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Thing 1 & Thing 2 My Twins 1st Birthday Party

Hey all you out there in blogging land! It has been so long since I posted to my blog but you will see why from this post. I had two beautiful babies a year ago and we just finished celebrating their first birthday! The following photos are from the party and are mostly inspired by things on Pinterest.

I will post the resources, where I can, to those places so you too can create your own "Thing 1 & Thing 2" party as well!

The first thing I did after figuring out the theme I wanted for my twins was to create an event in Facebook. With this event, I needed to create an event header image. The font I used is called Dr. Soos and you can find it here. This is what I came up with:

Next, I created the actual invitation. This was for posting on the event page and also to print and mail out. I made it so I would be able to put two into a publisher file and print them on a colour printer to be cut. You could also design these and upload them to a place like Heritage Makers and have them printed.

These invitations were inspired by a few different sources but namely from Pinterest which the picture goes to an Etsy account and it is no longer available. I can customize these for anyone and send you a high resolution file for $15 USD. Order custom invitation file here. (I can take the bow off of Thing 2 or put it on Thing 1 as well, depending on your needs.)

I wanted to have this party be super special and custom so I created these sweet profile 12x12 pages for the twins of their favourite things etc. Some people make them at 11x14 but I wanted to be able to put it in their scrapbook when the party was done so I stuck to 12x12. Inspiration and elements for these pages were picked up from Lane + May and you can find her on Facebook as well as Etsy. She creates these little gems but I did these myself as to save some money. Plus with me being "kreative" and all, I wanted to do as many things as I could, myself.

While searching for all things "Thing 1 & Thing 2," I came across a FREE Dr Seuss Cat in the Hat with Thing One and Thing Two party printable kit from Homeketeers.com. The Kit Includes: Party Hats, Cupcake Wrappers, Hershey Kiss Labels, Straw or Treat Flags, Treat Bag Toppers, Water Bottle Labels, Mini Candy Bar Wrappers, Table Tents and Treat Box. 

I wanted to use everything and I cut out a lot from here but with having twins you find that you run out of time fast. I only ended up using the water bottle labels and the party hats. I printed them on plain white printer paper and then cut out the hats with scissors and taped them to other party hats that I had hanging around. It was perfect because then I didn't have to worry about the stiffness holding up and to try to put a stretchy string on them. The bottle labels, I cut out with my Silhouette Cameo. 50 labels lickity split!

See the hats in this photo... They didn't want to keep the hats on. Around the girl's hat is the headband that came with the outfits. She didn't want to keep that on either, see next photo!

Speaking of these amazing photos... these were done by my friend at K&E Imaging. It was a Smash Cake photo session. I baked the cakes and iced them with rosettes. The babies seemed to like the cake but we didn't let them eat a lot of it as they would have a smash cake at the actual party. We did these photos 3 days before the party so that I could print them out and frame them for the wall display.

I will bet you want to know where I got the darling outfits? These were purchased on Etsy. (Leg warmers from Birthday Express) There are many people who make a variation of these but I would urge you to find a seller that you trust and are comfortable with. My friend made the little blue boutonniere for my son's outfit and the red flower on top of my daughter's hat (above).

I did a trial on these cupcakes the month before to make sure I would like them. They are yellow cake from the box with added bananas, sour cream, vanilla, etc. You can find the recipe here. I also made a batch of gluten free ones because I knew there would be family and friends there who cannot have gluten. They raved about the cupcakes and said they were the best gluten free cupcakes they had ever tasted. I use the same recipe but got a box of Betty Crocker Gluten Free Golden Cake mix for them. For the icing, I did use the cream cheese icing for the cupcakes but for the actual cake I stuck with butter cream icing because I was afraid that the rosettes would melt down the side of the cake before the twins smashed it. 

The cake turned out nice. I continued with the rosettes on the actual party day but instead of making two cakes, one for each baby, I made this one so I could display it on this stand that I got at my local hobby store. I took two cupcakes one with a blue wrapper and one with a red one, sprinkled blue sugar on one and red sugar on the other and then tipped them a bit sideways to make them a bit more whimsical then secured them with rainbow lollipops. (These were also favours that the kids could take home with them along with pencils and stickers.) This was a quick job as I was still icing cake when the party was in session. I put a little too much green in the icing for the cupcakes, I was trying to make it the teal/aqua color of the Thing 1 Thing 2 hair but it didn't quite make the grade! Oh well! All in all, I was pleased with the tower of cake for the amount of time I had to do it in!

Living with twins can put you behind without knowing it will happen! I had the best of intentions of getting everything done and in fact, some of the decorations and ideas never made it to the party.  More on that later...

Ready to be smashed!

The aftermath!

I uploaded all the photos from the shoot to COSTCO and they just happened to have a sale on collage posters so I had this gem printed up which I displayed when you came through the door. I had this frame already, there is a lego poster behind it from when my older son was younger. I just placed this over top. The stand is gorgeous, I know. We saw it in a Christmas store as a display and asked the owner if it was for sale. We ended up buying it!

Also as you came through the door, we had a Dr. Seuss birthday book for each twin for people to sign. I had every intention of printing up a little sign that talked about signing the books, but I didn't have enough time. It would have looked something like this. 

I printed the invitation out in 8x10 along with some of the photos from the shoot and I used scrapbooking adhesive to just pop them over the glass of the frames I already had on the wall. 

