Strawberry Shortcake Birthday ::. The Food (and food tags)

I love themes for parties.

I really do!

Christmas Cocktails.

Summer Luau.
This is why, for Charlotte's Strawberry shortcake birthday party, I decided to have some sort of food or beverage to represent each of the characters (um... minus Cherry because, to be honest, she's not in the books that we have, which is what I initially got the party idea from; also I don't think she's like a full-time cast member, lol).

Strawberry Shortcake
Strawberry Shortcake Cups

Orange Blossom's
Orange Wedges

Lemon Meringue's
Lemon Cheesecake Bars

Blueberry Muffin's
Blueberry Muffin Pops (um... not as pops, lol)

Raspberry Torte's
Raspberry Lemonade

Plum Pudding's
Plum Grape Jello Jigglers
* um... I actually meant to put "Plum Purple Jelloe Jigglers" woops. I did try to find some dessert with plums, but eventually gave up because I didn't want to spend TOO much time on something!

AND for the Food Tags...

So super unbelieveably easy! I googled the strawberry shortcake cartoon characters and came up with images of each of the characters. I then printed them out onto cardstock and glued them to a cardstock tent with the food name on it.

There you go.

In doing my research for putting together this blog post, I tried to find where I downloaded my strawberry shortcake character images from... but I think hubworld.com changed the pictures. If you are interested in what I have, please contact me at themoorebabies(at)gmail(dot)com.

Linking up:
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Keeping it simple,
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{DIY} Party Water bottle Labels

We've all seen those super cute personalized water bottles floating around, right? So I decided I was going to do those for Charlotte's 3rd Birthday Party. So off to google (what did we do before google?) and I typed in "DIY water bottle labels" and came up with Life {Sweet} Life's DIY Printable Water Bottle labels.

I then headed over to my favorite, photoshop, to put together a super cute (in my opinion) label for the Strawberry Shortcake birthday party.

Here's how I did it:

I set up my label dimensions to be 1.5" by 8.25"ish (actually, the first time I made them 2" wide.. er... tall, but that was WAY bigger than the water bottle allowed, so I went back and shrunk everything). I created a new doc, changed the right dropdown to "inches" and then made my resolution 300.

Once my document was created, I created a circle of dots (using this photoshop tutorial).

I found a strawberry shortcake image from http://www.hubworld.com/ (Strawberry shortcake is on the Hub channel)

 Added a "3"

 Inserted a green bar across the label

Then added a pink bar just inside the green bar making the green the border.

Put a white circle on top of the pink and green, but under the dots, "3", and strawberry shortcake

Added some text ("Happy Birthday Charlotte *", repeated)

Copied that line 2 more times to fill my pink bar, and set the text slightly askew from the other rows

I also added a SMALL grey line at the very bottom so I could distinguish between the labels when I went to print them so I would know where to cute (see image below)

To print them, I opened a word doc and made my margins as SMALL as they could go (0.12" on all sides). Then I pasted down until I was at the end of my word doc.

I printed my labels out on regular old white paper (no cardstock as  Life {Sweet} Life suggested) and I got like 5 per sheet. I then separated them using my handy dandy paper cutter.

The tip that I walked away from this blog was PACKING TAPE. Forget about using waterproof paper (they have that?) or leaving your printer paper to wrinkle and tear; use the 2in wide packing tape so when you press it on the bottle, you have a tight* seal.

* I used publix water bottles and maybe they were a little flimsy, but I didn't have a TIGHT seal. Once submerged, they bleed... but it was still super cute!


Awesome.

Voila.

This is such a super easy way to personalize your party and tie your theme together.

Linking up: Delightful Order, Bacontime, Sun Scholars, Ladybird Lane, Delicate Construction, Naptime Crafters,  Tatertots and Jello, Young and Crafty, Crafty Moms Share, Marvelously Messy, Creating my Way to Success, Shaken Together,CRAFT, Homework, Not Just a Housewife, Blackberry Vine, Vintage Wanna Bee, Chef in Training, Our Delightful Home, Sew Much Ado, My Girlish Whims, Gingersnap CraftsDragonfly Designs, Trendy Treehouse, Blue Cricket Design, Handyman Crafty Woman, Crafty Blog Stalker,  

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Strawberry Shortcake Birthday ::. The Cake

 In case you missed my guest post over at Between U & Me the other day... here it is!

