When it’s book character parade time, we don’t play around. 😂 You can make this costume with a cardboard box, fabric marker, ribbon for shoulder straps, felt, glue gun, fabric, and a t-shirt! I added a cardboard controller and an old remote, as well. I made the t-shirt with a brown Hobby Lobby shirt, felt, scissors and glue. I stole a headband from one of my other kids and cut green craft foam to make the top greens of the potato. Pin, share, enjoy!
He tied for first with the same girl he tied with last year ❤️ She’s a mom after my own heart 😁
Second round of these cute Valentines! A few years back we did these with our guinea pigs and rabbits. When my son was uninspired for this year’s class party invites, I knew he would love these! All you need to do is take a picture with your phone, upload that image into Canva or the Word Swag app and use their free fonts, and add wording, hearts, etc. Print them from your phone at Walgreens and get them in just a few hours and then attached your favorite candy with a hot glue gun. Make sure to hold your pet’s paws in a way to make them look like they are holding the candy. Enjoy!!!
Listen, when I’m President, I promise to launch a team to investigate the price of fake palm leaves. They look good though so all’s well that looks well.
I made the banner in on the window with footprint cut-outs from Hobby Lobby. I punched holes in them and strung them on twine and it did a body good.
My very first idea for this party was this centerpiece! I saw large dino claws at Big Lots and found them on Amazon cheaper. Those can be purchased here. I was envisioning a dinosaur coming out of the table. I layered palm leaves around the claws and used my son’s Halloween costume mask from 2 years ago in the center. I used a glass bowl and purchased a small mist maker here to make him light up and smoke. I hope this makes your dreams come true like it did mine.
Look at the smoke and the detail in the claws! Is this Disney, because it’s feeling awfully magical in here.
I found this Pteranodon blow up on Amazon when looking for dinosaurs I could hang from the ceiling. I think it is technically for pools, but he has a hole in his head for hanging so one can’t be too sure. You can find him here.
I found this big ole’ fish net and the garland of leaves in the party section at Hobby Lobby. It got the job done and covered a lot of space for just two pieces. I also promise to investigate the cost of decorative fish nets as your president.
The best ever party hack is to buy a pre-made cake and decorate it with candy and crap you already have at home. I literally took a 16 dollars Sam’s Club and start to finish did this cake in under 10 minutes. Now that’s a win.
Breaking news, these are NOT real rocks! These are chocolate boulders that I bought from Candy Craze at our mall. Ere’body thought I put actual rocks on the cake. No, son.
The Dollar Tree has bags of dragon egg gumballs and since no dragon experts were coming to my son’s party, I used them as dino eggs and stuck a T-Rex head out of the middle of the bowl for good measure.
Okay, actually the dino head in the gumballs was actually the lid to the tube that these little dinosaurs came in from Target. Everybody got dino eggs, a mini dino, and a slime volcano with dinosaur as seen below.
I found these gel/slime dino volcanoes in the summer section at Kroger for two dollars each. It was like the party gods shined down and said, “Here girl, take these.”
You know I love to cut edges into my plastic party tablecloths. I made this one really jagged in the spirit of Jurrasic World.
I had 100 water balloons, dinosaurs set up for water gun shooting, and an 18 foot water like thingy all set up. It was sunny alll day, until the party. We got to have fun for 12 minutes though so take that thunder time.
I hope you like this simple Jurrasic World shabang. Pin, share, enjoy! Follow me on Instagram and Pinterest for a good ole’ time.
My new favorite, fast, easy, and cheap invitation hack is to take a picture and use Word Swag or a similar app to add text! I edited this picture and got my “invites” within an hour from Walgreens photo department for a cool 2.50!
So, we just moved into our house 3-4 months ago and we are renovating the whole thing so it’s not near done, but here’s the tablescape in a half done room.
Thirty minutes before the party, my little girl said, “Remember when you did Godzilla footprints for Crosby’s Godzilla party? We should do bunny feet for my party.” I free handed some prints, laminated them, and had them out for the party in 20 minutes. I am so weird. Don’t ask me how I attached them to the floor because when I say hot glue, you might judge me.
Dollar store cups, one dollar bag of cotton balls, and clearance Easter crazy straws equals, heck yes.
Both the plates and napkins came from TJ Maxx on Easter clearance. The plates are Meri Meri brand and if you haven’t seen their stuff, you should totally check them out!
For cupcake toppers, I ordered swirly bunny suckers from Amazon. They were actually pretty yummy and perfect for the party!
The best thing about having a bunny party, is that you can use some of your Easter decorations! I hung up this carrot garland and patted myself on the back for buying it 4 years ago. I knew we had something special between us when I saw it.
You’re only cool if you wear a bunny dress to your bunny party.
