Crafting

 Recently, and thanks to Pinterest, I have gotten really into making things.  Actually, it started with Weston's  party and then Pinterest added to it.  I'm actually having a lot of fun doing it but it takes quite a bit of time.

The major project I had for Weston's party was the "army of sock monkeys" as Mike liked to call them.  I'm so sad I didn't get a picture of them when they were all done but I made about 12 as favors for the kids. Here are three of them.

As you can see, they are far from perfect but I'm still pretty proud.

I put them in the favor boxes here along with a monkey book, MumMums, Earth's Best Strawberry and Apple snacks, Birthday Blowouts.  The two older kids got some playing cards, bubbles, and a monkey coloring puzzle.

Another one of my favorite projects for his party was his month banner.  All of those monthly pictures I struggled to get were used for it.  I just printed 5x7 prints of each one, clued them to construction paper and hung them from a string with mini clothes pins.

I also made a birthday banner with his name out of scrapbooking paper and those punch out letters that teachers use.

 Finally, the candy buffet, cake and cupcakes. I ended up not doing fondant for the smash cake.  I just realized that, while it looked nice, it wasn't all that practical for a one year old.

The invitation:

We also blew up all of the balloons.  I really wanted more but we ran out of helium and time since we only had about 30 minutes to set everything up.  All in all, I was very happy with how everything turned out.

Recently I taught myself how to knit and am having fun with that.  I finished this scarf and am working on another.

I am also making Christmas stockings.  Weston has a really nice one from Pottery Barn but Mike and I have dollar store stockings.  I'm done with one but will post pictures when they are both done.

And keeping with the holiday spirit, here are our pumpkins for this year.

I'm still debating about carving out the letters and sticking our led lights in there but I'm not sure that we have time.

Here is our boy picking out his pumpkins.