Memorial Day.

Maren's Fabulous Bake Sale and Lemonade Stand

So here's the thing: I haven't been blogging because my last post was #899, and I wanted to do something big for #900. However, I've been swamped and just haven't been able to get a post or a giveaway put together, so instead of waiting forever to blog the perfect #900, I'm just going to make this one it. Still want to do a giveaway, but it's going to have to be the Big 902nd Post Giveaway! or something like that, when I get it all put together.

In the meantime, I wanted to tell you all about Maren's Fabulous Bake Sale and Lemonade Stand. Actually, let me back up a bit. Last Wednesday, I helped put on a tea party for 35 of the cute little girls and their moms that I work with at my church. I decorated the entire thing, five tables' worth, solely with the contents of my house: vintage tablecloths, strands of pearls, my great-grandmother's antique tea cup collection, vintage hankies, and silver spoons, as well as all of the cake pedestals and other serving pieces. NONE of which I have a photo of, because the ONLY thing I forgot the entire night was my bloomin' camera! :( I also hand-lettered the place cards, baked 60+ mini cupcakes decorated with pink icing and blue sugar pearls, and had the pleasure of dressing up in one of my vintage dresses, a feathered fascinator, pink cat-eye glasses, pearls, and white gloves so I could give an etiquette lesson as Miss Manners. The whole thing was very fun and I think the girls and their moms had a great time, but it was just a ton of work, especially falling in the same week as the Lemonade Stand.

I tried to get things ready for the Lemonade Stand ahead of time: I baked two batches of Peanut Butter Blossoms on Tuesday and popped those into the freezer. We built the framework for the awning on Sunday, and on Tuesday evening I went to IKEA and bought the striped fabric. They were all out of the black and white striped Sofia fabric that I really had my heart set on,

so I ended up with the hot pink and white striped fabric instead.

I also loved the red and white but since I had planned a pink and yellow and black color scheme for everything, I thought this would work better.

On Thursday, I sewed the awning. I should note that our PVC pipe Lemonade Stand was loosely based on this one from Not2Crafty. However, we built our stand around a 6'6" table so our measurements were different and I sewed the awning a bit differently, but it did give us a great jumping-off point.

On Friday, I baked like a madwoman. I made Devil's Food cupcakes with butter cream frosting (two dozen),

 lemon cupcakes with citrus cream cheese frosting (two dozen),

Knock You Naked Brownies (two pans),

a batch of Oreo truffles

four pans of French Vanilla Rice Krispie treats, individually wrapped and tied with pink and white baker's twine and displayed in an old pink-painted soda crate with a hand-stamped sign and vintage pink velvet ribbon.

 All in addition to the six dozen cookies already in the freezer from Tuesday.

Basically, I was a flurry of sugar and butter all day long. That night, I finished the awning and The Mister helped me make signs

with Cricut letters and hand-drawn lemons and cupcakes. I purchased a cute money box in Target's seasonal section, we got change from the bank, bought pink napkins from IKEA and stripey paper straws from Amazon. Heck, I even pulled out my cute vintage trash can to use at the booth. I had thought of every single detail.

And then we woke Saturday morning up to this:

 and this

and this.

And just like that, all of my work, all of my planning, all of my wrestling yards of fabric through my sewing machine (how do you quilters do it?), all of my baking--totally wasted. I'd been watching the weather report all week--Saturday started off as 80 and sunny, then 76 and sunny, then 72 and clouds, then 68 and rain later in the day, then 62 and rain later. Not ideal weather for selling cold, refreshing lemonade, but do-able, especially since the folks across the street were holding a HUGE yard sale and I was counting on piggybacking on all of their traffic. But 45 degrees and thunder and pouring rain? No go.

I thought Maren was going to be devastated. I thought there were going to be tears, and I'd have to console my poor sobbing little 7-year-old girl that the event we'd been talking about for literally a month, the one that she asked daily how many more days it was until her Lemonade Stand--wasn't going to happen. And you know what? I think I was more disappointed than she was. After all, I'm the one who invested hours and $$ into it. I'm surprised I didn't cry.

