Piñata AWESOMENESS

For my daughters birthday I wanted a piñata for the kids to break apart since it seems like the kind of party game that every kid is supposed to have.  I had two reservations about having a pinata though:

1)  Will it cost a lot?
2)  Is it going to take a body builder to break it open:  I've seen this happen and the dissappointment
     on those kids' faces were just... so sad.  :(

What do I do?  Look to see if I can make one, of course!

I used eHow.com for my inspiration.  eHow.com had paper mache directions that I used, but then I also added my own touch.  Here is how I did it:

Step 1: Decide what shape you want and gather your materials:

• news paper
• balloons
• flour
• sauce pot
• salt
• measuring cup
• scissors
• tape
• paint
• Tissue paper
• Bowl

I wanted to make a cute bee hive since a honey bee was the theme of the party.  Seems easy enough.

Step Two:  Take some of the news paper and tear or cut them into strips.  It doesn't matter how nice they look cause by the time they dry, you cant really tell any of them apart.

Step Three:  Make the piñata design.  eHow said to use one balloon but that was too small for me.  I wanted something large!  So I used 4 balloons.

• I can tell you right now that this was a pretty unstable start to laying down strips of paper so I took large sheets of news paper and covered the balloons using the tape to keep the paper in place, to shape it into what I wanted it to look like.  
• It didn't take on the perfect beehive shape, but in the end it worked out quite well.

Step Four:  Make the Paste.

• I was not very precise with this.  I used about 2/3 cup flour
• poured in some water (probably about a cup and a half)
• let it boil till it was a little thick
• threw in a pinch of salt
• stirred it while it cooled

NOTE: Since it thickens when it cools, don't let it get too pasty when it is hot

Step Five:  Run the news paper strips through the past and put onto the piñata.  This is when you use your bowl.  to steady the piñata.

• Make sure your paste is warm and not hot!  I burned my fingers a couple of times.  Silly me.
• Each strip does not have to have paste globed on.  Just a nice even sheen of it.
• I would put one end of the strip in the paste and hold it while with my other hand, put my finger over the paper to make sure that the bottom side of the strip met with the past.  Then with the hand holding onto the end of the strip that is in the paste, I lifted it up so that the whole strip would run under my finger catching past on it.  Did that make any sense at all?  I apologize if it did not.
• After running the strip through the past, I would hold the top with one hand and run my thumb and index finger down the strip to remove any extra paste
• Repeat for the other side to get all pasty
• Apply to the piñata.
• NOTE:  I put on 3 layers of large pieces of news paper and 3 layers of the pasted strips.  The weight of the newspaper kind of made it sag down so I didn't do more than that.

Step Six:  Wait for piñata to dry.  This may take a while depending on how many layers and how much paste you used.  Mine took about 2 days but it was also under an AC unit.

Step Seven:  Paint the piñata.

• It would be best if you got a primer but I didn't have any and thought that 2 coats would be enough.  Wrong!  You can see in the picture that even with two coats, you could still see the newspaper. Super Lame!  I'm not spending any more money on this thing so I've decided to cover it with tissue paper.

Step Eight:  Cut hole at top.  I did mine just big enough to put in toys candy and a child's hanger.

Now... if you did it right... you don't have to use tissue and could just paint it so step nine is not required!

Step Nine:  Put tissue paper on it.

• If I had put primer on it then I wouldn't have had to spend so much time with the tissue.  I could have just cut out squares and pasted them on but because you could see all the news paper, I had to add an enormous amount of tissue paper!  I do believe that it worked out to my favor though.
• Cut out two by two inch squares of tissue
• take one square and wrap it around your finger (put index finger in middle of square and squish the rest of the tissue upwards around it).
• dot your finger (with the tissue still on it) into the paste and place it on the piñata however you want.

This took some time but I enjoyed it.

Every party item I bought was yellow black and white polka dotted

By this point I was about to pull out my hair and you can see the white hadn't been added yet.

Step Ten:  Put in candy, toys and child's hanger.

