How awesome is this?!?

Since it's the summer and my son is at home with me, I decided to try to find a couple things for us to do. I took my son to the library to get his first library card. While I was there I noticed a room called Innovation Studio so I wanted to see what it was. I soon realized they had a 3d printer that was free to the public. If you make cookies, then you know what my first thought was.... COOKIE CUTTERS!!! The problem was I had no clue where to even start to try to make one. After doing some research, I stumbled across a site called Cookie Caster. This site is AWESOME!! It actually makes the cutter file for you!! Since I have a 40th birthday platter coming up next week, I decided to make a 40 cutter. I found an image I liked online and opened it in Photoshop. I am sure this can be done in other photo programs as well,  but I am only familiar with Photoshop. I found the easiest thing to do was to "black out" the image. Here is the original image I wanted to use:

It does have that little crown coming off the side, so I had to fix that but if you know your way around Photoshop, its no problem. Here is what it looked like after I blacked it out:

This is the image you want to bring into Cookie Caster. All you have to do after you import it is click the magic trace tool and then click on the black area. It will automatically trace the image and you will be able to preview what the cutter will look like! If it looks okay, click download 3d file. This is the file the library needs in order to make the cutter. 

To make things even better, my library offers to make your item for you so you can just send them the file and they will contact you when they have finished it. They had gotten a grant to purchase the printer and the supplies, but the supplies just ran out so they are now charging $1 per item. I will gladly pay $1 to save myself from hand cutting any day! 

Here is a picture of the finished cutter:

and here is a picture of a cookie made with the cutter. Please forgive the messiness of the cookie. I iced it real fast because I was heading out the door. 

Needless to say, the library now has about 15 cutter files to print for me. I am addicted! :) 

So if you need a quick cutter, check with your local library to see if they offer this service. My friend also informed me about this site so if your library doesn't offer this service, you might be able to find someone close to you that does. 

Under the Sea 2nd birthday party!!

My daughter recently turned 2 (Where does the time go??) and we decided to have an Under the Sea themed party! I usually start planning for my kids parties months in advance and really feel like I dropped the ball on this party with that. I had to cram everything into the week of the party, but I still think it turned out pretty good.

I am sure the first thing you notice when you look at that photo is the cake!! The cake was done by my friend Misty of Misty's Cake Box. I got to help a little with the cake and thought it was a lot of fun but that was only because Misty had done most of the boring base work when I started helping. We found some help on how to make this cake from The Artisan Cake Company. This cake was huge! Here is my daughter standing next to it so you can see just how big it is! 

Of course I had to have cookies... and I had a ton of them! I always do! I feel like you can't go to a party hosted by someone that makes cookies and not have a ton of them there! My family and friends love my cookies and they don't get them that often... so I try to make up for it at the parties. I had to try to keep them fairly simple and quick, so I used my airbrush for a lot of them.

If you have seen my posts before about my parties... you have probably noticed I like to have games. This party was no different. I had three. One was called Pin the Fin. I just took the image from my daughters birthday invitation and blew it up on a poster. I taped the posted to foam board and made a few fins. The older kids were blindfolded but we let the younger ones just put it on there.My daughter loved it! 

The prize for this game was a small bag of goldfish with a bag tag I made to match the poster.

The second game was Drop the Shark in the Tank. I found the idea for that game here. I couldn't find the pins she used so I just had to improvise. 

The prize for this game was a package of shark gummi snacks I found at Kroger. 

The last game was sort of a last minute thing (since I waited so long to get started on her party). I just found a little fishing game at my local Dollar Tree and let them play that. I called it Catch the Sea Creature. 

The prize for this game was a cup of water and 2 of those little capsules that disintegrate and have  those little sponges inside. I had the sea creature themed ones. 

The kids were also able to make sand necklaces. I have lots of different color sand and the kids got to choose which shape necklace they wanted to make. 

I made tags for all the food as well. I only got a chance to take a photo of the dessert table, but for the food we had Octo-dogs (hot dogs cut to look like octopus), Sand dollars (Chips for nachos), Shark Teeth (mozzarella cheese cut into triangles), and we even had boiled shrimp and crabs! 

The beverage I made for the punch dispenser was Ocean Water. Everyone seemed to like it and said it tasted just like the one from Sonic. 

Here are a few items from the dessert table:

and we of course had goldfish snack crackers too.

For the party favors, my husband and I made these

 they are soap with little fish in them. I followed the instructions from here to make them but ended up modifying a little as we went along since we found things that worked a little better for us. 

The party was a swim party and this suit just screamed mermaid so I had to get it! I got Kajun Monograms to personalize it for me.

I had taped sea creatures to the ceiling of the carport and also bought a small bubble machine and had that going throughout the party.

Overall, the party was a success and my daughter and all the other children that attended had a blast! 

If you want to check out last years Candyland party, you can find it here.