Strawberry Shortcake Birthday Cake

Ok, I'm not gonna lie... I'm really proud of this cake.

Like, SUPER proud of this cake.

So much so, that I would like to share with you how I did it.

1. Start with a strawberry cake (boxed... which was FANTASTIC!!)

2. Put on a crumb coat using whatever icing you want. I used canned because I didn't feel like making half a dozen batches of icing. This was buttercream.

3. I baked a white 8"x8" cake (plus a dozen cupcakes) because I figured that not everyone would really like strawberry cake. Once cooled, I cut 1/3 off, then cut that 1/3 in half.

4. Put the 3rd layer on (secured with skewers... we should have leveled the cake, but we didn't) and crumb coat and chill.

5. NOW using my Grandma's Wedding Icing recipe, cover the whole cake in green.

6. Smooth the cake using step 4 on Wilton's site (or after googling, this method looks awesome). I also added the icing for the pond...

7. ... then smooth the pond out and added the pathway (PS I used valentine's m&ms)

8. Next came the grass using tip 33. And then I took a break because my hand got sore. Back to the fridge went the cake.

9. Finally, I added in some color with some flowers; I made drop flowers (yellow) with tip 18 I believe and I made rosettes with tip 16.

Now we are ready for PARTY DAY!

I almost couldn't cut into it...

but with 17 3 year olds hovering around begging for cake, I had to give in.

Linking up: Crafty Mom Share, Young & Crafty, Tatertots and Jello, Lolly Jane, Around Tuit, Under the Table Dreaming, Crafts Keep me Sane, CRAFT, The Girl Creative, Delicate Construction, Making the World Cuter, Homework, Not just a Housewife, A Bowl ful of Lemons, Chef in Training, Vintage Wanna Bee, Blackberry Vine, Gluesticks,  Our Delightful Home

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{Pinned there, Done That} Homemade Jello Playdoh

I went to Pinterest to find ideas for my daughters strawberry Shortcake birthday party, I mean... who wouldn't, the resource is there why not use it?

I am not a super fan of party favors that are silly little plastic nic nacs that end up getting broken the 2nd time you play with them. So after pinning this jello playdoh recipe from from Playdoh Recipe.org I decided to make jello playdoh as the party favors...

... and making different "flavors" based on the characters. (you gotta stick to the theme right?)

I only made 4 different "flavors" because, well, I didn't need to make THAT much and I split each batch into 4 pieces. I used strawberry jello for Strawberry Shortcake, Blue Raspberry jello for Blueberry Muffin, Raspberry Jello for Raspberry Torte, and grape jello for Plum Pudding (what? there's not plum flavored jello... and I was sticking with the color versus the flavor)

Then I went off to photoshop to make these cute labels for the top of the containers.

There we go, another pin moved to the "completed pins" board.
Woo hoo!

Linking up: Delightful Order, Crafty Blog Stalker, Between u & Me,  Finding my way in TX, Sun Scholars, Delicate Construction, Ladybird Ln, Faith Trust and Pixie Dust, Bacon Time, Naptime Crafters, Trendy Treehouse, Pocket Full of Pink, Crafty Moms Share, Lolly Jane, Tatertots and Jello, Young & Crafty , Not just a Housewife, Chef in Training, A Bowl ful of Lemons, Shwin and Shwin, How to Nest for Less, Elizabeth and Co, Homework, Vintage Wanna Bee, Blackberry Vine, Trophy Wife, Rae Gun Raegan, DIY By Design, Gingersnap Crafys, My Girlish Whims, Sew Much Ado], Dragonfly Designs, Trendy Treehouse,  Someday Crafts, Momnivores Dilemma, A Turtles Life for Me
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Finding my way in Texas

Find me at 'Between Me & U' today!

Happy Friday everyone! 
 We are home after a 3 day Disney vacation for Charlotte's 3rd birthday (the girls FIRST visit) and we are absolutely exhausted! I need a vacation after this Disney vacation.


Well, guess what? I am sharing my Strawberry Shortcake Birthday cake with Courtney and her readers over at Between Me & U  today, go check it out!

This just so happens to be my VERY FIRST guest posting
gig ever.... so I am super excited!




  Have a GREAT weekend!