Friday, December 18, 2015

December Festive Linky Party

Welcome to the Party Gals Linky Party!  We're a group of  CREATIVE PARTY PLANNERS here to share with you our love of parties, entertaining, delicious recipes, DIY ideas and crafts!  Visit us every other Friday to see what's new in our party world and link up with us to share your own fabulous ideas!




Gingerbread House printable treat box

It's that gift giving, treat sharing, goody bag time of year again.  A few weeks ago I shared these Gingerbread house treat boxes on Design Dazzle. Today I'm re-sharing them here because you can never have too many Gingerbread house treat boxes. 




Friday, December 11, 2015

Festive Deer Coloring page

Wouldn't it be fun if deer decorated their antlers the way we decorate our homes for the Holidays. Meet Cedric the very festive deer.  He's not a reindeer or he would be helping Santa up at the North pole. So he shows his support in other ways. 


Cedric would love for you to add some color to his antler decor and help him celebrate this merry time of year. Download your copy of our very festive deer below. 

Happy Holidays!


Friday, December 4, 2015

December Holiday Linky Party

Welcome to the Party Gals Linky Party!  We're a group of  CREATIVE PARTY PLANNERS here to share with you our love of parties, entertaining, delicious recipes, DIY ideas and crafts!  Visit us every other Friday to see what's new in our party world and link up with us to share your own fabulous ideas! 





Monday, November 23, 2015

Santa Kitty Gift Wrap

The Holidays are quickly approaching and I'd love to say I have all my Christmas shopping done but I don't.  I've barely started.  I have the next best thing though, the wrapping paper. Hey, you have to start somewhere. Continuing on with our Santa Kitty theme for our kitty's first Christmas I designed some wrapping paper, bags and gift tags for my Zazzle shop.    



Of course Charlotte had to inspect and give her sniff of approval. 

Friday, November 20, 2015

Hot Cocoa Challenge

After our Kitty and Cocoa party the kids wanted to do a Hot Cocoa challenge.  They love food challenges so this was the "purrfect" chance for them to take some mystery ingredients and mix it into their hot cocoa. Yummy!





If you'd like to do your own cocoa challenge at home all you need is:
paper bags for your mystery ingredients
a collection of 10-15 mystery ingredients
mugs for hot cocoa
hot cocoa
hot water
spoons for mixing
scrap paper for numbers
a bowl to put the mystery numbers in

To start things off I placed 15 mystery ingredients in paper bags and then numbered the bags.  Then I wrote numbers 1-15 on scrap pieces of paper and placed them in a bowl.  I had the kids sit down with a mug and draw numbers from the bowl and then place the corresponding ingredient from their paper bag into their mug.  Once all the bags were gone we put hot cocoa powder in their mugs with hot water and mixed it all together. Then the kids tasted their cocoa.  It was interesting to see how hard it was to taste some of the ingredients and how much other ingredients stood out. There really is no winner or looser with this challenge.  It's just fun to see what concoctions they can come up and listen to all the giggles. 


Credits:
Marina: Panda Luvy
Video: Sunny Duran
Kitty ears: Sunny Duran
Cat pet food dishes: Zazzle
Cat Tshirt: Zazzle

Tuesday, November 17, 2015

Kitty and Cocoa Pawty

We recently adopted a kitten named Charlotte from Frederick County Animal Control. She has brought us so much joy that we wanted to celebrate her first Christmas with us with a Kitty and Cocoa pawty. 

My kids have begged for a cat or dog for years.  I've always loved animals and I grew up with many different pets as a child. I had cats, a rabbit, a mouse, a goldfish, parakeets, and dogs.  Not all at the same time thankfully or my mother would have gone nuts. So naturally I've always wanted to give my children the experience of having a pet. Years ago when the kids where younger we tried hamsters and they didn't work out.  They were more interested in biting than letting little hands touch or hold them.  