So then we were left with dozens and dozens of treats that weren't going to keep. I hurriedly invited over everyone to a "Lemons into Lemonade" party that night to just help us eat everything. We had a few take us up on the offer and help us eat our way through the spread, but many of our friends had taken part in a CRAZY race that morning in the 42 degree rain and mud and were still at home trying to stop shivering, so they couldn't make it.

We set up the awning in the front room and I laid everything out, if nothing else than to console myself by making something pretty.

We still had pink lemonade, this time in my pretty glass dispenser instead of the insulated 5-gallon thermos jug.

I even had a pretty pink, black and white vintage glass pitcher for water:

So there it is. I'm tickled with how the awning came out--it is just the way I pictured it in my head, which doesn't always happen for me. And I truly believe that if we'd been able to have our sale, Maren would have raked in the cash! I've already promised her that we'll set up the stand in front of the neighborhood pool one busy Saturday this summer, and I believe the neighborhood holds another garage sale day in August as well. Now that we have the awning, I'm determined to find uses for it, and I really do want Maren to have the opportunity to earn some money.

But maybe I won't bake quite so much next time.

Weekend Junk Finds: Just Down The Street edition

I live in a fairly new area, so it's rare that I'm lucky enough to find anything vintage at a garage sale--it's usually baby toys and the like. However, sometimes I do get lucky! Not long ago I was driving Maren to school in the morning and went past a house just a few blocks away that was having a yard sale. I recognized the house from a sale they had last year, because I scored several vintage goodies then. After I dropped Maren at school, I ran back by my house to grab my wallet and headed down the block to shop.

I had hoped for some vintage goodies again, and I wasn't disappointed!

This pretty painted aqua tray was the first thing I grabbed. Love the bright colors! I also picked up a jar of white buttons and a pair of vintage silverplate advertising spoons (Donald Duck and Spaghettios). I have the matching Mickey spoon already, so maybe these cute spoons need to find a shadowbox to live in.

Two old books on gardening that I picked up for decorative use. The small one's title is "An Unexpected Result." That about sums up my gardening adventures.

The larger green book has the cutest yellow watering can on the front!

This vintage 1960s Playskool toy has a set of cards that fit together like puzzle pieces. You have to match up the animal and its home and there's even a little cardboard frame for the one you're working on. The illustrations are charming!

One other item at the yard sale that I had my eye on was a black vintage rotary phone. It was marked $10 and I heard the seller tell another man that her best price on it was $8. I didn't have enough cash on me and I considered going back home to get more money, but didn't in the end. Still wondering if I should have bought it--it would have been a fun display piece! Rats, the more I think about it, the more I wish I'd gone back!

Hope these ladies continue having sales--nothing like being able to walk a few minutes from home to buy vintage goodies! Did you find any treasures?

I'm linking up with Her Library Adventures Flea Market Finds!

The Unicorns and Rainbows Birthday Party

I've been sitting on these photos for more than a month now, putting off posting about them because I knew the post would be a stinker to write with all of the links and photos--and I was right! But I need to get it done before her next birthday rolls around!

Last year, I suggested to Maren that it might be fun to have a Unicorns and Rainbows theme for her 7th birthday party. Full disclosure: I wanted to have a Unicorns and Rainbows birthday party, but that's not really as socially acceptable for a 34-year-old as it is for a 7-year-old. Lucky for me, I have the same taste as a 7-year-old girl, so she went for the idea right away! I've been collecting ideas on my Unicorns and Rainbows party Pinboard for months and I was able to use several of them to make her party really fantastic!

You may remember the invitation we made using rainbow-striped paper from Michael's and a Cricut cartridge. The unicorn even had a glittery mane and tail! We asked the guests to come dressed in their favorite color of the rainbow.

For party activities, we started out making our own edible Unicorn horns, inspired by this pin. I used sugar cones and dipped them into melted white almond bark while the girls were waiting.

We put each dipped cone on a paper plate with the girl's name on it and then they got to decorate their horn. I raided my baking supplies and set out bowls of anything that looked girly or magical. My favorite was the sparkly gold sugar.

The pink sugar pearls were really fun too! One of the reasons I like almond bark much better than Wilton candy melts is that almond bark hardens very quickly. While the girls were outside doing the next activity, my mom put each unicorn horn into a cellophane bag decorated with a name tag and a piece of rainbow striped ribbon.

