Mustache party!

Posted: March 8, 2010 | Author: Mika | Filed under: Dangerous Book for Boys | 5 Comments

Ready for the long-awaited pictures?

The night before, I set up this thrift store sheet as a photo backdrop so we could all have our picture taken. With our mustaches.

I had a little vase filled with mustaches for guests to use. The mustaches were made from dark brown felt, cardstock, and something from the craft store called "cookie sticks."

We got lots of balloons to match the thrift store sheet. And blue for boys, right? The Bwun is not unhappy - it's just difficult to get any pictures of him sitting still, and this was the only one in focus where you could see his face instead of just the balloon.

I made the Romgi model a mustache for me before our guests arrived.

Originally I planned to serve cupcakes, but February cupcaked me out. So we had cookies (Oreos, chocolate chip, and Mother's) and milk instead. I put the cookies on a cake plate; it was awesome.

Look in the background - the Romgi put mustaches on our portraits!

Remember that Williams-Sonoma giant donut cake pan I love? I made a miniature one for the Bwun! ...Ok, fine, we got a donut from the BYU Creamery. It seemed fitting. The candle is a blue elephant.

The Bwun has obviously watched me eat donuts a time or two.

Eating the mustache was completely his idea, though.

Ben, Krista, & family.

Twins!

Josh & Katie.

Quentin & Kimberlee.

Doug & Angie.

The Romgi & me.

We watched Up, ate cookies, drank milk, and tried to get the Bwun to open presents. I guess he just isn’t old enough to care yet. But he definitely liked the toys once they were opened! It was a lot of fun, not too much work, and a great way to take advantage of the mustache fad. (By the way – did I tell you the whole thing was the Romgi’s idea?)

If you’re curious, I used this mustache template from The Inspired Bride. I suggest making the mustaches slightly smaller. I cut some at half-size for the kids, and 1/4-size for the twins.

Good times!

Speaking of Christmas

Posted: March 7, 2010 | Author: Mika | Filed under: All's Well That Ends Well | 3 Comments

Did you get our Christmas card? Some of them were mailed out later than I planned, but I almost definitely sent you one. Blame the postal system if it didn’t arrive…

I thought they were amazingly cool cards. I don’t know how I’ll top them this year. My inspiration was this save-the-date postcard idea from Martha Stewart:

I wanted to include a wallet-sized family photo, so I had to change a few things. I got a larger (though still quite small) envelope, which had to be turned vertically to fit on my postcard. And I stamped our return address on the top flap of the envelope so we could see whose card was undeliverable and so friends could mail us cards, too. Want to see what I came up with?

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Originally I wanted to get a lot of vintage postcards from ebay, but that turned out to be way too expensive and complicated. I was able to find a book of old-fashioned Christmas postcards on Amazon. The envelopes were #17 Mini Envelopes bought through ActionEnvelope; they were the perfect size for the photos, which I had printed at the BYU Bookstore (I alternated between 3 of my favorite pictures from our portraits in September). I ordered a set of 100 postcard stamps online to save myself the trouble of going to the post office during December.

Total cost? About $0.85 per card. Not bad, considering the other cards I like were over $1 apiece, over $2 apiece, over $3 apiece, and over $4 apiece (do I have expensive taste?).

Admittedly, it would have been cheaper to buy a box of 12 cards from the dollar store (with change in postage, about $0.67 per card), but…definitely less cool, although I think I will go a somewhat cheaper route this year. We had almost 100 cards to mail out!

Happy Christmas again!

(Our family photos were taken by the amazing Angela of angie milne photography.)