It’s Great To be EIGHT

One reason for doing a friend birthday every 4 years is it hits all the “big” ones – 8, 12, and 16.  In our church, 8 is the age you get baptized, and we wanted to make everything special.

It’s become tradition in our building that the family serves a dessert after the service.  Everyone always does a sheet cake from costco – yummy, but a little pricy and then someone needs to dish it up and you have to get all the supplies and the clean up and – I didn’t want that!

I was excited when I saw this:

but then bummed when I realized she didn’t offer it as a printable!  But it’s so cute! The doughnuts make an 8, it’s self contained, no one needs to dish it up. Perfect! I figured I could make my own.

I found the bags at Joanns – wilton brand, mini size, in a package of 100. The are about 4 inches wide.

Then, using this tutorial, I spent a ridiculous amount of time making chalkboard looking toppers:

And printed and cut them out at fedex   *TIP: it was cheaper to print them black and white, and the looked almost the same.
Then the assembling began – 1.5 movies later and I was done!  in all, I spent about 5 hours working on this.  Want to save yourself 3 hours of time? Download this picture and your toppers are ready!

The day was wonderful – and the treats adorable!

 *check out places I link up to tab on top.

try this one at home

Take one huge stack of scrap paper:

Combined with an adorable girl who refuses to use "yucky" paper.

Figure out that she will use it if it's little.

Hack up the whole pile into 4ths.

Clothes pin into bundles.

Squirt some Elmer's all over one even-ish edge

Spread it around with your finger.
Let dry. Repeat the glue if you want to make it a bit stronger.
And Voila! A dozen really simple easy home made note pads.

Now obviously, if I wanted to make this look cute, I'd take the time to measure the cuts to make it all even, and make a cute little cover out of card stock. But this was just so my girl (who single handily could go through a ream of paper in a month if I'd let her) would have something to color on that didn't bug me.

*Also, I totally saw this idea a couple of years ago, only they made money books with 20 dollar bills glued together. I have no idea where I found this originally, but there's my attempt at credit where credit is due!