2012 – Page 10 – Casa de Berry

2012, about me, bloggy friends, link parties

She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not

March 14, 2012by casadeberry8 Comments

I’m linking up to the awesome Michaela’s She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not linky party ;D

She Loves Me

1. My family – I love my husband and boys more than anything!!

2. Having a big backyard for my boys to play in and for me to grow veggies in.

3. Nail polish! I am late to this game but I love wearing all sorts of weird colors on my nails.

4. My homeland – Peru – and my dear family and friends who are there. I am planning on going to get some yummy Peruvian food on Saturday, if any locals would like to try Peruvian food, you should!!! ;D

5. Throwing parties! Seriously, I love it. It always gets a little hectic right before but I love putting things together, coming up with ideas with my husband, and seeing them come to life ;D

She Loves Me Not

1. People who think like this. Who don’t care about anyone else’s wishes and only think about what they want. (pic from Pinterest)

2. Cliques. They’re bad in high school and downright pathetic in adulthood. (pic from Pinterest)

3. Factory farmed food. I am guilty as hell of enjoying meat but one of my goals this year is to have more meals be made without factory farmed animals. Pic from here.

4. Empire waists and horizontal stripes. I’m 5’1″, with big boobs and hips. This dress would make me look like a pregnant circus tent. Dress from Old Navy.

5. That I am so far from Paris ;D

2012, craft, gardening, paper

Downton Martha garden file box

March 12, 2012March 10, 2012by casadeberry5 Comments

I saw this idea on The Martha’s website the other day and decided to make something similar. Alas, at the time I was watching Downton Abbey, so you see, the end result is something of a hybrid ;D

We had a spare DVD storage box that I appropriated for this project, and covered in gorgeous 18-century floral print wrapping paper that I got from a book on clearance. Score! It has a few different prints so I used two, the lighter one to cover the box, and the darker one for the cardstock dividers.

I made the Seeds sign with stickers I had leftover from my craft table project. Since this file box will be outside some of the time, I added some wide packing tape to the edges of the box, the Seeds sign and the dividers, to protect the printed paper. I had some bias tape that coordinated with the paper, so I made handles for the box and added a ribbon detail to the top of the box, with a cute button on the Seeds sign.

The seed packets are attached (once empty) to plain index cards where I can write down how well they did, where they were planted, etc. I have a spreadsheet I use for my garden plans but I had been holding on to the empty seed envelopes because I didn’t want to throw them away. Now I have a pretty box to store them in and add information for future plantings.

Hope you enjoyed this Downton / Martha inspired craft!

2012

Garden numbers

March 5, 2012March 4, 2012by casadeberry2 Comments

6 – The number of broccoli seedlings I planted yesterday.

22 – Number of carefully-nurtured tomato seedlings that got planted.

25 – Number of wax beans I planted, after soaking for an hour.

72 – Number of tomato seedlings I was supposed to plant. Of course, then I’d have to move out because there would be no place for me.

My mother-in-law is, thank goodness, taking a few tomato seedlings. Because we’re supposed to go camping in August and I don’t know who’ll be canning the zillion tomatoes we’ll be getting. Our friend K wants to do a canning day, which sounds fab. The manly men will watch the kidlets while the womenfolk get our canning on.

After I planted the 22 tomato seedlings I realized I grabbed seedlings at random, without keeping track of which kind went where. Yeah. I swear I’m a little more organized with my kids.

And by the way, Trader Joe’s, your “Amusant” wine wasn’t Amusant at all. I still love you, though, because your rice milk is the cheapest in town.

Signed,

Mme. Non-sequitur

2012, birthdays, boys, craft, husband

Superhero birthday party – Background and Decor

March 2, 2012June 29, 2020by casadeberry14 Comments

superhero wall
(Click on the picture above to see a larger version)

My husband wanted to create a huge cityscape, full of well-known superhero landmarks, a blend of Metropolis, Gotham, etc. for our son’s party — we had a huge roll of butcher paper his mom had given us, so he decided to use that and our supply of spray paint to create his vision.

Putting the final touches on the Daily Planet building.

Some final detail shots:

The bat-signal appears against a stormy sky.

Shadow-lettering on the Daily Planet topper.

The main letters on the Daily Planet, Daily Bugle, and Stark Industries buildings were printed out, cut out (no Silhouette here, LOL) and pasted on.

My son had the great idea of adding the superhero decals I had gotten him for Christmas to the buildings. They really added the finishing touch to the background.

Here’s my sweetheart on the morning of his birthday.

In addition to the fab background, my husband also built a sloping console to go on top of the TV console – he cut out pieces and taped pictures of various villains and technical elements, then added fluorescent lights under so it really looked like a computer console:

The birthday boy loved all the touches throughout the house, and I loved all the work and thought my husband put into making our sweet boy’s birthday a magical one.

If you missed any of the earlier posts, click on the following links to read about the rest of the party details: Invitations, Masks & Capes, Cakes, and Piñata – enjoy!

2012, birthdays, craft, husband

Superhero birthday party – Piñata time!

March 1, 2012February 28, 2012by casadeberry2 Comments

With a superhero-themed party, the obvious choice for a piñata was a supervillain. My husband decided on Dr. Doom, foe of the Fantastic Four and other heroes.

The piñata was built out of balloons and paper mache, and I made the tunic and cloak out of green velour I found on sale.