The cups, pencils and stickers were left over from my friend's sister's party. She was sweet enough to bring them over to me to see if I wanted to use them too! I have noticed that you can get a lot of Cat in the Hat decorations from Amazon as well but with us living Canada, they did not ship most of those items here. #TheProblemWithLivingInCanada

So, the display wall came together better than I had hoped! The pom poms, balloons, plates (not shown here), baby leg warmers, candles and Cat in the Hat paper down the middle of the wall were all from Birthday Express. The marquee letters by Heidi Swapp were from Michaels and I had them already in the nursery. I also got the chevron paper from Michaels. It comes in a roll and was described as scrapbooking paper for backing in frames. It was perfect for what I was doing. The red frames I painted, the black frames for the black chalkboard stats 12x12 prints are labeled for framing LPs and they also came from Michaels. The inspiration for this display also came from Pinterest and you can find it here.

This is my family at the end of the day, twins all in their pjs and overly ready for bed!

Thing 1 & Thing 2 AKA: Cherub (Bennett) & Angel (Harmony)

Some things didn't make it to the party. I had these wooden letters that I bought a while back and painted them. I was going to use them somehow in the display but they didn't make it up. That's ok, they can still serve the initial purpose of going above the cribs. I may add something to Harmony's like glitter or flowers. We will let that idea marinade for a while!

 Another thing that "got left on the cutting room floor" was the birthday banner. I worked hard on this one and I just didn't have time to put it up. Thanks mom for helping me place the paper before I glued everything down!

Mom texted me a day later saying that I could still use that banner for subsequent birthdays. Yes, I may do that! I printed the paper on my printer that I purchased from Lane + May Studio. I bought the dove tail template along with others for later from WendyBird Designs and cut everything out with my Silhouette. I was going to have a photo booth but with the lack of time, I didn't get any props made. It's probably better that it didn't happen as the house was crazy busy with so many wonderful people! 

If you would like me to make you a "Happy Birthday" banner, I charge $15 plus $1 for each extra letter, also $5 for shipping anywhere in Canada or the USA. Message me with your requests!

Thank you for coming by and reading my post! My gift to you, if you choose this theme is a digital download of the faceless Thing 1 & Thing Two. I have removed my twins faces of course and in this file you will get a high resolution transparent copy without a bow, with a bow on each, with a bow on the right and one with a bow on the right so if you have a variation of twins and gender of kids, this will work! Click here for download.

Please follow me on Pinterest and be sure to visit my new scrapbooking site and sign up for your FREE preferred customer account which will enable you to receive 30% off of all of your scrapbooking needs!

-Kreative Karma

Spring Door Hanging

This is my Spring Door Hanging. It includes a big candle in the middle with pearl drop strings peeking out the top of the bucket. Bucket is Southern Living at Home... probably about 8 years old. I picked up the flowers today at Michaels with a coupon. I was going to use the flowers on a wreath but I couldn't find my Spring wreath readily so I went with this option for now.

Enjoy,
Karma

National Scrapbooking Day Super Contest

What better way to celebrate National Scrapbooking day then to win some really great prizes?  We couldn’t agree more, so thanks to our friends at Homeketeers we are giving away some great prizes in honor of National Scrapbooking day.

One Grand Prize Winner:

• Tim Holtze Vagabond – value $249.99
• 10 scrapbooking Kits – value $220.00

One First Prize Winner:

• Pink Sizzix Sidekick – value $39.99
• 7 scrapbooking kits – value $150.00

Two Second Place Prize Winners:

• 5 scrapbooking kits – value $110.00

CLICK HERE TO ENTER!

Spring Decorating

In the spring I start getting restless and want to change everything in my home. Well, DH is out of town this week and that is usually when things happen in the house! One year he went away on a trip and came back to no carpet on the bedroom floor. It's cause I pulled it all up and found hardwood under there! He was so impressed that we ended up pulling all the carpet up in the house. We only had to have the hallway resurfaced and fixed. But I digress! 

I have done a few things this weekend. Reworking the mantel and created a wall of framed maps.

I had a dark painting of fruit above my mantel for winter/after Christmas and it was just feeling too drab. So I took everything down and off the mantel and decided to do frames and mirrors. I am not done the decorations yet, but this is how the layering of the frames looks:

Interesting... I see the mirror is reflecting the photos I have on the opposite wall in this photo. I have 2 mirrors and 2 frames stacked together. White, silver, platinum and gold. I have my fall mantel posted here if you are curious to see that.

While I was downstairs getting some laundry done, my son found some old toys that he wanted to play with. He wanted to stay down there so I went ahead and started to tackle my scrapbooking room mess. I noticed 5 IKEA frames that I had purchased before Christmas and remembered that I wanted to do a project with them. It was inspired by something I found on Pinterest.

This is my guide for the wall hangings. After I cut out all the States/Provence that I have lived in, I taped this on the wall to see where I wanted to hang the pictures up at. 

Here is the result. I did not  end up putting them exactly where I put the push pins but they are close. I wanted to have the same amount of spacing between the frames but have them placed in relatively the same space as they were on the map. Sorry I had to take the photo sideways because there is a closet right in front of that wall.

Next project I might like to do is to take all of our license plated from each place and string them together. Inspiration maybe something like another project I found on Pinterest.

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I need to pin...

So far my "Been There Done That" board is slim pickings...

but I know it will get full this summer!! WOOT!