Happy Birthday

My oldest turned 12 on Friday- can she really be that old? Because that means... lots of things, including- but not limited to- me being really old too. Her party was super fun. We barbecued, made t-shirts, played night games and ate too much cake.
As a host and a parent of the guest I get so tired of the useless party take home gift that gets tossed aside or thrown away as soon as the partygoer gets home. I like t-shirts as a take home gift, it's nice to send friends home with something that can actually be put to good use after the party is over.
I have been working on this idea of jazzing up plain t-shirts. The cheapest shirt I could find were at Walmart, white or in various of other colors. I was thinking: a little paint, some iron-on applique, then machine stitching over the top, maybe even a few jewels to top it all off. Well, when it came right down to it-I couldn't find my roll of two-sided interfacing (I think I ran out last winter and forgot to pick up a new roll- or it's just lost in my messy sewing room) and then the though of lots of little girls using my sewing machine made me a little nervous, so we simplified the project down to just spray painting the shirts, using handmade stencils.


The shirts turned out really good. Steve O was getting all kinds of crazy making stencils and lots of guests got personalized stencils, special request pictures or their names made up. We washed the shirts in with some crappy towels first just to make sure the spray paint didn't bleed onto other clothes in the same load- but the paint stayed put and washed up just fine. We mostly just used whatever spray paint we had laying around the garage, some just household, others enamel- all kinds worked just fine. The metallic paints looked really good adding a subtle sparkle to the design.

Ohh the cake... this is what happens when you don't really have a plan going into the decorating- you throw all caution to the wind and just go for it. I think it's a flower that looks a little like a sun. In any case it was a bugger to frost with all the pointy bits, but tasted delicious with the thick layer of buttercream frosting trying so hard to cover the whole cake with all it's nooks and cranies.