a simple baby shower favor (for nesting mamas)

I'm going to keep this one short and sweet: bird's nest baby shower favors! Stock up on a couple of things after Easter, and you'll be able to make a whole grouping of nests for guests.

You'll need:

• edible Easter grass (made from potato starch; it doesn't taste very good. I found mine at Target.)
• speckled candy eggs
• parchment paper
• cellophane bags
• cardstock
• vintage-style labels (I like these)
• stapler + staples
• scissors
• pen

How to:

Take each bag of edible Easter grass and separate it carefully into five sections, one for each nest. Shape a round nest on a square of parchment that will fit inside a cellophane bag. After slipping your nest + parchment into the bag, pile six or seven candy eggs into the nest. Cut and staple cardstock tags over the folded bag tops, then cover front staples with a vintage label. I put the word "nesting" on the front, and on the back, "candy eggs * edible nest" as a little fyi.

These turned out so cute, I know I'll be using them for future showers as well! Thanks for stopping by to check out this sweet little project.

candy airplane party favors

A big "thank you!" to the blog Sewing Mama Raeanna for inspiring this fast and easy party favor.

Supplies list:

• Wint-o-green Lifesavers 

• rubberbands

• Smarties

• sticks of gum wrapped with scrapbook paper and washi tape (for decoration + sturdiness)

Thread a rubberband through two Lifesavers. If your rubberbands are tiny, you can link two or more together.

Insert a stick of gum through the looped ends sticking out of the Lifesavers.

Insert a roll of Smarties into the space between the gum (wings) and the Lifesavers (wheels). The rubber band will hold everything in place.

Repeat as necessary!

More Flying Machines Party projects:

Hot Air Balloon Pull-String Piñata

Airplane Crayons from Molds

robot party favors + bags

Time for more robot party fun! Today, I'm going to show you the party favors we put together for the kiddo's third birthday party. (You can find the robot cake post and a piñata post here and here.)

The favor bags are really simple. You'll need some silver-colored bags with handles, and some of this paper tape from the stationary aisle at Target.

I also used the circles I cut out of the party invitations (post coming soon!) cut in half for the eyes.  No tutorial required, just some glue dots (for the eyes) and scissors.

I had planned to use googly eyes on these, but some of the guests were under three years old. You can make all of your bags look the same if you want; I made each of our robot favor bags different.  Fun and smiley!

We left the bags mostly empty except for these sticker sheets from Amazon and some robot erasers from the Dollar Tree. (Several of the kids tried to eat the erasers [thinking they were candy] so I'd nix them if I had it to do all over again.)

The kids collected other favors for their bags during the party, like these wind-up robots we found at Eugene Toy and Hobby locally. You can find them in a local toy store too, I'd bet, or you can get them on-line (I'd skip the wind-up robots at Oriental Trading Company though. We'd ordered a box and half of them were missing pieces or didn't walk, and the rest broke really easily. Ditto the replacements they sent.).  

I made this silver-glittered Play-Doh using some party packs of Play-Doh I picked up after Halloween. 

I made the silver color by mixing the following colors with silver glitter and dividing into five containers: 2 white, 1 black, 1 green, 1 purple. 

To finish them off, I taped each one with the paper tape and labeled them with a fine-point Sharpie.

To make the robot candies, I found a robot candy mold  and cast three different recipes: gummies (using this recipe from Skip to My Lou; you can see the blue mix cooking in that photo above), chocolate butterscotch, and chocolate peanut butter (both by melting chocolate chips with either butterscotch chips or peanut butter chips).

I designed the packages in Adobe Illustrator, and stapled everything together with green staples.

The jelly bean packages were easier. I bought mixed beans in bulk and separated out the yellow/green/blue ones.

If you want a copy of the PDF file so you can print your own wrappers, leave me a comment below or send me an e-mail, and I'll get a copy to you.

With most party themes, there's a way to mix handmade and store-bought party favors to maximize budget and really personalize. The trouble I ALWAYS have is knowing how to plan my time well so that I'm not frazzled by the time the party rolls around.

Any time management tips? How do you narrow down party ideas and decide what to leave out?

Thanks for reading!

(p.s. you can make these images larger just by clicking on them, but you probably already knew that. clever you!)

rainbow cupcakes

Prior to The Real Deal (my kiddo's crazy birthday cake), I played around with this cupcake design to build my confidence a bit.

The result:




And not that you need the play-by-play (this one's pretty self explanatory), but here are a few shots in-process for you.

Frost the cuppies in a pastel-y turquoise blue frosting (I think I'll dip-ice them next time, for a smoother, more uniform top).




Using a piping bag, add a fluffy cloud of white frosting to either side of the cupcake top.




Cut a strip of this Air Heads Xtremes Rainbow Sour candy into two pieces. Each piece will be the rainbow on one cake. (I found this specific candy at Target in the dollar section at the front of the store.)




The rainbow candy strips have a tendency to list to one side when warm; I think refrigeration prior to and following cupcake assembly might help them remain upright. Something else to try next time!




This is a cute, easy project for little kids to help with, too! Older kids can probably even handle piping the fluffy clouds. Enjoy!




(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)


Linking Up To:


I Should Be Mopping the Floor

gingerbread house

We built this cute little gingerbread house using a kit from Wilton. I think we might pick up a kit from Trader Joe's next year, as they're a few bucks less and a little more unusual-looking, but this one came out pretty cute, with the addition of a ton of chocolate chips. Babies are not awesome gingerbread builders, but they do make decent tasters!


(p.s. you can make these photos bigger by clicking on them . . . but you probably knew that!)


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