{Winner} Monkey-Toes Shoes Giveaway

Lucky Number #13 drawn via Random.org

CT Mom said...

"Like" CupcakeMAG on Facebook

Congratulations CT Mom! Please email us at carrie.andersruff@gmail.com to claim your prize!

{Winner} Monkey-Toes Shoes Giveaway

{Client Parties} Ellie's Great Skate

Ellie, the birthday girl!

Our client, fellow blogger and fellow Etsy seller, Erika, recently planned for her daughter Ellie a Great Skate party to celebrate her eighth birthday. Erika chose a local roller skating rink to throw the bash, and just looking at these pictures brings me back, way back...to 1980. I remember the disco lights and skating with friends in the middle of the rink, arms crossed, twirling around in circles. But, I digress.

On to the party!

The invitation! We used our Vintage Carnival / Circus Invitation, "Clownin' Around" and personalized it to match Ellie's party theme.

Erika, we love what your baker did with these treats (just look at the presentation with the pinwheels, and the cupcake toppers that spell out Ellie's name). The envelopes containing Ellie's invitation were personalized with a coordinating label sticker.

The girls worked up quite a thirst skating round and round! We designed coordinating water bottle labels for the drinks.

As a party favor, Ellie gave each guest a Pinwheel Hair Clip, how cute is that?!

Erika...the mom, the blogger, the crafter!

I wonder if the DJ played any Journey? (Carrie's flashback to 1980)

Ellie, her sisters and friends; what a cute crew!

Erika’s youngest daughter, Charlotte (nicknamed Tottie) was diagnosed with Pauci-JRA (less than 4 joints juvenille rheumatoid arthritis) when she turned two in October 2007. In her own words, “my girls love wearing headbands & so when I discovered that other people loved them too, I knew this was a way that I could give back to an organization that is searching & working on find the cause & cure for childhood arthritis.” Please stop by Erika’s Etsy shop, Totties Pretties. Proceeds of each purchase go to CARRA - a group of pediatric rheumatologist across the US & Canada doing clinical trials & research to find the cause & a cure for childhood arthritis.

You can also follow Erika’s blog, Reece99, here.

What fun memories for Ellie, her parents, her sisters and her friends. Roller skating brings out the kid in everyone! Thank you again Erika for sharing with us pictures of Ellie’s party!

{Client Parties} Ellie's Great Skate

{Featured Clients} An adorable Airline Party!

Audrey, a great and crafty client of ours, shared photos from her son's 1st Birthday Party. I am LOVING these airplane themed parties! She did a fabulous job.... Can't wait to show you everything below.

Here is the invitation that she sent out.... (She ordered a custom graphic and color change from our shop) Don't you just LOVE the color scheme!?

She used the party logos as napkin wraps.... I love how she displayed them in luggage!
Cute banner above the treats!
Could this cake be any cuter? I am loving cake buntings and her little logos on the sides make it so precious.... especially with the paper straws. Simple cakes can make such a great impact!


These cookies look so precious, too! I love how they are cloud shapes!
Precious setup with the water bottle wraps and napkins....
A closeup of the water bottle wraps....


She also used our printable folding food labels to personalize her food table...

More food and treats....

I love these cookie pops!!!!

These are my favorite part - the packaging is SO relevant to the theme, too. They look like little boxes that you'd see moving along the conveyor belt at an airport terminal! Love the twine, the cloud name tag and the logo sticker to tie it all together.

Great job, Audrey! WE love everything you did! What a memorable party that will be!

Thanks for sharing!

(Airplane printable designs available in our shop!)

{Featured Clients} An adorable Airline Party!

{Sneak Peek} Amazing client parties in NYC and Brazil

We are always THRILLED to be able to share our clients' parties with you all.

We have a few sneak peeks of some big parties to feast your eyes on.... Some real eye candy!

First up, Nick's amazing 50th Birthday party - planned by his girlfriend (and our wonderful client), Zulema. We had the pleasure of attending Nick's 50th Birthday and helped setup the dessert table, etc with Zulema. What a wonderful experience. Zulema is starting her own event planning / dessert table styling business in NYC and we can't wait to see her succeed! She is a true talent.

Just check out Trump SoHi - the venue. Top floor. Amazing!

Cookies by The Cookie Jar!
Me, Zulema and Adria...