One thing I repeated from the cupcake party we had a few years ago--we had the girls do their sprinkling over a cheap plastic tablecloth. When they were done, I just gathered up the cloth and tossed it, spilled sprinkles and all.

We sent them out into the front yard for the next activity so that we could get the kitchen cleaned up and the unicorn horns packaged up. Maren saw this unicorn pinata at the party store months ago and it was the thing she was most excited about. She kept saying how cool it was to have her "first birthday party with a pinata."

In my craft stash I even found little paper sacks in all colors of the rainbow for the girls to collect their candy.

After the pinata, we went back into the kitchen for our next project. I purchased these rainbow craft kits from Oriental Trading Company. When we were ordering, Maren actually told me she wanted these rainbow beaded bracelet kits but I screwed up and bought the hanging rainbows instead. They weren't my favorite, but the girls seemed to enjoy making them.

After the craft, we sent the girls outside on the back deck to eat lunch. For lunch we had Unicorn Calzones (inspired by this pin),

rainbow fruit kabobs (inspired by this pin)

and rainbow Goldfish crackers. The Unicorn Calzones were really very good and they ate up every single one! I ordered unicorn and rainbow plates and napkins from Oriental Trading Company as well.

When the girls were done eating, they came inside for cake. I'd been dying to try out the infamous rainbow cake that is all over Pinterest and this finally gave me an excuse! I made mine from two white cake mixes, each divided into thirds. The cake was still tall but not unmanageable. I made the cake layers the day before the party and wrapped them in plastic. I can't even remember how many batches of homemade white buttercream frosting it took--maybe 4?

The morning of the party I decided that the cake looked too plain and sent The Mister out to buy Skittles. Unfortunately the store didn't have the original rainbow color package, but I did the best with what they had and I think it looks fine. The skinny rainbow candles came from the party store and the glittery green 7 came from Target. The girls really did gasp when I cut open the cake and they saw all of the colors! It was quite the showstopper.

For goodie bags I bought plain white paper sacks at Michael's and decorated the tops with a rainbow punched from scrapbook paper. The goodie bags had twisty rainbow suckers, erasers, unicorn necklaces, and unicorn stickers, plus the girls got to take home their unicorn horns, pinata loot and hanging rainbows.

For decorations I used mostly rainbow crepe paper. I had solid colors and then after I bought those (of course) I found rainbow striped paper at another store. It was too much work to take all of the solid paper back, so I just used them both.

I also bought a dozen balloons in rainbow colors and Maren even wore rainbow-striped Hanna Andersson leggings that I found at Costco. I am nothing if not devoted to a theme!

The whole party was so much fun and I'm so pleased with how it all turned out. Maren and all 11 of her little friends had a good time. My parents came for the weekend to help celebrate and I put them to work during the party--it took all four of us adults to keep things running smoothly, and I'm so thankful that I had their help! I don't think I could have done it without them.

Maren rarely gets invited to 'at home' birthday parties these days--the kids in her class usually have their parties at those bouncy places or at little girl salons. It's a lot of work to have 12 little girls in your home; to plan all of the activities and bake and decorate and then clean up all of the mess afterwards. To me it's totally worth it and I hope that someday Maren will have fond memories of the fun parties we planned together! And maybe next year I'll actually let her choose the theme. ;)

Weekend Junk Finds

I didn't get a chance to go out junking this weekend even though there were several promising estate sales, two thrifts running 50% off and a plethora of garage sale signs. Bummer. My kids (Porter in particular) are seriously putting a crimp in my junking plans! Good thing they're cute, right?

These first few finds are from the same estate sale where I found all of the vintage Christmas goodies that I showed last week. After I crammed my shopping bag completely full of Shiny Brite boxes, I was trying to fight my way through the crowds to go pay. I attempted to keep a hand on a very sticky Porter (I'd given him a Tootsie Pop to buy a few quiet minutes so I could grab ornaments) when I saw this 7Up crate. It was the first day of the sale so I paid full price of $10 but that's a deal, since they usually go for twice that at antique stores around here. And I luuuuuurve me some old wooden soda crates!

