Friday-Last prep day.

I have almost everything done, except the cardboard 40.  I have waited till the very last minute and now I want to throw it in the garbage.  I think I'm tired.  

I can't get it to look pretty like Oh Happy Day's tutorial.  I don't have the crepe paper to make the fancy decoration, and I've come so far that I can't just stop and not follow through, or can I?  Chad's asleep and I am very jealous.

I decided to switch up the decorations and cover it up in scrapbook paper and pictures instead.

My floor at the moment:

There's still the sides to do and a few more pictures to put on.  

Hopefully I will be able to get done and still have some time to rest before the big party tomorrow.  

Wednesday-A big 4-0.

Today, I am making a big 4-0 out of cardboard for my parents 40th Anniversary.
 I saw this on Pinterest:

It is on Oh Happy Day's blog.  She tells you in great detail how to make this which leaves you believing that it actually might be possible to pull it off.   I mean just look how fun that looks!  This 25 is supposed to be a pinata.  I wasn't sure if that was where I wanted to go with it, but I knew it would be a great addition to the decor.   Pinterest has a way of thinking you can do anything.

I found scrap cardboard from Costco, it wasn't as big as the picture from Oh Happy Day, but I got over it, reluctantly.

I left the rest up to Chad.  I would enter the scene again for the decorating part.

Gotta love him.  I will decorate either tomorrow or Friday.  

Tuesday-Pictures

Today, is day 4 of the party prepping.  I have decided to devote it to pictures.  

My dad has always been a huge fan of enlarging photos.  One visit to my parents house and you will notice the poster size pictures that are hung around the entire house.  I went around his house and counted the number of photos my dad has enlarged.  As of today,  April 30th 2013, he has 41 enlarged framed poster size photographs. 

F O R T Y - O N E !!

Normally when you frame photos for hanging around the house, you pick the best one.  If you're going to enlarge a photo to 24" x 36", the photo is better than the best, otherwise why make it gigantic?

My dad does not agree with that statement.
There are many photos that one or more of us have scowls or are just not happy to be photographed at that moment, and he chose to enlarge them anyway.  

Sorry about that rant.  My point is, with my dad loving photographs so much, I wanted to do something special with the photos I've managed to find of my parents.  This involved going through many many photo albums and weeding through the thousands of family photos that are in there.  I managed to find 200 photos of them where about 90% were just them. After scanning them, I wasn't sure what to do with them.  Scouring pinterest didn't seem to help much.  There were so many photos, I wasn't sure what to do short of a slideshow, and even then, it would have to be really long to add all the photos.  Of course, I did have the option of cutting some pictures out of there, but this is 40 years of memories, I didn't want to short change them.

Sometimes I stress out about trivial things, like photo collages.
I finally decided on a photo mosaic.  I took one of their wedding photos as the base, and using this great website, Easy Moza, I was able to create an awesome mosaic for them using all the 200 photos.
You can download a hi-res photo of what you created for $5.95.  Channeling my dad, I enlarged the photo to 24" x 36" at Costco.  Make that 42 poster-size photos in his house now. 

Monday-Banner

So far I have tackled the centerpieces for the anniversary party and the samosas.  Doesn't seem like a lot when I write them down, but they took up one day each!  Monday was devoted to decorations.  I saw this post on Pinterest and decided to replicate it.  It's from meandmyinsanity.com.  

Out came the Silhouette machine again.  I made the letters a little thicker than this, and I opted to not add their names to the banner.  RAMAN & MRUDULA was a little long.  So instead my banner just reads Happy 40th Anniversary.  Figuring out where to hang it on the deck is a different story.  I'll leave that part up to Chad.  

The Silhouette did a good job cutting the letters.  I used some glittery paper I had.  I just have random stacks of scrapbook paper for just such an occasion.  I would hate to have a brilliant craft idea and not have the paper to back it up.  

Saturday-Centerpieces.

I have tentatively planned out my week of prepping for the parents 40th anniversary party.  Today was devoted to centerpieces.  I saw someone break down 10 years in the number of months, weeks, days, etc. and put in on a canvas.  I decided to see what would happen if I tried to etch the breakdown of 40 years on glass.

Here are my tools: 

I bought 5 vases from the dollar store and the adhesive stencil film and etching cream from Michaels.  Originally the film is $10 and the etching cream is $23.  Kind of pricey, considering I bought the vases for $1 each.  (But a little FYI, if you ever find yourself in Michaels about to make a purchase, always check online for coupons.  Practically every week Michaels puts out coupons for 40% off one regularly priced item.  I actually looked it up on my iPhone while I was in line, because they will scan the barcode right off your phone!  I got lucky because not only did I find the 40% off coupon, but there was an additional coupon for 40%  off any regular priced Martha Stewart crafts.  You'll thank me one day when you want to be crafty).

I had recently bought a Silhouette Cameo.  This is a machine that looks like a printer, but instead of ink, it uses a little blade to cut your designs.  It's a pretty awesome concept, but I haven't had much time to play with it yet to truly see it at its best.  I brought it out for this project. I cut out a 12 x 12 piece of adhesive stencil, made a stencil with the Silhouette and attached it onto the vase.

The only problem with the stencil was taking out the negative space for the letters and numbers and attaching it on the vase so that they would be able to be etched properly.  I had to take out the little pieces with a tweezer and attach it on every o, e, a, 4, 6, 8, etc.... that was the most time consuming out of this project.

The etching cream looked like caramel. The directions say to apply a thick layer on the glass and leave on for 15 minutes.  Then rinse off.

And this was the end result:

Not bad.  I did notice I should've paid more attention to the consistency of the cream, made sure I applied the same amount over the whole thing.  As you can see the 40 is a little splotchy.  Well, I have 4 more to go, I'm sure it'll eventually get there.  I did have a panic moment while the etching cream was setting.  I had to make Chad double check my math and make sure that really was the breakdown of 40 years in months, weeks, days, hours, and minutes.  Phew, it was.

 Overall looks pretty good.  Some flowers in there, and we've got our centerpieces.

Bean balls. Yes, bean balls.

On one of my many insomniac nights I stumbled on this website that got my attention. With great blogs like that I can skip through the instructional text and just jump right to the pictures. In a nut shell, Creek Bed Threads was telling me I can go from this:

to this:

with beans and a hot glue gun. Seems simple enough, so I decided to give it a try. I went out and bought a styrofoam ball and some white beans and on another insomniac night I began the tedious job of glueing beans onto a styrofoam ball:

At that point, I realized it was going to be quite the commitment to glue all those little beans onto the big styrofoam ball. I started a movie and got to work. One hour into it, I almost quit. I was a little discouraged, not only did it take me one hour to do a so little, but it was also looking a bit shabby:

I wasn't sleepy yet, so I decided to keep going. Two hours later:

And then I thought: Did I really just spend TWO hours hot glueing beans on a styrofoam ball?? I wasn't even done. I decided that it was not ok to be awake hot glueing white beans on styrofoam for longer than two hours (fine I did it for three, but no longer than that, honest!). But I did note that it was starting to look ok.

The next day Leah came over and was quite fascinated by the whole thing, she took over the task of finishing the ball....

Not bad...a couple more different sizes, different beans, and I've got a centerpiece. Why do things like this make me happy? I'm such a dork.