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

2014 Printable Oscar Ballot

It's Oscars Week here on Make Life Lovely, and today I'm sharing a 2014 Printable Oscar Ballot that you can use to play along during the Academy Awards and see how close you were to picking the winners!

You can play along and vote for your favorites just for fun, or you could have a prize at the end for the big winner.

If you're throwing a party or get together you don't want to miss the free printable Oscars invitations that I shared with you yesterday, plus the directions on how to make a gorgeous sparkly gold glitter envelope to put it in!

Click here to download the 2014 Printable Oscar Ballot

(2 per page)

Enjoy!  If you missed any of the Oscars fun this week, here are some of the highlights!

I teamed up with World Market to create a fun Oscars Viewing Party!  

One of my favorite ideas are these gold film reel cupcakes that are so quick and easy to put together.  When you use store-bought cupcakes, you can have these guys ready in only 5 minutes!

Chocolate covered almonds look and taste even better when they're all dressed up for the party in tiny chocolate tuxedos!  These little guys are so addicting…

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

xo, Laura

Sharing here:  Show and Tell

Disney Planes Movie Night Treats

This Disney Planes family movie night and Planes treats and craft are sponsored by Collective Bias®.

My kids have been counting down the days until the Disney Planes movie comes out, and were so excited when I surprised them with the movie and a fun movie night! I made a few Plane treats and even a little craft for my son that I'll be sharing with you!  

I love the values and the overall message of courage that is in Planes.

Without giving too much away, the main character, Dusty, has tremendous amounts of courage, despite being laughed at by practically everyone and being told that he'll never be able to fulfill his dream. Despite all of the opposition, Dusty keeps going and working hard to achieve his goal, and is kind to everyone he meets in the process. I love the lessons and values that this movie teaches! My husband and I talked to our kids about courage, persistence, and kindness after we saw the movie at the drive-in the night it came out, and shared how we should all be more like Dusty!

For our fun Disney Planes movie night, I headed out to Walmart to pick up some ingredients to make a yummy treat for everyone and a fun surprise for my biggest little Planes fan- my two year old son! He has been in love with Planes since the first time we saw it, and has all of the little die-cast Planes toys that we can find! I thought it would be fun to make him his own set of Dusty plane wings! For the treat, I made little plane cups. I made them while the kids were at school, so they were so excited when they saw them!

Disney Plane Cups:

• Cotton candy
• Colored chocolate melts
• Plane chocolate mold
• Cupcake cups (or small cups)

1. Melt the chocolate according to the directions on the package. Carefully spoon the chocolate into the plane molds, and place in the fridge for about 15 minutes until the chocolate has set and become hard. Pop out the chocolate planes by placing the mold upside down and gently shaking. The planes should pop right out!

2. Fill your cup with cotton candy, trying to make it look fluffy on top, like clouds.  

Add a chocolate airplane to the top, and repeat with the other cups.  

So easy, right? You'll notice that if you overfill your mold, you'll have a little extra chocolate on the sides of the planes. No worries, all you have to do is rub your finger along the edge where the extra chocolate is, and it will melt and smooth it out so that your edges are nice and clean. These little planes are very impressive, and yet are so easy to make! I made mine in orange, blue, white, and red, but you could choose any colors that you want, or even make them to match party colors if making these for a party.

I also made some plane suckers as well, using the same chocolate and directions, but this time using a plane sucker mold.  

These were a hit with my kids, too!

And last, for my youngest Planes fan, I made him his own pair of Dusty wings out of felt. They were a breeze to make, and require no sewing! Unfortunately my little guy was not in the mood to cooperate with picture taking (with all that chocolate around he was a bit distracted), so my daughter stepped in so I could take a picture of them. They fit perfect on him, but are obviously a bit small on her :)

To make the wings, I held up a big piece of white felt, folded in half, and measured how long I wanted the wings to be. From there I just cut the felt into a wings shape, and since it was folded that gave me the front and the back of one wing. I cut around that wing onto another piece of folded white felt to get another wing. I used hot glue to glue the front and back side of the wings together.  

I cut thin strips of orange out to fit the top and sides of the wings to match Dusty's wings. I also added the thin blue strip that has has, and traced around a round object in my home to get the black circle. I cut out the circle, and then cut the inside out and a black number 7 to match Dusty. I hot glued it all together, and within about 15 minutes, I had two Dusty wings!

