Alex and Zach's 4th Birthday

 

 

The Doc McZach is in! The boys' favorite show is Doc McStuffins, so it was a natural choice for their 4th birthday theme.  I'll be honest - I was pretty excited myself, but for different reasons.  After doing a farm theme (aka the last time I EVER make cakes from scratch), a lame version of Max and Ruby, and two parties with diggers and dump trucks, I was ready to ride the Disney merchandizing train all the way into the party station.

 

I waltzed into the nearest Wal-Mart, wallet in hand, ready to buy a party.  I saw Mickey, Jake and the Neverland Pirates, and a ton of princess stuff.  Guess what?  No Doc.  Target and a random sampling of craft stores didn't turn up anything, either.  Are you kidding me???  Amazon tried with some latex balloons, but ugh...

 

To top things off, my kids had discovered Pinterest.  Not a big deal, you say?  They spent HOURS looking through kids' birthday cakes - the ultra fancy ones, mind you.  Plus every person they met, from the guy bagging our groceries, to the random person innocently pushing their kid on a swing at the park, heard all about how they were turning 4 on June 4th and they were having a Doc McStuffins party.  Expectations?  They had them.

 

So with the cake booked two months in advance, because I dumbly decided to have kids during the peak of wedding season, I began preparations for a Doc McStuffins party.  I hit up Pinterest and you can check out my board here if you like.  I decided that blue, pink, and purple were the colors.  Lambie is their favorite character.  I have a Silhouette Cameo, ink jet printer, glue gun, and random smattering of craft supplies at my disposal.  Click on the pictures for a MUCH bigger version if things are tough to make out.

 

I'm going to start with the party décor and see how far I get.  In the picture at the top, you can see our "The Doc is In" sign.  You can download it here from Disney.  The link also includes instructions to make it, which I apparently didn't follow at all.

 

Instead I combined 8 large craft sticks, some hot glue, and the signs (In//Out) printed out on card stock.  I drilled holes in two sticks and threaded some Dollar Tree clothesline through.  A couple of knots and a 3M hook later and we had a sign on the front door.  What I didn't think about at the time was how much fun the boys would have with the sign.  It hangs on their bedroom door now, and I must hear "The Doc is Out!" one hundred times a day.  Well worth the 30min and scrap supplies I put into it.

 

 

 

The white shirt was $4 at WalMart and I had the ink jet heat transfer material left over from another project.  I imported the Lambie art from WondersofDisney.com and built the rest in the Silhouette software.  You can download my Silhouette file here, and the font you'll probably need to go with it here.  If your kids aren't named Alex and Zach and they aren't turning four, you'll probably need to ungroup the items and tweak the text (purple/pink and the white offset).  You can mirror image it so you don't go insane trying to get things to look right, but don't forget to flip it back around before printing!

 

 

Party City had the overpriced tissue paper pompoms, curly streamers and purple streamers, but I needed to pick my battles.  The Dollar Tree and Walmart took my money and handed me the table cloths and blue/pink streamer material.  You'll need to check the baby sections for the pink and blue, though.  I ordered two packs of Doc McStuffins removable wall decals from Amazon.  They were on the small side for our giant, bare walls, but we made due.  (Once the party was over, some of them moved to the boys' bathroom to decorate in there.)  The table was for guests to write their name on their badges and pick up their doctor kits. I'll cover those more once I get there.

 

 

The balloons are from the Dollar Tree and are still inflated and floating around 3 weeks later.  They were out of the pink stars so I called an audible and bought pink "Happy Birthday" ones instead.

 

 

I saw a pin for some awesome centerpieces but couldn't figure out how to order them from the website.  Instead I grabbed Doc art from WondersofDisney.com again and made my own.  The only downside is I couldn't find art of anyone except the 5 main characters.  That company got it somewhere, but I couldn't figure it out.

 

 

What you'll need:

• ~30 sheets of cardstock
• 5 Large craft sticks
• 3 Floral foam blocks in the 5in range
• Hacksaw, knife, or something that cuts foam blocks
• Hot glue and gun
• Silhouette and printer
• Art from WondersofDisney.com
• My Silhouette file here ( and font here if you need it)
• Tissue paper, purple in my case

1. I cut the foam blocks in half with a hacksaw.  It was crazy messy, so I went all horror movie on them outside.

 

2. Slap a Doc character into your Silhouette program and add a significant offset.  Print and cut it.

 

3. Do a mirror image of the whole thing, delete the original, and print/cut it.

 

4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 for each character.

 

5. Open my CenterSquare.studio file and modify the text and offset as needed. Print and cut.

 

6. Hot glue the squares directly to the foam.  Let the edges stick out as needed.  Kids do not care if things line up.  Honest!