Second up, Luciana's daughter's party. We LOVE it when we have international clients. When Luciana, of Brazil, contacted us to design a whole collection of printable graphics for her daughter's party, we were thrilled!

We will be sharing several large parties in the next week.... can't wait to share more!




Third up, Cecilia's 4th Birthday. What a BLAST this party was. We were in NYC for Nick's 50th (above) and were able to stop by our friend, Suysel's daughter's party. It was a disco dancing party and WOW was it fantastic. I think the kids will be talking about this party for a LONG time.... Here are some peeks....

Cute photo booth (dress up clothes, etc provided for them to enjoy!)
The dance floor!
The cake!
Stay tuned within the next week for full detailed photos!

{Sneak Peek} Amazing client parties in NYC and Brazil

{Guest Post & Surprise Giveaway} Oscar's First Birthday

Our friend and client Jenny, owner of Monkey-Toes asked us to created for her cutie patootie, Oscar, a farm themed party. We are thrilled that Jenny shared with us photos AND a write-up, which is also being featured today on CupcakeMAG For Littles. As an added bonus, Jenny has graciously offered to give away one pair of shoes for your little cowboy or cowgirl!

Oscar sported at his party these adorable Wowie Cowie shoes but there are plenty more to choose from!

Take it away, Jenny!

MOOOOO-VE over bland 1^st birthday parties, here comes OOOOSCARS! Oh how much fun I had for this barnyard bash. I had many nights of insomnia with the list of “to dos” running through my head, so I found myself waking up at 5 am (which is completely unheard of for me – I’m an 8am to noon-ish kinda gal) getting busy. Cutting, taping, drawing, hair and finger nails flying (added the last one for a fun visual). All this hard work paid off when I heard the oooohs and ahhhhhs at his party!

So here it is. The long awaited Oscar’s first birthday party which was a HUGE success. (Even the hubs *admitted* he enjoyed it, and he was non-stop rolling his eyes at everything for the past 3 weeks – his eyes must HURT!) The details, which MADE the party, were supplied by Anders Ruff Designs and I couldn’t be more happy with their work. EVERYONE commented on the little bits scattered throughout the party. I thought it was adorable for Oscar to have his own logo. The (barn) stage was set with the invite, and everything from there coordinated. Can you say AH-DOOR-ABLE??

I had so much fun playing dj on itunes by creating a mix of Oscar’s Barnyard Beats. I had a little cowboy theme going with Wild Wild West (Will Smith), Dixieland Delight (Alabama), Should’ve been a Cowboy (Toby Keith) and tons more. I hope the kiddos enjoyed them on their ride home, and hopefully it didn’t drive the parents nuts by being to kidd-ish. Along with the cd’s, each cowpoke received their very own adorably hand decorated farm animal sugar cookie. Aren’t they sooo cute! They could choose from a horse, barn, cow, pig, chick or sheep. And they were quite yummy too! All created by Truly Scrumptious Cookies – so many fun designs. See those “winner” bags? Those are for the pin the tail on the donkey and pie eating contest winners. Oh the kiddos had so much fun playing. And of course, no farm party would be complete without Monkey Toes Wowie Cowie tennis shoes. I initially had the shoes, and Oscar’s non-traditional birthday hat – a cowboy hat - sitting on the entry table and then moved it on to the kids table to act as the centerpiece. Oscar did just what I suspected he would once I put the hat on his head, he grabbed it, smacked everyone in the face with it and then threw it to the ground. Gotta love 1 year olds!

I tried to make the party space look as much like a barn as I could, so we held the party in the garage. I figured all the pots, tool boxes and lawnmower, etc were perfect “décor” for a barn, right?! I just incorporated it all into the scenery. We even strung lights across the ceiling of the garage for a “ho-down” kinda feel. I LOVE it, so much that I think I will leave them up – it’s like a party for our cars every time we drive into the garage. The wheel barrow was the perfect place to house the cold beverages! Look how cute those “Got Water” labels turned out. I heard many whispers of “oh my gosh, I can’t believe Oscar has his own water bottle labels, how CUTE!”.

