Bow Tie Party
We had a bow tie themed blessing party for our little guy, Cruz. It was a lot of fun. We had a family gathering in our backyard with family. We kept it super simple. Because the blessing was in the morning, we had a light breakfast menu. We served muffins, french toast sticks, fresh fruit, and o.j. I have learned over my years of party planning, that when preparing a party menu, the simpler the better. You don't need 20 things. Just make a few things really well. Anyway, as you continue through this post you will see the fun projects I made for his party. yippee for cruz!
Bow Tie Napkins
Bow tie napkins were easy enough to make. We bought yellow rectangular napkins. You then fold the middle of the napkin in a little and then press the rest of it together to create the creases and folds in the napkin that make it resemble a bow tie. My mother in law and I made these and we realized that it took a bit if patience and each napkin kind of took a different shape so you had play with them a little to get the right shape. I had pre-cut strips of paper that would wrap around the middle. After I got the shape together, I wrapped the piece of paper around the middle and made it as tight as possible and then taped it. You want them as tight as possible so they will stay together. They arent hard to do at all! but they do take a little bit of time.
Fruit Stickers
The fruit stickers were made out of sticker paper that I purchased at Walmart and then printed off at home. It was easy to use. You want to get sticker paper that is full sheet sticker labels. I created the graphic on my Pages app for the ipad. It was easy to create using shapes and text, then e-mail it to yourself as a pdf. When you open it as pdf, you can go to the top menu and "save as". Resave it as a jpeg format. After you do that you can upload it into most photo programs. I used iphoto and on the print menu, it gave me the option to print many on a page. I printed them off, cut them out, and stuck them on the fruit. My tip is to make them pretty small (smaller than the orange ones) ebcause I ended up having many wrinkles on the stickers because it wouldn't fit well on the fruit. The banana ones were quite small and they worked perfect.
French Toast Stick Cups with Bow Ties
I saw an idea similar to this on pinterest. Don't you love pinterest?! Anyway, I created bow ties using my cricut craft machine but you could eyeball it and draw a simple bow tie and then trace them or you could cut two triangles and tape them on the sides to look like a bow tie. I used a circle sticker (the ones you purchase with the pre cut sticker labels and have sticker price tags) as the middle or knot of the bow tie and I attached the bowties using that sticker. I will say the stickers weren't always sticky enough, sometimes they fell off and we had to use scotch tape to stick them back on. My stickers were a little old though so they might work for you fine. As far as the food, I purchased frozen french toast sticks at the store and placed them in a small amount of syrup I had poured at the bottom of the cup.
Paper Pennant Banner
I created the pennant banner in minutes! It really was easy. I cut a triangle (eyeballed it) and after I cut it out, I traced the others so they were all the same size. I was able to fit two per page (12x12 scrapbook page). I could have almost fit three but not quite so you could make them a little smaller to fit three per page. After they were all cut out (I think it took 15 for my small banner). I punched two holes into the top so I could tie bows using twine in the top of them. I simply tied them to the string which was attached tightly across the tent canopy. I punched with my small martha stewart hole punch. It's smaller than regular hole punch but a regular one would still work fine.