I knew that when the time was right I wanted to adopt a pet from our local shelter.  It's such a great way to give a sweet animal a forever home. We started by visiting our local Animal Control Center which is the only shelter in Frederick county.  They had cats, dogs, rabbits, guinea pigs, hamsters, birds and a chinchilla. Which made it fun to just go and look around at all the animals (and dream about adopting every single one). We quickly found out that they have a large number of cats and kittens that come into their facility daily.  Thankfully they also have a large number of people who adopt so the turn around is pretty good. When you see that many cute, adorable, soft kittens it's hard to not keep your composure. The hardest part was choosing just one.  Very often the kitten we picked was already chosen by another family so we went back to the shelter several times. 

Charlotte kind of chose us.  She walked up to the edge of her cage and sniffed and meowed and purred at me all tiny and cute. With a shortened stubby tail that we later found out she was born with. So we brought her home and it's been a wild ride having a kitten.  She keeps us laughing and giggling and on our toes.  She has a lot of energy and gets into everything.  She's always close by or under our feet.  She loves to attack our ankles and stalk us.  But when she sleeps all curled up in a ball or laid out flat on her back she's the sweetest softest thing and you can't help but pet her. 


This cute ball of fur inspired me to design a line of kitty themed products for my Zazzle shop.  I love designing and giving Zazzle gifts because they can be customized for each person. We noticed early on that the cat just eats, plays and sleeps so that became the design for some new kitty shirts and kitty food bowls . The girls are wearing their Zazzle "eat, play, sleep, repeat" shirts which they got as an early Christmas gift. I was also able to order Flannel pajama pants through Zazzle to match their shirts. 








  

I used our sweet new kitty food dishes to display our Oreo yarn balls and snowflake sugar cookies.  We didn't let the cat eat any of the desserts but we did let her sniff around a bit and play with the real yarn balls. After our party I washed the dishes and now we're using them for her food and water. 

Since it is her first Christmas we thought she needed a kitties first Christmas ornament for our tree. So I designed a Santa Kitty ornament just for Charlotte with her name and date on the back. 


 

Charlotte's favorite part was trying to eat and hide under the tree.  She knocked it down about ten times.  I'm not looking forward to putting up our full sized tree with this mischievous kitty in the house. 

After we let Charlotte roam around the table we rewarded our guest of honor with a kitty treat.  But since this was a hot cocoa party we put it in one of the cocoa mugs. The girls had a blast watching her try to get the treat out of the mug. We might have done this several times.  It wasn't easy but she managed.  She's a very resourceful kitty. 




For the kids I made kitty donuts by dipping store bought donuts in melted chocolate and used Laffy Taffy for ears then drew a kitty face on with melted chocolate. I love these because they use store bought ingredients, they're fairly easy to make, they're versatile and they're delicious. 


For the hot cocoa I made kitty paw marshmallows.  I got the idea from a store in Japan called Yawahada Mashmallow Shop that sells adorable kitty and paw shaped marshmallows but they were sold out. So I did the next best thing and created my own. Homemade marshmallows are always delicious and they're even more delicious in the shape of a kitty paw. 








Ah, kitties and cocoa. It doesn't get much better than that. 


Happy first Christmas to our sweet and sassy Charlotte or Char Char as Marina calls her.

I received compensation from Zazzle for this post and it contains affiliate links. The Humane Society did not endorse this post in anyway, I am just sharing our own personal experiences with the pet adoption process. As always all opinions are my own and were not influenced in any way. 

Credits:
Sweets and Baked goods: Sunny Duran
Party Styling: Sunny Duran
Photography: Sunny Duran
Short haired grey tabby cat: Frederick County Humane Society
Cat pet food dishes: Zazzle
Cat Tshirt: Zazzle
Flannel Pajama pants: Zazzle
Porcelain Christmas ornament: Zazzle





Friday, November 13, 2015

Party Gals Linky Party #10 Fall continued


Welcome to the Party Gals Linky Party!  We're a group of  CREATIVE PARTY PLANNERS here to share with you our love of parties, entertaining, delicious recipes, DIY ideas and crafts!  Visit us every other Friday to see what's new in our party world and link up with us to share your own fabulous ideas!