I found these rabbit candy dispensers at Easter and bought the only ones they had left. Dang, it wasn’t enough. Luckily, Mighty Dollar came through with these little glass jars for a dollar each and I just spray painted the lid. I bought bags of Double Bubble gumballs from the Dollar Tree and filled em’ up. Someone thrust their hips three times.
Home girl wanted straight-up box mix cupcakes for her party. What the bday girl wants, she gets. Hey, it’s super cheap so, good job kid. I didn’t have enough suckers for the extra ones so, mind your own business.
For a take home party favor, I used Dollar Tree tin pails wrapped in twine and the annual 10 for 10 succulent sale at Kroger to make individual bunny gardens. You don’t have to water succulents but randomly so I felt like parents would have no pressure from the kids to keep them alive.
I bought little bunny figures and mushrooms from Amazon, and little glass beads from Hobby Lobby. It was fast, easy, and not candy so yay!
Crappy quality picture. Cute kids.
No bunny party is complete without actual bunnies so one of our rabbits made an appearance for the masses. Ladies and gentleman, Kinder (like Kinder Egg), the bunny.
(Before someone sends me a message about trancing a rabbit, he isn’t tranced! He eats like this, lays on the couch like this, purrs and honks, when we hold him like this. I know not all rabbits do this, like this, or can do this. Peace and blessings.)
I hope you got some ideas for a simple and affordable bunny party! Let’s hear it for floppity loppities!
Can I hear it for my daughter’s Target “dollar section” light up board?! I love it when you can use crap from your kid’s room at a party! It looked cute lit up at the party, but you can never see that in pics. Dang.
If you don’t know anything about the game Among Us, it’s sort of like clue but with astronaut guys in outer space. They say people are “sus” for suspicious so I had to use sus in the party because everyone needs a reason to say that.
The little acrylic guy on top was actually a remote controlled light with tons of settings. I used the color strobe setting so the lights were always flashing a different color. I have a clip of it working on my her party pants Instagram, but not on here because technology hates me. You can buy these lights on Amazon for 15 dollars. Click here to shop them.
I bought the cupcake toppers here on Etsy as a printable file for just $2.90! I printed them for under two dollars from Staples using their on-line print ordering services. I picked them up same day and cut them out at home and hot glued them to toothpicks. I don’t know how many times I have said this but, hot glue is the craft medium of the craft gods. I can make anything with felt and hot glue! Bet it!
Hobby Lobby astronaut vibe plates for the party win! I scattered some Crayola star confetti on the tables that I found in the clearance aisle of Meijer. Po’ pimpin’ dem budgets.
I mean, this is what I mean by my site being “realistic Pinterest”. It’s cute, but it’s not over the top. It says, “I like parties”, but also, “I didn’t hire a balloon artist and do a 100 dollar table-scape because this is real life and a two hour party and I don’t own a Fortune 500 company”.
You can buy all of these balloons as a set on Amazon here. Mylar balloons are great and you can deflate and reinflate them to use again! I have Party City fill up the Among Us character balloons and I added a 3 dollar balloon tail that I purchased from there also. Imma save dat tail, too. I have a whole big ole’ collection of things I keep from other parties that I love reusing later.
So, we are renovating our house, and the room pictured here was supposed to be done by the party. Good thing it wasn’t because it rained all day and we needed a safe zone to make these reverse tye-die shirt aka bleaching method. What can go wrong indoors with 10 kids with straight bleach in spray bottles with little ventilation? That’s right. Nothing.
I got some cheap packs of craft stars in different sizes to go with the whole galactic theme since Among Us is set in outer space. It was a cheap and age appropriate thing to do with pre-teens so yay us.
I stretched out dollar store plastic table cloths and labeled each child’s name on a strip of tape next to each shirt. They laid out their shirt design and got to spraying. It’s such a simple activity and I think they turned out really cool!
BEFORE
AFTER
To end the party, they all played Among Us in real life. My husband secretly picked two impostors and they roamed about the house figuring out who had “died” and who must’ve been the impostor “Among Us”.
This now concludes the two part series of “parties right after a move that are not as crazy as some parties I’ve done before”. I hope you’ve enjoyed your stay here at Her Party Pants today. Travel safely.
Everything you see in this party, except for the cake (which was dirt cheap) and the candy, was either free from a dumpster (true, read on), or 5 dollars or less. Most things seen in this post were three dollars or less. Come join me on a cavity fun filled adventure!
I talk about some of these individual decor pieces down below, but let me just talk about the rainbow swirl candies here. I bought a 3 dollar pack of dessert party plates from Target and wrapped them in cellophane to make 8 different rainbow striped treats that I used in different ways for this party. Some were taped to the wall….that’s right….taped….just directly on the wall because I hear packing tape is good for paint. The remaining ones I turned into a garland. Wee doggies.
There are the plates I made into a garland. I cut circles out of card-stock from an old garland to add between each plate. Put it on a ribbon and ya done!
