  When we look back on our childhood, we think of Disneyland- if not the simple, innocent magic of all things Disney- as a dear childhood friend.  It isn't often that I meet someone, as an adult, who shares this experience and unique Disney fondness, so when I do we find a special kinship.

Pictured above is the wedding gift I made for a friend who shares my kind of Disney love.  A one-of-a-kind simple, handmade, heartfelt gift that is full of Disney-style imagination and whimsy!  I searched the web and found this image 

 on the website dailyembroidery.com.  I know myself well enough to know that I am no match for embroidery, so I adapted a bit.  I saved the image to my computer and enlarged it a bit.  Then, I placed a piece of parchment paper over the screen and traced the outline of the image.  Next, I pinned the parchment paper "pattern" to a piece of scrap fabric and stitched embroidery floss directly over the pattern.

When the stitching was complete, I simply- gently- tore away the parchment paper.  I found a frame at Hobby Lobby that couldn't have been better suited for this project!  The frame looks to me like something that would be in Mickey or Minnie's home in Toon Town in Disneyland!

The frame was on sale 50% off of $19.99, the fabric was a scrap and the embroidery floss cost about $1 per color.  Total project cost: around $12.00!! 

The Sew Simple Vintage Pillowcase Skirt

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Oh, how love the cheerful patterns of vintage fabric!  I swear I was born a few decades too late.  When I daydream, I dream in Technicolor, and when I shop at thrift stores, I always peruse the linens hoping to find vintage sheets.  After all, isn't a bed sheet just a length of fabric?  Why not use it as such?  And- bonus!- a pillowcase has already had most of the work done for you!  All you will need to do is make one cut and add a waistband!  Easy breezy.

Here is my favorite way to use, and enjoy, vintage pillowcases:

Step 1:

Locate the already professionally hemmed opening of the pillowcase.  This will become the bottom of your skirt.

Step 2:

Turn the pillowcase inside out and hold it up to your body to determine the length you would like your skirt to be.  Fold over the excess fabric and be sure to account for 1-2 inches (depending on the width of elastic you use) the will be lost when you create the waistband.

Step 3:

Cut the excess fabric.

Step 4:

The right way to do it: 

Fold over about 3/8" of the raw edge of the fabric and press.  Then fold over another 1" or so of fabric (I folded 1" since I am using 3/4" wide elastic), press and pin.  This will be the channel for the elastic waistband.  Sometimes it is helpful to lie your elastic on top after pinning to be sure the channel is wide enough.

The I just wanna slap this skirt together because I want to wear it out tonight way to do it:

Just leave the edge raw and fold over the 1" or so, press and pin.  Hey, when I'm in a hurry, and the skirt is just for me, I don't really care about a raw edge on the inside.

Step 5 :

Measure your waist where you would like the waistband sit and subtract 2 inches.  Then cut your elastic this size.

Step 6:

Stitch around the waistband channel, leaving an opening about 2" wide where you will insert the elastic.

Step 7:

Attach a large safety pin to one end of the elastic and thread it through the waistband channel.

Step 8:

Overlap both ends of the elastic inside the channel, pin and stitch it up.

Step 9:

Wear it out!!

Feel free to respond to the shower of compliments with a sugary: "Oh, this old thing?  I just slapped it together this afternoon..."

Neatball Subs!

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What a surprisingly pleasant experience it is the cook up a huge batch of "neatballs" and not have the tell-tale grease stank linger in the kitchen all night!!  The little buggers turned out great, and even got the hubby's stamp of approval :) 

I doubled the recipe and froze half.

Ingredients:
1 cup cooked short grain brown rice
1 - 16 oz can drained/rinsed red kidney beans
1/2 cup favorite salsa
1 tsp fennel seed
1 tsp dried basil
1/2 tsp dried oregano
2 cups marinara  
1 1/2 cups shredded mozzarella
Hoagie rolls 

Put the rice, beans, salsa (yes, salsa...  I thought this was weird- I mean why not marinara, these are Italian flavors, right?? Turns out the salsa works pretty well here), and spices into the food processor and mush it all up.  It's amazing how much this mixture really does look (and feel) like meat at this point.  So much so that even though I knew it wasn't, it still grossed me out a little.  Maybe I'm just traumatized from so many years of having to touch real meat...

Next, put a little olive oil in a large skillet and heat over medium heat.  Cook up the neatballs, turning until all sides are goody and crispy.  Remove from the skillet and put on a plate lined with a paper towel to drain.

Heat the broiler on the Low setting and toast your buns for 2 minutes.
Remove the buns and add 3 neatballs to each, top with a couple spoonfuls of sauce and some shredded mozzarella.  Return to the broiler for 3 minutes. Consume.

 

Recipe adapted from: http://www.thecoloradowave.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=61&Itemid=70