Every other Friday, visit any of us on our blogs to check out a fun party inspired project, idea, recipe or craft. We'll share all our tips and inspiration with you and what's even better is, you get to share your creativity with us too!  Each post will have a linky party tool at the very end where you can link up with other awesome creatives!


NEW FEATURE TO OUR LINKY PARTY!!! 

Thanks for partying with us, we want to shine the spotlight on those of you who take the time to link up with us and share your creativity!  Each linky party will feature a collage of our favorite projects and ideas that you shared  with a link to your posts!  






Our faves from left -right:






Thanks to everyone who linked up with us - now let's get ready to party!


Today I'm sharing some fall coloring pages.  A fun activity for a blustery fall day or something for your guests to do after Thanksgiving dinner.  




Download your maple leaf and pumpkin coloring pages here. 

Visit me on InstagramPinterestTwitterFacebook and Youtube to see more of my own personal faves  - use the hashtag #ThePartyGalsLinky"  

Here are more great and inspiring ideas, recipes and how-to's from the rest of the Party Gals:


Thank you for partying with us!


GRAB A PARTY GALS BUTTON  
We'd love for you to also share that you're partying with us by linking to Party Gals Linky on your blog.  You can grab one of our buttons here:"








We would love it if you also follow The Party Gals on Pinterest where you can see all our favorites and more!


JOIN OUR LINKY PARTY!
We'd love for you to link up with us too!  Leave a link to a post with a creative idea, craft, diy, recipe or project you would like to share.  We'll select our favorites in a future post and on our Pinterest/Instagram page!


By participating in our linky party and leaving a link below, you give us permission to share your photo and idea on our blogs and social media pages with a link back to you (we promise).  Links to shops, contests, sweepstakes or giveaways will be removed from the party.  Please link to your own blogs and projects and be sure to leave a comment on your favorite projects!

Tuesday, November 10, 2015

Zentangle Maple Leaf coloring page

I am so thankful it's finally Fall. Fall is in the air here in Maryland.  The weather has gotten chilly and a little dreary. What better way to lift your spirits than with a cozy cup of coffee or tea and a fall leaf coloring page.  

What's great about this printable coloring page is that you can print it off as many times as you like and color them again and again. This is the perfect just for fun or Thanksgiving "sitting at the table" activity.  

HAPPY FALL!!

You can download and print your copy below. If you do color this I'd love to see your results. You can post them directly to my facebook page or post on your own Facebook, Google+, Instagram, Twitter or Tumblr and tag me @sunnybydesign.

Monday, November 2, 2015

Santa Kitty Christmas Cards

Christmas is quickly approaching and we just got a new kitty.  So I couldn't help designing a few cat inspired cards and products for my Zazzle shop. These kitty cards with matching envelopes and address labels are a cute way for any cat owner or lover to spread their Christmas cheer. 


We love our kitten but getting good pictures of her is difficult.  She's so active and always wants to play.  She's super curious and gets into everything. So I figured why not draw her looking as sweet as I know she can be, when she wants too be. 



One version of the card has our sweet Santa Kitty with editable text and a Santa hat on the back. 



The other card has our kitty with a paw print boarder and editable text on the back. I love ordering cards from Zazzle because you can customize everything.  From the text to the background color to the shape and size of the cards. 




I also designed matching envelopes and address labels to go with our Santa Kitty theme. 


If you order now Zazzle has a sale running 50% off all cards or 20% off all orders if you use code: HOLIDAYSENDS

Holiday Cards

I was compensated for this post with products and this post does contain affiliate links. But as always my opinions are my own and I would never support a product I don't believe in.