Disney UP Themed New Beginnings Program

I was recently asked to put together a program for the 12-18 year old girls at our church called New Beginnings.  I decided to go with a Disney UP themed evening after seeing these two fun programs here and here, and because it's a lot more fun for everyone when have a great theme!  Many of the ideas I used came from these two sites, and many I came up with on my own.

I wanted to share what I did with you, because a lot of these ideas can be applied to any UP themed party, whether it's a birthday party, a baby shower, bridal shower, etc… the sky is the limit!  ;)

The photos taken from that night were taken at night in a church building when I was scurrying around trying to make everything perfect, so please keep that in mind :)

I bought some sky and clouds butcher paper from here that worked perfectly as a backdrop for the evening and the decorations.  I have a large PVC stand that my husband and I came up with for our party backdrops, and it worked perfectly with the cloud paper!

I found the cute picture of Russell, the boy from the movie, and added the words "It's UP to you to Come Unto Christ."  This is one of the ways that I tied the UP movie theme to our Young Womens New Beginnings Program.

I made Russell's little Wilderness Explorer sash and badges, too, just for fun, and will be sharing an easy tutorial soon on how I made it!

The girls each got a small bag of colorful gum balls with the same Russell picture and words as the above sign.

I love this easy garland I put together for the program using Party City paper fans, these Pixar Retro UP Poster Art prints, and some string.  It added a lot of color and added to the overall UP theme, too.

All of the leaders helped me out and brought some delicious treats for dessert!  I forgot to push the table back up against the sky paper until halfway through the night, so ignore that little space in between the table and the paper.

One of my favorite decorations of the night were the brightly colored paper mache houses I spray painted in bright pastel Krylon spray paint colors.  I used the colors Blue Ocean Breeze, Gum Drop, and Satin Meringue to paint each of the 6 houses.  

I attached balloons to all of the houses, and used some on the houses on our main table, and some as centerpieces on the round tables we used.  

Because I didn't have enough houses to use on each table, I also used grape Crush soda on the other tables, with balloons tied to them, UP retro style posters leaned up against them, and paper fans lying by them on the table.

I feel like the evening was a great success, and everything went really well.  The girls, leaders, and parents all loved the theme, and it was a lot of fun to put together!

Oh, and I almost forgot… here's one of the photos I put on Instagram taken at church, when I passed out the girls' invitations.  They LOVED them!!  I designed some cute invitations with a house on them floating with tons of balloons on the top, and a blue sky background.  I attached the invitations to each balloon (that I filled up during the second hour of church), and passed out to the girls at the end.  I wanted them to get excited about coming, and I think these balloon invitations did just that!

xo, Laura

Sharing here: Show + Tell

Creative Oscars Party Ideas + Film Reel Cupcakes

I am a member of the World Market Trendsetter Tribe.  This Oscars Party is brought to you by World Market as part of their Movie Lovers Sweepstakes. As always, all opinions are 100% my own.  #MovieLoversSweeps

Don't you just love watching the Academy Awards?  Whether you watch it to critique the fashion and style on the red carpet, to catch a glimpse of your favorite actor or actress, or to see if your favorite movie wins, there is something for everyone!

I've been busy creating some great ways for you to enjoy the Oscars this year with family and/or friends by throwing an Oscars viewing party!  I'll be sharing tons of fun food, drink, invitation, ballot, and decorating ideas for you party to be amazing and worthy of the red carpet!

To get ready for my Oscar party, I went shopping where I always go to prep for a party- World Market!  World Market so many great dishes and party essentials that are perfect for entertaining, as well as lots of gourmet food and drinks from around the world.  

The first thing you need when prepping for an Oscars viewing party are invitations.  I created these free printable Oscar party invitations for you to download, print, and pass out to your party guests!  

I created them to look like tickets, and in this post I show you how to make a glittery gold envelope to put them in.

Once the invitations are passed out, it's time to go shopping for food and some party dishes!  I wanted this party to look great, but be easy to put together. 

One of my favorite finds at World Market was this retro popcorn maker, which looks amazing, and is just perfect for the Academy Awards since the movies and popcorn go hand in hand.  

World Market also sells some cute paper popcorn boxes that perfectly match the popcorn maker…. gotta' love that! 

I wanted to serve cupcakes to match the theme, so I decided to go with some gold film reel cupcakes made from licorice wheels.   

The wheels look like film reels, especially when you unroll the end just a bit.  I originally saw the idea here, but I swithced them up a bit.  Here's how I made them: 

Gold Film Reel Cupcakes:

Supplies:

• EDIBLE gold spray paint (from the craft store)
• Store bought or home-made cupcakes
• Licorice wheels (from World Market) 

To give the edible film reels some sparkle and shine, spray them with edible gold paint.  Spray the wheels and top of the cupcakes with the gold paint just like you would with regular spray paint.  You might need a couple coats of paint on the licorice wheels.

Place one "film reel" on the top of each cupcake.  I just love the way they turned out!!

