DIY Pinata - Our Birthday Tradition

If you read our post last week about how we do birthdays, you know that we love a good pinata in this house. And by that I mean a free, amazing, whatever they come up with pinata. So today I just wanted to give you a basic idea of how we make them, so you can go forth and make whatever your kids dream up.

Did you guys do paper mache growing up? Because that's all this is! All you need are balloons (or thin cardboard from a cereal box if you need square shapes), newspaper, flour, and water. Plus any paints and decorations you want.

Start by making your pinata form with balloons or cereal boxes. Don't use anything thicker than that or you won't be able to break the pinata when you are finished! Just do your best to make the basic shape of your item. Here are some examples:

• Death Star - one large punching balloon (easy!)
• Ninja - two regular balloons taped together with one blown up slightly less for the head (construction paper arms and legs added at the end)
• Long Neck Dino - two regular balloons taped side by side for a long body, a small balloon for the head, and a paper towel roll for the neck (we added construction paper legs when it was done)

Tape a loop of string to the form that you can use for hanging it when you are done. If you can loop it all the way around to the bottom that will give you the best hold.

DIY Felt Birthday Banner

We've got one more felty birthday project for you this week. While we were putting up the traditional streamers and balloons (they were black, as requested by the soon-to-be-2 birthday boy... who apparently likes black) the night before his birthday we decided it would be nice to have a reusable "Happy Birthday" banner to pull out for every birthday. So that night after I finished his polar bear birthday crown, I whipped one up from my felt stash (another reason I like to buy felt by the yard = there's always left overs for last minute projects!).

Like I said, this project was also completed the night before his birthday, so that will give you and idea of just how fast and easy it came together. And if you're really in a time pinch you could hot glue the letters on instead of sewing them. It's also really simple to make the banner say anything else you want - you don't even need a pattern! Here's what you need:

• felt! Any colors you like. I used red, yellow, and a tealy blue. I guess the amount would depend on how big you make your pennants, like I said I did it all from left over pieces. :)
• thread (or hot glue if you want a no-sew project)
• hot glue 
• rope or ribbon

Start by cutting out some pennants (you need 13 to spell "happy birthday"). I just cut one the size I wanted, about 6" tall, and used it as a pattern to cut out the rest. Next I cut felt rectangles for each letter. You can see in the pic below I cut the rectangle to just fit on one of the pennants. Then I used it as a template to cut out 12 more rectangles. Cutting the letters from the rectangles makes it easy to be sure your letters will fit on the pennants, and that they all end up evenly sized! Then I lined up all my pennants in order (red, blue, yellow, red, blue, yellow) with their coordinating rectangles on top of each pennant (I did yellow on red, red on blue, and blue on yellow).