You and your kids will LOVE Disney Planes! We have watched this movie countless times in the past week that we've had it. You can own it on Blu-ray Combo Pack and Digital HD on November 19! You can also follow Disney Planes on Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest to keep up with the latest news and to get some great Planes ideas to try.

If you liked this, I'd love for you to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin', and Instagram.

xo, Laura

Monsters University Cakes in a Jar

I made these Monsters University Cakes in a Jar as part of a sponsored post for Collective Bias ®.  #ScareEdu

By now, I'm sure you know of my love for all things Disney!  Disney's Monster's University came out on DVD + Blu-ray this past week, so we kicked back this weekend and had a fun movie night with the kids and watched it.  I also made some fun treats for our Disney movie night... colorful mini cakes that match Mike and Sully's colors that I baked inside baby food jars!  I just love this technique, and will share with you exactly how you can make your own!

We love surprising our kids with Disney toys, so when we bought the special Monsters University 2-Disc Blu-ray + DVD + Infinity Figure Combo Pack at Walmart, we also picked up a few Monsters U toys for the kids to add to their collections.  They already had the Sully and Mike toys, so we bought them Johnny and Squishy toys, too.  The kids loved that the Squishy toy was actually squishy and squeezable, just like the character!

You might remember these mini cakes from when I shared with you my Rainbow Cake in a Jar baked in a baby food jar.  My Monsters University cupcakes are very similar, just without all of the layers of color, and with bright colors of frosting!

Here's how to make your own Monsters University Cupcakes/Cake in a Jar for your MU family movie night...

Supplies:

• Clean baby food jars with the paper removed
• Vanilla cake mix (I just used a box mix)
• Frosting (I whipped up a batch of 7 minutes frosting)
• Food Coloring (I used gel because the colors are much more vibrant)

Directions:

1.  Make sure the baby food jars are clean and have the paper removed.  I use Goo Gone to remove the sticky residue off of the jar.  

2.  Mix up the boxed cake mix following the directions on the box, and separate the mix into smaller bowls, one bowl for each color that you would like to use.  I used three different colors- green (with a tiny bit of yellow added) to make the Mike Wazowski cakes, and sky blue and purple to make the James P. Sullivan cakes.

3.  Carefully drop the desired colors into the baby food jars, filling NO MORE than halfway up the jar. If you fill more than halfway, it's just wasting it, because the cake will overflow and bake outside the jar and you'll have to cut it off.  

For the Sully cakes, start by adding some blue cake mix, then dropping small drops of purple mix in on the sides.  I did a blue layer, then two drops of purple, then another blue layer, then two or three more drops of purple, etc. until the jar is filled about halfway up.

4.  Place the jars in the oven at the temperature listed on the box, and bake for 10-15 minutes.  Check the cakes after 10 minutes, and keep checking every minute or so after until the cakes are completely baked.  If you leave the cakes for too long, they can turn a slight brownish around the bottom, so be sure to keep a close eye on them.

5.  Remove cakes from the oven and let cool thoroughly before touching and frosting.

6.  Make your preferred frosting recipe (or use store-bought).  Split the frosting into two separate bowls.  Add some green gel coloring to one bowl, and some purple gel coloring to the other bowl.  Pipe the green frosting onto the green Mike cakes, and the purple frosting onto the blue and purple Sully cakes.

Aren't they adorable?  Your little scarers will LOVE their Monsters U cake in a jar! 

I just served these to the kids with a spoon, and they dug right in!

Except for my little guy, who had to give his favorite furry monster a big hug before licking his frosting!

These are the perfect treats for your Monsters University movie night or MU party, and they're great because they can be made a day or two ahead- just put the lids on the cakes, and wait to frost them until shortly before serving.

We had a great family movie night watching this Disney's Monsters University, and I won't even tell you how many times they have watched the movie this week!  It is a wonderful movie, and everyone in my family absolutely loves it!  

Be sure to get your copy of the special Monsters University 2-Disc Blu-ray + DVD + Infinity Figure Combo Pack at Walmart, and check out all of the cool Monsters U toys they have!  

If you'd like to try making a fun MU toy for your kids, check out my Mike Wazowski EYE-Spy bag I made for my kids, using small Monsters U toys that I bought at Walmart a few months ago!  I give complete instructions in the tutorial, so you can see how to make it here.

If you liked this, I'd love for you to follow me on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Bloglovin', and Instagram.

Happy scaring! 

xo, Laura