Another fun treat to serve are these tuxedo chocolate covered almonds.  They are so impressive to serve, but I promise they aren't as hard as they look to make!  

Simply start with some World Market chocolate covered almonds, and follow the directions in my tutorial to make the cutest little almonds, all dressed up in a suit and tie.  You're basically just painting on a white triangle for the shirt, a tiny black bow tie, and a couple little dots for buttons with chocolate bark or melts and a toothpick.

I found these small tuxedo boxes that were perfect for holding treats for guests!

While watching the Oscars you have to have a little bubbly, so I picked up some of my favorite orange mango passion fruit Italian soda and mixed it with ginger ale for a delicious drink that looked amazing in the Madison champagne flutes.  These glasses look amazing, and would you believe that they only cost $1.99 each?  You can bet that I stocked up!

To decorate make my food table, I spray painted some regular tickets from the party store (originally green) a pretty gold color, and attached them to the front of my cake plate and serving platters with tape.  I also used some metallic gold shreds on a platter to hold the drinks.  Both of these decorations added a lot to the table without taking a lot of time and effort or costing a lot of money.

When your guests arrive for your Oscar party, you can have them fill out this free printable 2014 Oscar ballot and make their picks for the top categories of the Oscars.  

They can do it for fun, or you can always have a prize for the winner at the end of the Academy Awards!  A fun prize would be an assortment of some of World Market's delicious and unique chocolate bars.  Their strawberry and champagne and sea salt dark chocolate bars are soooo good!  The blood orange milk chocolate bar is next on my list to try.

Are you a movie lover too?  World Market is giving away FREE movies for a year ($1600 Fandango gift card), plus a $1,000 World Market gift card!  Be sure to enter World Market's Movie Lovers Sweepstakes for a chance to win the grand prize package.  There are also three awesome runner up prizes which include a $500 Fandango gift card and a $500 World Market gift card!  

You can earn bonus entries for liking World Market's Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumblr brand pages for more chances to win.  Good luck!

If you liked this project, please follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin', and Instagram.

xo, Laura

Sharing here:  Show and Tell

Free Printable Oscar Party Invitations + DIY Gold Glitter Envelopes

Most award shows are hit and miss for me, but I LOVE watching the Academy Awards.  From analyzing the dresses, makeup, and hair hits and misses on the red carpet, to rating how funny the host is that year, to guessing who and what movies will win, I love it all!

If you love it all, too, then you're in luck!!  This week on Make Life Lovely it's all about the Academy Awards.  I've got tons in store for you this week, including free printable Oscar party invitations, fabulous food ideas, free printable ballots, easy Oscar party decoration ideas, and a complete Oscar party table spread using some amazing finds from World Market.  I can barely contain my excitement!

I designed some lovely free printable ticket invitations for you to download, print, and give!  Whether you enjoy a casual get together with friends and family, or love throwing a lavish party for the occasion, these invitations are perfect!  There are four invitations per page.  I print mine at the office supply store so I don't use up all my black printer ink!

These invitations are part of my Oscar Party I created with World Market.

Download Free Printable Oscar Invitations

(These invitations are for personal use only, and are available for free for all followers of Make Life Lovely.)

The only way to make these invitations even better would be to add some gold glitter, so I made some easy gold glitter envelopes that take these invitations over the top!  If you want to add a little glitz and glam to your invitations and party, you have got to try making these!  

And did I mention that each envelope literally will take you one minute to make?  I used an awesome tool called the Envelope Punch Board, made by We R Memory Keepers.  I saw it in action at CHA last month, and just fell in love with it.  It's a simple yet powerful tool that helps you easily and quickly make envelopes.  Here's how…

DIY Gold Glitter Envelopes:

• Gold glitter paper (I found mine at Michaels)
• We R Memory Keepers Envelope Punch Board
• Paper cutter or scissors and ruler
• Adhesive

1.  Measure your card size, and look on the punch board to see what size to cut your paper.  Cut your paper to the correct size.  My Oscar invitations are 4" x 5," so I cut my paper to a 7.5" x 7.5" square.

2.  Look where it says "score line" next to the paper size on the punch board.  

Line up the left edge of paper to the score line measurement.  Punch down to create a notch in your paper, and use the scoring tool to score the paper (which will make it easy to fold).

3.  Turn the paper counterclockwise by 90 degrees, and line up the score line to the blue score guide.  Punch and score.  Repeat on all sides.  

Round all of the corners using the reverse punch, which is the back side of the punch that you already used.  Fold and glue.

Isn't it beautiful?  

Wouldn't you love getting one of these beauties in the mail?  Your first envelope will take a couple minutes to make, but after that you can make an envelope in one minute, which is very cool.

You can also download these free printable Oscar ballots for your get-together or party as well!  Just check off your top picks on the ballot before the show, and see how many you got right.  You can also turn it into a contest and have an award for the winner if you'd like.

These tuxedo chocolate covered almonds go perfectly with the the Oscar theme, as do these gold film reel cupcakes that use store-bought cupcakes and are SO easy to put together!