 

7. Hot glue both sides of each character to a craft stick and jam the whole thing into the craft foam.

 

8. Fluff up little pieces of the tissue paper and put them inside of the faux boxes you made.

 

 

 

Our basement is terrible for pictures, but I think you can get the idea of our clinic.  I took our existing IKEA kid's table and covered it with a chunk of egg carton foam ($10 at Walmart).  Over top of everything I put some fleece in a lovely lime green I had laying around.  If I wasn't cheap, or could not face yet another trip to the store, it would have been better being blue or purple.  This made our exam table.  Scattered across the surface are the pieces of Melissa & Doug doctor's kits, and items from the medical bags we handed out.

 

In the background is my poor recreation of the growth chart Doc has in her clinic, plus our family scale.  You can find the Silhouette flower here, although I'll be the first to admit that it was too small.  The stem and leaf are green construction paper.

 

 

 

I figured the kids would spend 10 seconds giving their toy a checkup then move on to something more fun, but that wasn't the case.  One of my friends (seen patching up a doll) helped the kids and they spent quite a bit of time working on their diagnoses.  You can see one of my kids in the white shirt attempting to weigh his toy on the scale.

 

Next time I'll go over what's in that mysterious purple doctor's bag, our invites, plus how we did the food (without grossing out anyone!).

Squished Squash

Jim needs a bumper sticker on his lawn mower that reads "I don't brake for vines."  One bed of squash (pumpkin, zucchini, and summer yellow) has taken off and is making double-time across the mulch toward the grass.

To save it from a rather abrupt end to its journey, I tossed together a tri-pod trellis.

You can find a list of materials here:

http://organicgardening.com/learn-and-grow/simple-squash-trellis

I pretty much flipped through the instructions to get the basic idea and winged it. I didn't pull out a tape measure, but I assure you it's straight. The ground? Not so much.

You'll need a 1/4" drill bit to make holes for the bolt. I only used 4 of the 2"x2"x8' since I attached the legs directly to my beds with 3" wood screws. I didn't have any twine, either, so I used another couple of 3" screws to hold things together at the top. I had the cheapest wood possible, so the whole thing cost around $20.

Concerned my squash might be too inexperienced to figure out a trellis with such wide spacing, I stretched a nylon garden net over one side and secured it with 1 1/2" wood screws.

I carefully (because I forgot to wear gloves) encouraged the squash to attempt the climb. We will see if I end up with a leafy tunnel or it gives up and heads for the grass again.  

I checked on the green beans. There are a few started but something is eating them before they get big. It's hard to appreciate in the picture, but the purple beans have this awesome green fuzz that makes them appear almost iridescent. 

The carrots are still too little to pick but are quite fluffy on top. The kids love running their hands through them. 

The Garden

After about five days of rain, I finally checked on the garden. I had been worried that the peas would have been scorched by the sun before making a single sphere, but temps have stayed low with storms constantly blowing over.

So Alex helped me with a second harvest of snow peas. Some made it into the bucket and many got "lost" on the way. I got a couple of "I wuff peas, mom!" As he talked over a full mouth. 

The spring garden box is doing pretty well. You can just see the tiny orange carrots starting out, and the accidental onion has taken his chance at growing to heart. I'm not sure if the broccoli will make it before it gets too hot, but that's ok.

I've never grown an onion, and didn't plan to, so we are just learning as we go. 

One thing that's obvious is proper drainage in this monsoon is key. With drought conditions the past +6 years, I wasn't prepared. 

The bed on the front left has a bottom layer of grass clippings as a weed deterrent. The one on the front right has cardboard, because I thought I'd need to hold into as much water as possible. Both boxes have the same squash, zucchini, and kale but with a drastic difference in results!

I picked a decent amount of kale already but discovered caterpillars working their way through the leaves. It appears the are gone, and there should be enough left for the plants to recover. 

Here are a few other pictures from around our small patch of veggies. 

Bush bean flowers. 

Corn learning to swim. 

Spicy tasting broccoli protectors. 

Bony looking peas. 

Our spring garden with the peas tied into submission. Poor broccoli were in an eternal shadow. 

Blackberries making a start in the corner of the yard. 

One transplanted Azalea bush has stopped holding a grudge and is trying to bloom a second time. 

Toy Storage

We have a large basement and three kids. Naturally, the toys migrated to the carpet of least resistance. A couple of trips to IKEA, and you have shelves and bins as far as the eye could see.