TIP: Buy a solid color store bought cake and decorate it at home. This cake was a big size and only 15 dollars from Sam’s. I decorated this one with a sprinkle number topper from Hobby Lobby, candles from Five Below, and candy from the Dollar Tree! It was a twelve inch cake and all in cost me 22 bucks! This is an example of being a winner.
PSA: You can always hot glue anything. This includes large swirly suckers that you drop and break.
Might as well turn the homeschool chalkboard into something.
I know, I know, the balloon backdrop looks so small here. In reality, it was fine, Karen. Moving on, I hand cut a dollar store tablecloth into drips, which coordinated with her invitations that I bought on here on Etsy. If you’ve been around here a few years, you may remember the first time I came up with drip cloths for my third daughter’s chocolate themed birthday party. They are satisfying
I bought plain white paper boxes from Hobby Lobby and decorated them with large patterned letters in each child’s first initial. My daughter decorated each box with puffy sweets stickers.
Buckle up kitty cats because those swirly little fans are straight from a dumpster at Five Below. Yes sir! My mom dumpster dives in retail dumpsters and you wouldn’t believe what they throw out. She found these fans and other party supplies and I’ve kept them in a tote knowing I’d use them one day. Two hours before the party, I thought they would look like suckers on spray painted dowels, so that’s exactly what I did! I added ribbon and that, my friends, is how you turn dumpster finds into basically free party supplies!
The bigger suckers and the wrapped candies in the picture below is just one dollar pool noodles wrapped in athletic tape and sealed with cellophane. For the big suckers, I hot glued them on craft dowels I painted and for the individual candies, I just wrapped the rolled up noodle, and twisted up the ends of the cellophane and tied them tight to make them look like over-sized candies. The handing honeycomb ice creams were one dollar from the Dollar Tree for a two pack. Pimpin’. I hung them and opened them halfway and secured them to the balloon wall for a dimensional look.
They filled them nicely, bro.
So boat loads of candy can get expensive. We found the world’s cutest marshmallows from Walmart for 2 dollars a bag. They were just vanilla flavored marshmallows in cupcake shape with sprinkled sugar on them. They were so cute, cheap, and took up a bunch of space. I also used brownie bites from Sam’s Club that were manna from heaven! I’m not supposed to eat gluten, but I partookth.
Aw yeah, donkey butt, that is one of those cute glass jar gumball containers from the Target cheap zone that sold out super fast. I know a sell out when I see them so I bought one and I sprayed painted the red on the jar yellow to match the table. I bought many of these plastic display containers from Hobby Lobby and they were cracked so instead of 6-7 dollars, I got them for $1.50! When filled with candy, you couldn’t even tell and imma keep usin’ those bad boys until they fall apart or the good Lord comes back, one.
You are darn tootin’ that I used mini boxes of cereal! The mini box backs are cheap and cereal is truly the ultimate of trash foods. Everybody loves cereal AND they take up lots of space!
For the sucker display, Styrofoam can puzzlingly enough, be costly so I bought two circle discs of Styrofoam from the Dollar Tree, stacked them in this container, and stuck carnival suckers in them. It gave some variance to the look of the display and was cheaper than….something witty….cheaper than……I don’t know, Sarah.
Another big table filler: Cotton candy containers from Sam’s! It was really cheap, really. It’s way cheaper than buying smaller candies, like Skittles, that don’t take up much space.
I love coming up with neat ways to give a gift card and I made this large clear candy ball with an ornament and twisted and glued cellophane hot glued to each end. I got confetti from the Dollar Tree and cut it up to use as a filler. I mean, I love these like chocolate cake after midnight in my pajamas.This gift card was the prize for the ice card scratch off games. I found the scratch offs in the “dollar” aisle at Target a few years ago and bought a few packs to use at different parties. The ice creams went perfect with the theme. Here are the scratch-offs below. I love adding a gambling flair to elementary school parties. It just feels so right.
And the winner was…..Mrs. Emie!
I did this whole party for 12 kids for 100 bucks! That includes EVERYTHING! It was simple and fun. 5 stars. Highly recommend.
Pin, share, enjoy! Follow me on my social media accounts, but just like my bio says, just not in real life.
Have you seen the pictures kids take with outstretched arms and then they add a sucker to the picture later so it looks like they are holding it? I was trying to think of a unique and easy Valentine and it dawned on me, “Why can’t my girl’s use their pets to do the same thing?” and poof, DIY pet sucker Valentine’s were born!
I used the app Word Swag to do the wording and printed these from my phone to Walgreens. I used scissors to snip slits for the suckers and it couldn’t be easier!
I also have one where the guinea had the sucker in its mouth. I mean…I can’t. I love these!
I love doing creative things for my kids and to inspire others! I’d love for you to share this post or pin it to spread the creative juices around. Happy early Valentine’s!!!!