The kiddos were greeted with their own burlap covered table filled with all sorts of goodies, when they walked into the garage – oops, I mean BARN. Each lil cowpoke had a cowboy hat with name tag, and their tagged cups dictated where they would be sitting (ah, this left out any arguing over who was going to sit by who! Crisis averted - Yay me!!). I had this bright idea for centerpieces in the middle of the night – a mason jar filled with animal crackers and peeking out – a colored pencil topped with the cute little tags made by Anders Ruff. EASY PEASY! And cute to boot! (HA! I am a dork). And since Oscar would chuck his hat any time it was near him, it sat in the center.

For games, I really wanted tons of giggles from the kiddos so we went back to basics. A good old fashioned game of pin the tail on the donkey and a pie eating contest. I drew the donkey, my oldest daughter colored it, and made the tail by cutting a ton of fuzzy yarn and hot gluing it to a square of card stock. The kids had so much fun being spun around and around – I was amazed at their pinning skills! All the kids helped out and were squealing. The pie eating contest was a hit too! Of course I wouldn’t let them use their hands. HAHA! Whipped cream EVERYWHERE! They loved getting a little messy for a good cause – a clean plate. To make bibs – I cut plastic shopping bags in half and the handles served as the ties. Cheap, easy and fun!

Ok, Ok, on to the most important thing at a birthday party – CAKE! I decided not to go the traditional route of a giant cake, I went with mini err, gigantic cupcakes from Costco (GASP! Don’t knock it until you try it, their cakes are DEEE-LISH!) I’m a cake person, if you can’t tell. To make things easy on me, so I didn’t have to do any baking or re-frosting, I decided to just add a toothpick to those cute little tags and slap them right on top of the store-bought cupcakes. Again, easy, and made a great statement. I even created cow print placemats from some of the Anders Ruff printables they sent.

And lastly, we cannot forget the birthday boy and his first GIANT cupcake! I think he was a little overwhelmed by this monstrosity, but we all coerced him into eating it. And that he did! (Oscar is definitely my child with the way he smashed that cake into his mouth) He was so messy we had a “hay-day” (pun intended) getting him clean again. I swear with a toddler you need a disposal installed on the tub.

I’m pretty sure Oscar had a great time at his party. Ok, he had no idea it was his party, but he didn’t cry, scream or throw any tantrums, so I am taking that as a “I loved it” stamp of approval!

Thank you to Anders Ruff who provided me with all of the gorgeous printables for this party! I would have NEVER been able to pull this all together without you!! And now on to the next party in March - YIKES.

Giveaway Description:

One pair of Monkey-Toes Tennis Shoes or Mary Janes (Infant/Toddler). You may pick the style depending on availability. Here are two examples:

First Way To Enter

• Visit Monkey-Toes or their new outlet store and leave us a comment below telling us which pair of shoes you will choose if you will.

For Additional Entries* (not required but extra ways to win!)

• “Like” Monkey-Toes on Facebook

• Follow Monkey-Toes on Twitter

• Follow Monkey-Toes' Blog

• "Like" CupcakeMAG on Facebook

• Follow CupcakeMAG on Twitter

• Follow CupcakeMAG For Littles' Blog

{*For each of the additional entries, you must leave separate comments here (on our blog) specifying what you did. We will verify the additional steps if you win!}

Winner will be drawn on Friday, December 31st, at 1:00PM ET

Open to US residents only

{Guest Post & Surprise Giveaway} Oscar's First Birthday

{Featured Client Parties} A "Sprinkle" Shower

I have been anxiously waiting to post this shower until after the holidays. Our calendar was so booked up with all of our holiday posts/parties/products, and so I'm so excited to share these photos finally.

A great client of ours, Lynne, hosted a fabulous "sprinkle" baby shower. I absolutely love the colors and "feel" of this baby shower. The colors remind me of something you'd see in Restoration Hardware.

When Lynne found Anders Ruff, she had already sent out invitations so she just wanted us to create printable accessories to go along with the theme/scheme.

We incorporated some graphics (different from ones seen on her invitation, but still with the same "feel" and color scheme) and created party logos and a banner for the "sprinkle".

Super cute table!

Adorable place settings...

Cute napkins with a party logo embellishment on the outside.

Cupcake toppers....

Sweet little cupcakes "Sprinkled with Love"...

I love the white chocolate dipped oreos that each guest received! Lynne tied a favor tag to each favor that was personalized with each guest's name on it. I love how she used a party logo around each napkin wrap.

Here is a picture of the hostess, Lynne, and the guest of honor....

Great job, Lynne!

{Featured Client Parties} A "Sprinkle" Shower