Things stayed that way for about 8 months. I loved the bins because everything had a place and looked put away. But what I've realized is my kids would not pull out a single bin to play with what was inside. Loads of toys sat untouched while the few that couldn't be binned were played with to boredom. 

So this week the bins went into storage, along with about 30% of their toys. I really, really wanted to say 50% here but it just didn't happen. Mason still needs some of his own age-appropriate toys. 

The shelving units stayed, as did any toys that fit reasonably on the shelves. For little toys I had two options.

Walmart has little milk crate baskets for $1.50 each, so little things that made sense to go on a shelf went in those. 

I also went the Pinterest-says-I-can-store-anything-in-shoe-organizer route. This made sense for items too big for a shelf that also had little pieces. 

This is a standard over-the-door shoe rack from Walmart. I cut it into thirds, giving me two rows of four pockets per section. Over the rough edge I put carpet tape for strength, and pretty duct tape for style. (ha!) Scissors clipped some slits and I wove Dollar Tree clothesline through the tops. 3M hooks keep it on the wall. 

Suddenly they want to go in the basement and they spend a lot more time playing with each toy before moving on. Toys that had been buried beneath junk (think fast food meal toys) are really fun again!

Big Book of Boo Boos

Doc McStuffins has only been out a little over a year, but all three of my kids love the show.  So it came as no surprise when Alex and Zach picked it for their birthday party theme this year.  As a mom of three boys and an aunt to all nephews, I saw this as my rare chance to use both pink and glitter for the kids without raising any eyebrows.

The main goody bag item for the party was going to be the Big Book of Boo Boos, where Doc writes down all of her diagnoses.  In the show, it's a five-ringed book with a purple cover sporting a pink glitter heart on the front.  Inside are wide-ruled lined pages and she draws her findings with a crayon.

While I'm all about little details and sticking with the original source, ringed notebooks aren't easy for little kids to navigate, especially ones with large rings that let the pages flop around.  I came up with a rough idea using cereal boxes and notebook paper, but it was going to be a lot of work and I wasn't sure I'd like the results.  Maybe if I had three to make, it would be alright, but never one to make things easy on myself, I was facing the manufacture of 17.

So, I decided to have The Dollar Tree do the hard work and ordered a case of regular size composition notebooks.  They also carry them in the store, but clicking the mouse was all the energy I had one day.  I teamed these with Amazon's 12in by 40ft of purple vinyl, two pages of 12in by 12in chunky pink glitter scrapbooking paper from the local hobby store, and glossy laminating sheets.

If you look at it from a per book basis, each one probably cost less than $2.50.  The notebooks were $1 each, it took about $1.10 worth of vinyl, $0.09 for the shipping label, $0.08 of the glitter paper, and about $0.15 for the laminating sheet.  I didn't include printer ink or a plain piece of printer paper, and of course, if you needed to buy scissors, a cutting mat, or glue, that would make it more.

Essentially you cover the book in vinyl, line the inside of the notebook covers if you like, and attach the glitter heart to the front.  You'll see in the materials picture that I'm using a Silhouette cutting mat mainly because it was the only thing I could find.  Between the sticky surface of that and the vinyl, it was a bit irritating to work with.  Also, if you use a rotary cutter, it'll go right through it, which I found out the hard way, but it still works in the machine at least.

Covering the Books

I initially tried just slapping the notebook on the vinyl and cutting around it with the Exacto knife.  I didn't like how much concentration it took me to get a good edge.  I also briefly toyed with the idea of taking measurements and having my Silhouette machine cut out the covers for me.  Maybe the high end composition notebooks (do those exist?) have even edges, but the ones I had were pretty variable.  One size wasn't even going to fit most, and I'd still have to trim them by hand.

If all of your crafting is squashed into the few hours between when your kids go to bed and when you do, then you probably understand my desire for simple.  I needed to be able to hack at it with some pointy objects and end up with something decent.  Also, don't worry about any little bubbles between the vinyl and the notebook cover.  I tried to press them out and it just made the vinyl wrinkle, plus after sitting overnight, they disappeared on their own.



You will need:

• Composition notebook
• Scissors*
• Exacto Knife*
• Vinyl, 12in wide, purple in my case
• Cutting Mat (mine is 12x24) or Expendable Surface
• Rotary Cutter* (Optional)

*You can use any or only one of these.  I used all three just for speed. Go with what you have.

1. Roll out the vinyl sticky side up across the cutting mat
2. Peel the paper off the back, exposing the stickiness
3. Place the back notebook on the vinyl, about 2in in from the edge with roughly equal amounts of vinyl sticking out above and below.
4. Open the book to the back cover, holding the front cover and pages so they don't touch the vinyl.