Here’s the birthday boy ready to wallop Dr. Doom:

Dr. Doom’s neck was the first to go, followed by his head — my little one gave some dainty hits as well 😀

The hardest hitter of the afternoon caused some serious damage:

But in the end, Dr. Doom met his end at the hand of a mob of children, and was ripped apart, limb by limb.

There was much rejoicing in the vanquishing of this villain, and even more so in the baggies full of sweets that were inside his belly.

2012, baking, birthdays, boys

Superhero birthday party – Cakes

February 29, 2012February 29, 2012by casadeberry4 Comments

My mother-in-law has always baked birthday cakes for the boys — as I mentioned last week, it’s only been in recent years that my husband started to decorate them. This year he chose a simple design for our superhero-obsessed boy: Captain America’s shield.

This cake was huge — how huge was it? The platform it’s sitting on is a table topper, which my mother-in-law wrapped in starry paper to match the cake’s theme.

It was also delicious. My boy loves vanilla, so she obliged with a yummy, moist vanilla cake, vanilla pudding filling, and vanilla buttercream frosting. So good! Here is the moment it was brought out:

Time to blow out the candles!

The surprise was, there was a second cake — you can see it on the left there. It is an arc-reactor cake that, thanks to our friend S, could light up.

Aidan tries to blow out the arc reactor 😀

Since the larger cake fed everyone at the party, I decided to bring the arc-reactor cake to Aidan’s school on Monday. His classmates loved that it lit up and had many nice things to say about the yummy cake. I saved the last piece for my boy to have after dinner. Thank you for the yummy cakes, Gran!

2012, birthdays, boys, craft, entertaining, husband, kids, parties

Superhero Birthday Party – Masks & Capes

February 28, 2012March 7, 2012by casadeberry13 Comments

Our original plan had been to make fabric masks and capes for the kids so they could be “superheroes” all afternoon — but then my husband decided to shape foam sheets into masks and off he went, making a ton of them in a variety of colors and shapes.

This one was my favorite:

I loved the sparkly rose gold color and the heart shapes!

My son chose this one:

Here he tries on another mask for size:

The kids loved choosing a mask and cape and wore them throughout the party – here are some of them during the piñata gorefest (not really). I made a few capes in different colors, and my son requested his be longer, and I added his initial on the back.

It was fun to see the kids trying to decide which color mask or cape to wear, it was a very important choice ;D

2012, birthdays, boys, craft, paper, project

Superhero birthday party — invitations

February 27, 2012June 29, 2020by casadeberry2 Comments

My oldest turned 7 yesterday – he’s been into superheroes for the past few months:

As Captain America for Halloween

He’s waiting for the new Avengers movie to come out – so is mommy, for entirely different reasons – so of course, a superhero party was requested. My husband and I go crazy planning our kids’ parties so we had a lot of fun with this one.

The invitations were the first project completed, of course — I’ve posted about some of our past efforts, but in this case, it was my husband’s work all the way. He came up with a cool superhero invitation concept, but I’ll let the birthday boy show you the invitation itself 😀

The Avengers seal on the front of a gate-fold card.

Inside, on the center panel, would be all the party information.

On the left were the names of some of the Avengers and their status for attending the party — Responding!

On the right were the map and coordinates for the superhero headquarters, i.e. our house. Yes, the map and coordinates actually pointed to our house. It’s my husband we’re talking here, he’s very detail-oriented 😀

Some more detail pics:

More about this party on Wednesday!

2012, birthdays, boys, february

A trip to Sprinkles

February 24, 2012by casadeberryLeave a Comment

For Christmas, my dear friend D gave me a gift card to Sprinkles. My husband and I have been trying to improve our eating habits, so I decided to wait until my oldest’s birthday to use the card. I asked him if he wanted his BFF to go along and of course, he said yes!

On Friday morning, I drove the boys up to Stanford Shopping Center to indulge in some cupcake goodness and kick off my son’s birthday weekend.

I love this pic of my darling boy and his sweet friend:

Running towards our destination!

I got a few more to bring home ;D

My choice was, of course, the milk chocolate cupcake:

The boys chose vanilla cupcakes with vanilla frosting, although none of us could take more than three bites. The cupcakes are so rich that we brought ours home and ate the rest later.

I used to work close to this mall years ago and it was so strange going there today, seeing all the changes, all the new stores, and remembering what I was doing way back when this was my favorite mall to hang out at.

Also, many thanks to my friend D — $3.50 cupcakes are SO not in our budget, so your gift was the reason for this super fun little trip! Thanks also to my awesome friend M for letting your son join in our cupcake mission 😀

2012, birthdays, craft, husband, parties, past project

Past Project – Piñata Time!

February 24, 2012February 23, 2012by casadeberry6 Comments

Our oldest’s fourth birthday was all about dinosaurs. He knew the names of dozens of dinosaurs, what they ate, how they fought, etc. My husband decided to make a piñata worthy of his firstborn’s obsession.

I think it came out pretty fricking fabulous! It was made out of balloons covered in paper-mache.

Our boy was pretty happy with his piñata:

However, there was one little problem.

My husband had done such a good job ensuring the piñata was sturdy, that no one could break it. The birthday boy’s dainty whack certainly didn’t do the trick ;D

Three rounds later, all the kids were tired, so my husband decided to give it the old coup de grace and end its misery.

There was tons of red confetti inside, along with candy so when the piñata was opened (ha) it would come out like blood. My husband likes to be realistic that way.

We still have the head on our bookcase, along with some costume heads – I said we should mount them like hunting trophies, what do you think?