This is before I got it cleaned up. I love the dark red print and realized that it's the perfect match to the red paint on my front room walls, so I currently have it acting as a tray on the ottoman/coffee table in that room. Here is is dressed up with glittery eggs and flowers for Easter:

That evening, I told a friend about the sale and she asked if I'd go with her the next day. I was happy to go back--the previous day it had been so crowded that I hadn't been able to see anything beyond the storage room in the basement that housed the Christmas decorations. On my second sweep through the house, I found these two small gold trophies:

I couldn't believe they were still there, considering the crowds that had already been through the house, and especially since they were only $2 each. I prefer silver trophies but for that price I'm willing to branch out! Each one is engraved on the base: one for Welcoming Committee 1951-52 and the other for Social Committee 1955-56. The earlier one is missing its metal seal but I think if I am careful I can remove the dried glue residue and give them both a good cleaning with some Brasso.

The last item I bought at that sale was this sweet little covered Japanese lustreware cup. This piece reminded me of something I'd find in my dear Gram's house. I'm not sure what it's all about--it's quite small and seems an odd shape for a sugar bowl. Perhaps lid was married from another piece in the same set? It's a mystery, but I had to have it. I am brewing up a post about Japanese lustreware so I'll talk more about it later this week.

And that's all from that sale! Did you get out junking this weekend, or did your two-year-old (literal or figurative!) get in the way of your plans? ;)

I'm linking up with Apron Thrift Girl's Thrift Share Monday!

The lemonade stand and bake shop inspiration

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In a few weeks, our subdivision will be having its 2-day neighborhood yard sale. Now, I love going to yard sales, but fervently do NOT want to have one myself! However, Maren has been asking to have her own lemonade/cookie stand 'the next time we have a yard sale'. Since the time frame on that could very possibly be NEVER, I told her that we could just set up a stand for her during the neighborhood sale and skip dragging all of our junk out on the driveway. She happily agreed, and I happily started planning.

For me, planning a creative project is just as much fun as actually carrying it out, and this project is no exception! I've already planned out in my head just how my Maren's lemonade stand is going to look. I even created a Pinboard to collect ideas! Here's what is inspiring me:

• Black and white striped awnings like this one from MadeByGirl
• striped awnings with scalloped edges, like this one from DanaMadeIt

Original source: http://www.danamadeit.com/2008/07/bistro-awning-mini-tutorial.html

We're planning to use a 6-ft. folding table but we'd like some shade, so I thought maybe I can make an awning. I love the idea of having a striped awning and I remembered that IKEA sells this black-and-white striped fabric that might just be perfect.

My idea is to use PVC pipe to construct an awning frame, then sew the fabric to fit over the top. The PVC would be light, inexpensive, and easy to work with since they sell all of the connectors I'd need for the corners. The awning could then be disassembled when we're done and packed away to use for future lemonade stands or bake sales. I haven't been to the hardware store to check out the PVC pipe yet but in my head, this is a totally do-able project. We'll see what it's like in real life!


In my searching for inspiration, I came across this cute lemonade stand made by Lisa Storms for Fiskars. I'm in love with the clever 'lemon slices' she made using accordion paper pinwheels and white doilies:

Original source: http://www2.fiskars.com/Activities/Crafting/Articles/The-Lemonade-Stand

I'm thinking of a color scheme of black and white, yellow, and light pink. I do believe there will have to be striped paper straws, because everything tastes better when it's cute! (sidenote--Amazon carries these boxes of 144 straws in several basic colors and they're a great deal--cheaper than many online party supply shops)

Maren wants to sell baked goodies in addition to lemonade. There will of course be cupcakes, and I think this idea for packaging them is simply brilliant!

Original source: http://www.cookiemadness.net/2011/04/packaging-cupcakes/

Be sure to check out my Lemonade Stand Pinboard for lots more cute lemonade and bake sale inspiration! And if you Pin anything from this post, please be sure to pin from the original sources to give credit where it is due!

I'll keep you all updated on our progress and if I'm able to make that awning like I'm hoping--I think not only will it provide needed shade for us (and the cupcakes!), but it will be so cute that people driving by will want to stop and buy a glass of lemonade and a cupcake from a cute little gap-toothed 7-year-old girl!