5. With your free hand, use the Exacto knife or the rotary cutter to trim off the corners.  It doesn't matter how close or far from the notebook you get as long as you have enough to fold over later.

6. Cut some lines radiating out from both corners with the Exacto knife or scissors.  You can do 4 like I have or 40.  It just depends on how much of a smooth looking curve you want.  I started right next to the edge of the notebook and went out.  The most important part of this is to have one straight line coming off the top and the side (marked in red).  Without those, the whole thing turns out weird.

7. Fold the pieces over onto the notebook.

8. Cut a straight line out from the top and bottom of the cover.  Make sure it's in from the binding enough that it's easy to fold the vinyl over the cover.

9. Fold the three sides in over the cover.
10. Close the notebook and slowly turn the book over onto the vinyl so it's now sticking to the front cover.
11. Trim the vinyl along the long edge of the front cover and repeat steps 5 through 9.

12. Close the notebook and use scissors to trim the top and bottom vinyl tabs.  Cut as close to the notebook as you can.


Lining the Inside Covers

The next part is optional or you could do an easier variation of it.  This is just what I did for ours.

I didn't like the random composition text being visible, like the schedule grid or the conversion table, or the really not straight edges I had folded over, so I wanted to cover all of it.

You could totally do this with some card stock cut to size and hot glue/tape/spray glue.  I was too lazy for all of that and went with full page labels, which are essentially printable stickers. 

The additional plain paper is to make sure the text underneath doesn't show through the sticker part.  Without it, you can still see faint markings unfortunately.

I used the Time for a Check Up and I Feel Better song lyrics since they were the most pertinent to the Big Book of Boo Boos.  The main graphic is from TheWondersofDisney.com. The bandaids are from Family.go.com by Disney.  The rest of the graphics were Google searches for ears, eyes, hearts, and giggling.

You will need:

• Full sheet white shipping labels (Avery was the brand I used)
• Regular printer paper
• Printer
• My template for the Silhouette or a version to cut out by hand

1. Print out your template of choice using your highest photo quality setting.  If you are cutting it out by hand, the picture is twice as big as a normal page, so you might need to resize it.  The grey line is supposed to be 7in by 9in.
2. Rerun it through your Silhouette machine (Speed 3, Thickness 14, Blade 3) or cut it by hand along the grey line.
3. Cut down a sheet of printer paper so it covers the inside cover text.  This can be a really rough hack job as long as the final product is less than 7in by 9in and it covers the text.
4. Place the paper over the inside cover text, peel off the back of the sticker, and place the sticker over the paper, as centered on the cover as you can make it.

You can do a plain, unprinted version of this for the back cover, or just leave it crappy looking like I did.  The 4yr olds at the party weren't going to care.


Glittery Heart


I feel like I should give a warning about this part of the process.  The craft store had normal glitter paper and this really chunky, large pieces of glitter-type paper.  I chose the second because it looked the most like the show.

The glitter gets everywhere and is a mess.  I even blew canned air through my Silhouette at one point because it was sticking to everything.  Also, even on the highest settings for thickness and material and using the Double cut setting, my Silhouette wouldn't cut all the way through.  It did give me a good template to cut it out by hand, though.

After the mess I had on my hands, I decided laminating the whole thing would save other families from the cleanup I had.  This step is optional if you don't like the look or don't have the equipment, though.

For the glue, I went with the E-6000 because I didn't have the time or energy to try out others and see if they would work.  I'm pretty sure hot glue would hold the heart on temporarily but not long term since it's plastic on plastic.  The only other thing I had was a glue stick.  hehe

You will need:

• Glitter paper, 12in by 12in (12 hearts fit per page)
• My Silhouette template or one to cut it out by hand
• Exacto knife or scissors
• Laminator and laminating sheets
• E-6000 Glue

1a. For a Silhouette: Run the paper through your machine.  Use speed 3, thickness 33, and blade 10.  When it's done, finish them by hand.
1b.  By hand: Print out two copies of the template.  Trim one so all 12 hearts fit on the glitter sheet.  The hearts should be 2.5in by 3in.  Tape it to the backside of the glitter paper and cut out the hearts.
2. Optional - Laminate the hearts.  Cut them out beyond the bubble that forms around it.  If you cut within the bubble, the heart won't actually be sealed and the glitter will get out.  I just eyeballed it, as you can see.
3. Add glue to the heart and stick it to the notebook.  Let it set overnight.


These seemed to be a big hit at the party, teamed up with a basic 8 pack of crayons.

Disgnosis?  Mommy has an ear infection :(

The next post will cover all of the other things I made for the party, including center pieces, check up sheets, and a little clinic.