You can see all my party ideas for the Oscars viewing party I created for World Market to get more ideas for your party, too!  Happy planning!

If you liked this project, please follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin', and Instagram.

xo, Laura

Disclaimer:  I was given an Envelope Punch Board.  As always, all opinions are 100% mine!

Sharing here:  Show and Tell

Jungle Safari Birthday Party

Last month I put together a very fun jungle safari birthday party for my little guy who just turned two years old.  I LOVE the way that everything came together, and I wanted to share some of the details and photos of the party with you!

This is part one of the jungle safari party, which will mostly cover decoration and food. You can find part 2 here, where I share the games and activities, outfits, the cake, and more fun details about the party, including free printable safari passess for the kids!

The African jungle safari party was soooo much fun.  I tend to go overboard on my parties, and love to DIY everything, which worked out really well for this theme.  My son loves animals, so my inspiration for the party was the jungle cruise at Disneyland.  I wanted the look of an old vintage safari camp, complete with wood crates, old signs, lanterns, etc.

One of my favorite elements of the party was the Safari Expedition Base Camp, which was the first thing that guests saw as they came in through the back yard.  This is where the little explorers were able to spend their tickets that they were given on supplies for their safari expedition.

Does this structure look familiar?  You might recognize it as my DIY Lemonade Stand made from 3 wood pallets that I created.  I gave it a little makeover- a new coat of tan paint, a new burlap awning (instead of the pink and white striped one), and some jungle safari accessories (like lanterns, binoculars. signs, magnifying glass, butterflies, snakes, etc.) all helped add to the theme.  Fun, right?

Supplies included cute DIY binoculars (tutorial here) that I made out of toilet paper rolls and duck tape (you can check out other ways I decorate for parties with duck tape here), safari expedition passes to go around their necks that I created, and little frogs and lizards and snakes.

The mosquito bites were free (see on the sign above?), which some of the adventurers weren't excited about!  After a little reassurance from me that it was just a joke, they were ready to move on to the rest of the party ;)

To add to the whole jungle atmosphere, I stuck lots of tall bamboo plants right into the grass for the party, and it made areas of the lawn look nice and lush.  I painted some of the David Tutera butterflies I had left over from my DIY mason jar lanterns and DIY candles (made in toilet paper rolls).  They were originally white with little pearls on them, so I took off all of the pearls, and painted each butterfly with bright colors of paint.  The butterflies already had clips attached to them, so it was easy to clip them right onto the bamboo and other areas of the party.  I love the color that they added!

The food tables were a lot of fun to set up.  I used a lot of burlap, nets, crates, wood bowls, and woven Pottery Barn boxes (not sure what they are made out of)- all natural, and brown and green.  

I used some old distressed wood that I had and stenciled the "Tyler's Safari" sign, the "Base Camp" sign, and a "Beware of Tigers" sign.  I also stenciled the above crate with the word "Fragile" that the cake went on later in the party.

I served nachos, salad, a lot of fruit (regular and dried), and had a candy area with green candy all in apothecary jars.

We have a bird of paradise tree and a palm tree in our front yard, so I cut off tons of huge, green leaves, and laid those out over parts of the food tables.  I also wrapped some Pottery Barn wheat grass that I had (the little square of grass in the back) with some of the leftover David Tutera burlap from my DIY mason jar lanterns.  

I found this amazing elephant dish at World Market, and had to have it- the perfect dish to hold peanuts!  

I created these "Do not feed the animals" bags to hold peanuts or candy by printing directly on the paper bags... tutorials and template coming soon!

If you follow me on Instagram (@makelifelovely) you might have seen the amazing globe that I scored for only $5.99 at Goodwill!  I bought the crates at Michael's and Jo-Anns, and found the ball of jute rope (that is actually a doorstop) at World Market.

I was so busy with the party that I missed getting some pictures, so you're only getting a little peek of some of the candy and treats that I served in jars and wood bowls.... "worms" (gummy worms) "sticks" (pretzels), animal crackers, "alligator eyes" (sour apple rings), Eiffel Bon Bons (left over from my World Market Lemonade Stand), dried papaya, "fried ants" (raisins), etc...  The kids LOVED this area of the party the most!!  All of the amazing apothecary jars are from World Market as well.

I got some incredibly cute little kraft colored bags from Wholeport that have a sealable top, and put zebra and leopard (or is it cheetah?) duck tape around it for instant little candy bags.  The kids filled them up with their favorite treats, and carried them around with them throughout the party.

No jungle safari party would be complete without monkey food, right?!

My little birthday boy.... what a cutie :)

Thanks for letting me share my son's jungle safari party with you!

Be sure to check out part two of this jungle safari party that shows you the outfits, the games and activities, the cake I made, and free printable safari passes you can use if you plan a jungle safari party!  What's your favorite birthday party theme?

If you liked this project, please follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin', and Instagram.

xo, Laura

Linking Up Here: Tidy Mom, 30 Handmade Days, Whipperberry, Tatertots and Jello, A to Zebra Celebrations