We are getting ready to move homes to another dated house to makeover so I wanted to document my before and afters of this sweet home before we go. Plus, I hope it will give you hope when you see pictures of our next dated space. Lol
Before: Someone said, “You know what, let’s paint this house cream and put cream rock all around it. That will set it off.
This is our 2, 000 sq ft ranch home we bought almost 9 years ago. Here is what it looked like on move in day in 2012.
After: Needlepoint Navy is the brick color with Colonial Yellow for the door. I believe it was from Porter Paints. We moved the Japanese Maple that was oddly in front of the big windows because it was to big for that space. I added a new light and paint and plants did the rest.
Original living room before:
After! I had my dad build my some simple custom shelves and a custom mantle and we walled in the bonus to make a master/4th bedroom.
Believe it or not, this was the original master! It looks bigger in this picture than it really was. This room is approximately one king size bed big.
After: New paint, lighting, and window treatments go a long way. Also, nothing like a rug to change a room. If you want a big change to a room, go rug and windows first! They warm up a space and really complete a look.
Before: Let’s talk about what you see here. It will be therapeutic because you can’t un-see it. What you are experiencing is a wet bar with fake leather pillowed front and fake marble tiles behind it to really set it off. For a special effect, the whole room is wrapped in red wood paneling. This is the room that became our master!
After: I never really felt like I finished this space, but it beats cheesy strip club wet bar any day.
Before: One of the girl’s bedrooms and I need you to know that there are 7 levels of border on that wall. SEVEN. Why do people do the things they do? Just don’t, Christopher. Don’t.
After: Those solid bunk beds are something special. That is an Opalhouse clearance indoor/outdoor rug. I like to use outdoor versatile rugs because, you know, kids.
Before: Kitchen
After: Added lighting and replaced lighting, added shelving, paint, and decor.
Here’s another angle.
Before: Laundry room corner
After: Home school space! I use to have a big cool rug in here and then, rabbits. They pooped and peed on it like a litter box and I gave them away in my mind for a minute.
Before: Front foyer
After: Paint and added this wall of hooks with shelf for just around 100 bucks. This is not how the shelf is normally styled, but we are moving and I don’t care. lol
Before: Hall bath
Again, just take this in. This yellow is something special. Also, please note the fronts of this vanity is covered in fake mosaic wallpaper. You’re welcome, eyes. The after is still under construction but….
After: New ere’thang. I JUST started doing this a few months ago during COVID stuff not knowing we were about to move. That’s a dark blue solid wood vanity with quartz top and soft close doors. New lights, epoxied yellow tile, new fixture, bath fitter, toilet, floors, and a cool mirror you can’t see all the way that is sort of rainbow shaped. The mirror was a big mantle mirror and I loved it. I actually used liquid nails to adhere it to the wall so it’s there until the house burns down or falls apart. Enjoy.
Well folks, that it’s for this sweet house. There are more rooms and I have more pictures, but my kids were in the bulk of them so this will have to do.
I CANNOT wait to move in to our next home and I will be documenting it heavily here and with videos on Instagram.
Pin, share, enjoy and follow me on my accounts so we can be BFFs.
I found this glorious Christmas wall decor at the promise land, Ikea, in Tampa. It was actually used as an advent calendar in the store, but I decided to fill with Christmas cards instead. I’ve always wanted a streamlined and cool way to display cards and when I saw this wall tree, I heard angels and rainbows in my eardrums. I told me husband that even if I had to tape this tree on my back, it was getting on the dang plane with me. As you can see, I won in passenger versus airplane carry-on limitations.
Do you love this?! Ahhhhhhh, Merry Christmas and thanks for all the Christmas cards, homies.
I am in love with gifting in unique ways. This year I made a few different versions of ornament packaging and DIY gingerbread house boxes that I posted on my Instagram. Sets your corneas on these!
I am a private dyslexia tutor and gave this fun pom ornament to as student as a gift for completing a level in the program/Merry Christmas. The sucker is a cupcake topper which was perfect because it gave it natural height.
I went to a favorite things party for homeschool moms from our campus and I brought my handmade gingerbread house boxes and with my favorite nut butter from Gone Nuts. (And no, no one wore clogs with socks and denim skirts to the homeschool party. I almost wore a Biggie sweatshirt. Homeschool: It’s not just for Pilgrims anymore.)
I bought these large globe ornaments from Hobby Lobby and they came in a 2 pack. I’m not a magician. They come in two separate pieces that snap together. You can use blanket or loose snow and these bottle brush trees are what started it all for me. I’m a sucker for a bottle brush tree!
As a tip, loose snow is easier! Just hot glue the trees, figures, gift cards, etc. into the placements that you want, fill up one half while it lays on its back, and then snap the two parts together. I love the way they turned out and it’s cooler way to gift a gift card. Merrryyyyy Christmas!!!!!!
