DIY: Make Your Own Initial Pinata

Hi!  I threw my first baby shower this week, and of course, did a crap job of capturing it.  Even my husband asked several times if I had taken photos, and I was just too busy chatting, refilling food, and drinking margaritas (!).  I made a pinata for their sweet future daughter, Ruby, and it was a fitting piece of decoration for the Fiesta themed shower.

I will update more on how the the shower went, but I wanted to share the project I knocked out back in January (when life was a little slower).   I found the process easy with the right tools, and by the end, I think I figured out the best way to do it!

Sidenote:  This is a pinata that serves no purpose other than decoration.  No candy was beaten out of this guy, so I do not provide instructions on how to do this; I imagine you could easily leave a hole during construction for the filling of candy if your heart so desired.

Supplies: Tissue Paper, Glue Gun, Exacto Knife, Elmer's Glue, and Cardboard (drying dishes optional)

STEP ONE

Draw your letter on a piece of cardboard.  You can see by my picture here that I had lots of revisions before settling on a perfect 'R' but the letter will get covered by tissue, so whatever!

STEP TWO

Cut out your letter.  You will need to duplicate this letter exactly, so use your first letter as a stencil.  Trace and cut out the second letter.  At this point, I had two 'R's.' (I don't know what my punctuation should look like, so please forgive.)

STEP THREE

You will now need to create the dimensional side pieces that will connect your two letter shapes.  I did this by cutting one really long strip and then following it along the outer edges.  (Easier done than explained.)  For the curved pieces, I scored the strip every quarter inch or so.

STEP FOUR

Use approximately 9,000 glue gun sticks to attach all of the pieces.

STEP FIVE

Use Elmer's glue from here on out.  Glue down a layer of tissue paper on top of the cardboard, so that there won't be any brown sneaking its way through.

STEP SIX

Fold your tissue paper and cut into 2" strips.  Fold these 2" strips a couple of times (hamburger style), so that you can cut your fringe in a few quick cuts.  Your fringe must stay attached, so don't cut all the way through or you will have confetti.

When you unroll it, you will have several pieces of fringe ready to glue.

STEP SEVEN

Begin gluing your fringe to your letter.  Start from the bottom of your shape.  I learned this the hard way.  In order to saturate the color, make sure to provide an overlap.  Notice where I put the glue in the picture below.  The pieces that are hanging off were later cut off.

I worked in small sections until the whole letter was covered.

Pedro approves!  Here it is at the party just hanging out by Spike Jones, our houseplant.

There it is!  I need to find another reason to decorate with pinatas.  I also need to figure out how to put a tilde on my n.  Feel free to comment with suggestions!

Inspiration for fiesta Themed baby shower

My friend, Molly, is having her first baby this June!  (It is hard to believe how many of my friends are parents of going to be parents in the matter of months.  It scares the crap out of me.  And I am not even having a baby!)

Even so, I am equally excited for Molly and Kevin!  We adore these people.  We lived in San Francisco together, and we moved back to Texas at the same time.  I even work with Molly now.

For her shower, we (more like I strongly suggested) decided a Fiesta theme.  This theme is awesome for a multitude of reasons, but mostly it gives everyone an excuse to eat Tex-Mex for another meal.  Decorations will be colorful and look great in photos.  Also, we can drink margaritas!

I am a little nervous about hosting.  I have never hosted a shower before, much less a baby shower, and I am a complete mess when hosting.  It is all internal, but mostly I am worried that no one is enjoying themselves.  (This is why I rarely had sleepovers as a child.  Well, that and I wanted my friends to leave first thing in the morning, so I could do my introvert thing.)

I want to document a couple of ideas that I was thinking before the party commenced.  Molly, if you are reading this, stop now! You promised!

1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7

I have a couple of DIYs that I will be posting soon.  What do you all think?  Has anyone been to a fiesta themed party before?  I actually haven't, but this invitation is my best seller in my Etsy shop, so I know they are popular.  If you have any ideas, let me know!

February Goals + January Goal Update

February is going to fly by considering we are more than a fourth of the way through.  Before I share February Goals, I want to give you an update on how I did in January.

1. Read Two Books - I only read one. I had plans to read the third book in the Red Rising series, Morning Star, but the release date was later than I thought.  This trilogy is so good!  February 9th could not come sooner.

2. Take the Pups on Walks At Least 3 times Per Week - This happened.  I have proof. Can we also talk about how challenging it is to walk TWO dogs?!

3. Try Two New Recipes - I tried this Kale/Lemon/Chicken casserole recipe.  It wasn't my favorite- too lemony.  I also bought the ingredients for this soup recipe.  I haven't made it yet, (because we had several 80 degree days) so I did not accomplish this goal.  I did however discover a new favorite drink, coconut water with a lemon squeezed in.  I drank SO much more water drinking this than regular water, so I consider this a win.

4. Host a Party - done! - We had some people over for New Year's Eve.  Do you think I managed to get a group photo?  No.  Of course not, but I did get a picture of some snacks that no one ate.

5. Organize the Garage Space - This was one of my goals?!

6. Post One Blog Per Week - Done in January.  I also updated the header and side bar.  It feels a little more fresh over here on the Great Goodness.

7. Prep our Guest Room for our New House Mate, Tanner! - Taylor's brother, Tanner, moved in the last week of January to live with us for a few months before starting his new job this Summer. We knocked this one out. I think this became our focus, so we forgot about the garage.  I plan to post a blog on the before and after.

8. Stretch Every Night Before Bed - This happened like 10 % of nights.  I need to find a better time to make this happen.

Other highlights this month included:

Meeting up with my sister, Noelle, and nephew, Haddon at The Magnolia Market.

Contributing to Noelle's awesome blog, Manuevering the Middle, on her new series Teachers Around the Globe.

Celebrating Taylor's birthday by going to Uchiko and Contigo (in the same night) which I didn't get a single picture of, but I did get a picture of him wearing his new birthday present.  It is a fancy work apron.

February Goals

1.  February is going to be our month of financial fasting.  We set a budget on February 1st, and we are sticking to it.  No impromptu money spending.  There is nothing we need this month.  We also finally set up automatic drafts for all of our bills and tithing.

2.  Plan and organize our New Orleans trip in March (woohoo!).  We have our hotel and flights booked.  Now we can plan the fun parts!

3. Blog weekly. 

4. Go on walks with Taylor everyday as a way for us to talk without any distractions and get a little exercise. And find a better time of day to stretch.

5. Create a few tutorials based on the Baby Shower I am hosting in April.

6. Read two books.  Any book recommendations out there?

7. Finish watching Survivor.  I am seriously hooked.  For all of the people out there who stopped watching back in Season 2, I encouraged you to jump on Hulu and start watching.  They have introduced some amazing twists.  Has anyone ever applied to be on the show?

Thanks for reading, friends!