• I did not fasten the child's hanger to it

I was so nervous to have the kids play with it.  Would it break too easily?  Would it take a muscle man to break it?  Will the hanger break off before the kids can break it?  ect ect ect...

It was perfect.  All the kids got a chance to hit it.  It didn't take an adult to break it open.  The hanger did not break and was perfect for hanging on a pole since I did not have a tree.

I got a lot of compliments (even though I felt it was kind of a fail), and to say that I made it, felt pretty good too.

Yeah, I am kind of a dumb dumb because I never took a picture of it before it got killed by the kiddos.

As for the cost:

News paper - free

Flour - $1.50

Salt $1

Tissue paper $2 (bought it at a store where a bunch of it was only a dollar!  Good Deal)

Paint $2.50 (Home Depot sample size and technically it was left over from when I painted something else)
This does not include the stuff I put in it

Total:  $7

Time it took to make it?  A LOT

Was it a nail or a fail?  

NAIL and FAIL

I would say NAIL because it was only $7 to make but a FAIL when it came to how much time it took.   So if you like to be crafty then I totally recommend it.  If you need something quick and just don't have the time, then buy one cause you can get them as cheap as $15  GOOD LUCK!!

Tutu For You Too

No Sew Tutus that I found on YouTube loaded by Wowzzydotcom.

This is awesome!! 

Let me give you a little background information as to why I wanted to learn how to make a tutu for my baby girl.

I have a friend who is trying to adopt.  She is about to get her kiddos and I am so happy for her BUT the process was hard and there was a lot of money to be spent.

How do you raise money?  But a fundraiser of course!!  They had a few fundraisers and one of those fundraisers was a raffle!  Who doesn't love a raffle?  So I put in a little to help out.

Well...  I actually won something!  I couldn't believe it.  I never win anything!!  I was so excited, I won a $20 gift certificate to a super cute little business that makes tutu's.  I thought it was a great win until I looked at the prices.  

Please don't get me wrong.  I support mom and pop businesses because I grew up on the income of a self employed parent that relied solely on those who support those kinds of stores.  So, instead of buying from this store, I supported the mom and pop store in my area that supplies the items needed to make a tutu.  As for the gift certificate, I let someone else win it.

The first thing I did was google 'How to make a tutu'.  The first thing that came up was the video on YouTube I mentioned above.  "Julie Figueroa shows you how to make a tutu for a little girl. This method can also be used to make an adult tutu." Wowzzydotcom.  It's great!  Super easy instructions and it's not hard to do.  It does take time though.

My daughters birthday was coming up when I was making this.  Her theme since she was born has been honey bees.  So, for her birthday I made a tutu that was white black and yellow.  I then made a headband that had two antennas and used the scrap black and yellow pieces of tulle for between the antennas. 

Just to reiterate the instructions that are on the video:

1. You need the following items:

• Ribbon
• Tulle
• Scissors
• Ruler (if you want to get that technical which I did not)
2. Measure out the length of ribbon needed to go around the little girls waist.
3. Tie a knot at each end of the waist measurement and add 20 inches to each side.
4. Cut your tulle.  You may have to work a little bit differently than Julie shows you so, let me give you some tips:



You can see the spool there on the left.  10 pieces that are each 10 inches long and in as even pile as can be.






Roll the tulle starting at the short end so it looks like this.






I did not make my pieces 3" wide but 2 inches.  Worked just fine.

• Cut out 10 pieces that are 10 inches long unless you want them longer (If you want the tutu to be 6 inches long then you will want to cut out 12 inch pieces)
• Evenly stacked them
• Rolled it up (short side not long ways)
• Cut off the edges
• Cut the middle.  This will give you 20 pieces of tulle to put on your ribbon
5. Next you will attach each piece of tulle to the ribbon.  You do this by:
• Folding the piece of tulle in half
• Tie it to the ribbon by making the folded part a loop and putting the two end pieces through the loop
6. Do that with all the tulle pieces till you have a tutu!
7. I also trimmed the edges to make sure that all were even.

