Recently we celebrated the 90th birthday of my husband’s grandmother. What a celebration was had! She is such a sweet lady and has welcomed me into the family with so much love. I was honored to participate in the planning of her surprise party, and couldn’t wait to play and be creative.
My first thought was that a happy birthday banner just wasn’t the right thing. So with the beginnings of an idea, off to Home Depot I went. I bought an 8’ long 2” x 6” board, which I cut into 4” wide blocks. I painted each block and then pulled out my Cricut and vinyl and added letters. I told my husband, who says he’s the engineer to my projects, that I wanted the blocks attached with twine and to be able to hang it on the wall or set it on a table, and he came up with a great solution! I think it turned out great!
Next I wanted to display some pictures in a creative and different way. Not to mention that I’ve been itching to try that method of transferring pictures to wood that I’ve seen so much of on Pinterest.
Here’s what I ended up with.
I transferred pictures to both sides of wooden blocks (leftover from my happy birthday sign), and painted the edges of the blocks black. From Hobby Lobby I bought a decorative wooden base, dowels and round wooden dividers, all of which I painted black. My husband drilled holes through the blocks and we assembled. The blocks can be turned to see the pictures on both sides. A fun way to highlight some pictures!
The black and white pictures are of the birthday girl, the color pictures are recent pictures of her with family.
Our theme for the party was balloons. It started innocently enough, with a few balloons on the invitations, and then I found the balloon topiary on Pinterest and suddenly it was balloon craziness! Here’s my version of the balloon topiary.
By the way, in case you want to make one, it took about 70 balloons per topiary. I preferred using 9 inch balloons, I tried 12 inch, but they just seemed too big. Once done it becomes very top heavy. I tried setting the dowell in a block of styrofoam, but it wouldn’t hold it. I ended up drilling a hole into a small block of wood and setting the dowell in the wood – that worked perfect, we didn’t have one centerpiece fall over during the party. I placed the block of wood in a small white gift bag, added tissue paper, and after 7 more were made, cute, festive centerpieces done!
The party was a blast. Memaw was very surprised, she didn’t suspect a thing! And as much as my house looked like a craft room for the last couple of months, I’m already moving on to the next project!
crazinessensues 