The tutus are really cute and when my daughter wore hers to her birthday party, she got a million compliments.  I am sorry but I was so busy at the party that I never got a moment to take any pictures. Boo.

This is how I used the scrap pieces:

Butt Wipes

My daughter is not one yet so I have been trying to save money on all sorts of things that she requires.  I want to focus on one item that I see quite frequently on Pinterest.  Homemade Baby Wipes.  

I found the pin on Pinterest back in March and have been working on perfecting this particular baby wipe.  It is from Homemade Mamas.  You should check out their site.  It is full of awesome ideas.

So, according to Homemade Mamas all you need is:

1. A round plastic container with tight-fitting lid
2. Thick strong roll of paper towels (Viva is the best)
3. Sharp, Serrated knife to cut paper towel roll in half
4. 2 cups water, boiled and cooled to room temp
5. 2 Tbs. baby shampoo or wash
6. 1 Tbs. baby oil

Well that sounds easy enough.  So I tried it.

I did not know that I was going to be doing this blog so I didn't take pictures when I made them for the first time.  I just made mental notes of what I liked and didn't like.

Things I liked:

• Paper towel rolls have lots of squares.  That times 2?  Awesome!
• Baby wash or shampoo sounds good to me since you have to put it on your baby anyway.
• My friend Lisa and Christie gave me a bottle of Burt's Bees honey baby oil for my shower so my babies bum smelled so sweet after using my homemade wipes.

Things I had to change:

• The paper towel roll!  When you cut it, it makes a huge mess.  Also, all the towels are connected so it can be a huge pain to get them to come apart but you will find this for ALL baby wipes.  I mean all of them (I have found anyway).
• Less water cause when the towels sit in the water for too long they disintegrate and then you have a mess and it gets pretty gross.
• Again the paper towel role.  It was not easy to just pull out a piece.  They started ripping constantly when they sat in too much water and the roll started sagging.

After several sessions tinkering with my baby wipes, I feel that I have finally come up with something that is still not perfect but better.  I will always keep trying to make them inexpensive and easy to use.

Here is a list of items that I use:

• Baby shampoo ($2)
• Baby oil (regular baby oil is about 70 cents for a bottle about the same size as shown)
• Kleenex 2 ply dinner napkins ($1 for one package of 50)
• Scissors 
• 1 Tbs and 1/2 Tbs
• Container (shown is Ziplock)
• Baby wipe container (not needed but not bad to have)
• 1 and 1/3 cup water boiled and cooled (I don't know why but I think it has something to do with purifying)

This is what I do:

1. 1 Tbs of baby wash and 1/2 Tbs of baby oil into container with 1 and 1/3 cup water- MIX
2. take about half the package of Kleenex table napkins and cut in half
3. fold napkins into each other (pictures below)
4. lightly dunk each side into mixture.  There should be JUST enough mix to get everything wet enough to use but no extra water for it to sit in
5. Put into container

$3.70 for 50 wipes does not sound very good BUT you have enough baby wash and baby oil to get you through at least another 5 rounds.  So let me break it down mathematically:

• $1 per Kleenex.  That means you need to buy 3 packages for 6 rounds = $3
• .70 cents for small baby oil = .70 cents
• $2 bottle of baby wash = $2
• hopefully you already have a container

Total is $5.70 for 300 wipes AND you still have enough baby wash/shampoo to get you through even more wipes without having to buy a new bottle.

THINGS I WANT TO POINT OUT:

• if you are a military ID card holder with privileges to the BX, NEX and so on... then you can go to the Navy Exchange website and get a box of 432 wipes for $4.50.  
• If you do NOT hold a military ID card and have to buy at the store then a store brand may be just as inexpensive.
• I have had no problems with diaper rash since using these homemade wipes.
• Having the baby wipe container helps pull the pieces apart better than the ziplock container.
• Add a little food coloring to the mix and you can have your wipes match the room!

After several tries I feel that I have NAILED it!