Fire Truck & Dalmatian Party Fun!

I read a comment on Facebook that made me start thinking.  It basically said something like, "Why do people go overboard for a 1st birthday party?"  Considering that my grandson's 1st birthday party pictures were just posted a few days before this comment, I felt a little offended :(  Rather than responding to the Facebook post, I decided to vent here.  While this post won't be the norm for what you will usually see on our blog, I hope you will see some cute ideas that might inspire you.

First, let me start with the comment that I really wanted to post on FB. "Tillman's party was a ton of work but it was well worth the trouble. I enjoyed the family time we all spent working on it. The look on his sweet face when the fire truck pulled up was priceless! He couldn't take his eyes off it. Little ones will only have one 1st birthday. Want a big party? Go for it! Or keep it sweet and simple. Precious memories, no matter what you decide to do."  With that off my chest, Let me share some of the details and adorable pictures of the party with you.

Maybe it does look like we went a little overboard, but I am happy to say my family is blessed with so many talented folks.  Tillman's other grandmother is an interior designer/wedding coordinator.  All the tables, tents, and chairs belong to her so they were no cost.  She also made the precious banner for his high chair. My sweet cousin makes children's clothing and she donated all the material for the table clothes and she made Tillman's adorable fire truck outfit and his Dalmatian bloomers.  I am super thankful for these family members who know how to sew, because I am sorely lacking in that area.  I made all the pennants, banners, posters, and printables.



Tillman's Fire Truck and Dalmatian Party - View from the Street
 



We decided to have cupcakes for easy serving.  I found a tutorial on Pinterest and made the cake stand to match the other décor.

Of course, we had to use party-themed food.  The menu consisted of "Hot" Dogs, "Paw-some" Potato Chips, Fire Flames (Cheetos), Fiery Fruit, Firehouse Chili, Cool Down Coleslaw,  and 5-Alarm Baked Beans. Menu cards were made on PowerPoint.
 

We ordered the puppies from Oriental Trading. I printed a thank you note to tie around each puppy's neck.

 

I made the centerpieces using tissue paper and graphics I designed on PowerPoint.  The Dalmatian and the fire truck were created using shapes on PowerPoint.  Thanks to Creative Clipart and KG Fonts for the other clipart and fonts seen in all the pictures.

 

 

I used scrapbook paper and card stock to make this banner.  Thanks to Angela (my colleague, best buddy, and TpT store co-owner) for teaching me how to cut letters and artwork freehand :)

 

The birthday boy with his smash cake and high chair banner made by his other grandmother.
 

You can't have a fireman party in July without a fire extinguisher!

At the last minute due to the heat, I decided to make a water blob for the kiddos to play on.  It was a royal pain but all the kids absolutely loved it.  I found the tutorial on Pinterest and the next one I make shouldn't be as much trouble since I learned from trial and error.  I also found a cute little puppy sprinkler (which I forgot to make a pic of).  It was beige and brown so I spray painted it white and painted on black spots to make it look like a Dalmatian.  Needless to say, it was popular with the younger party-goers.
 

The firemen were so awesome! They brought gifts for the children and let them go inside the fire truck :)

Here is Tillman and his Grandpa (my hubby).  I wish you could see more of his cute outfit!

Thank you for letting me share my pictures with you! I had so much fun helping plan, organize, and make this party happen!  I am truly blessed!

New Logo Flash Freebie Celebration!

We are elated, ecstatic, thrilled, overjoyed, excited (you get the picture) about our new logo and banners made by Laine at A Little Peace of Africa.  We can't say enough good things about her! Laine is wonderful and working with her was exceptionally easy! If you need a new logo or blog design, take a look at her work. It is fabulous and very reasonably priced :) 

To celebrate our new look, we are giving away a flash freebie J  Head on over to our TpT store (don't forget to look at our new graphics) and pick up Harry the Dirty Dog Language and Literacy Lesson free until 9:00 p.m. Eastern time.  Positive feedback is appreciated, but totally not necessary! Also, we are very close to having 300 TpT followers.  If you would like to follow us while you are at our store picking up your freebie, that will just give us more to celebrate J  If we reach the 300 follower mark by 9:00 p.m. Eastern time, we will offer another flash freebie to celebrate our new followers!

 

Thank you for celebrating with us! What do you think about our new logo?

Back to School Scavenger Hunt

So here we are! Back at school! How about starting the year off with a little fun and a give-away? We are joining Kristin at Beautiful Speech for a Back to School Scavenger Hunt.  You don't want to miss out on this! Kristin is offering some fantastic grand prizes . . . a $50 Amazon Gift Card, a $25 TpT Gift Certificate, and a $25 iTunes Gift Card! Wow! I told you they were fantastic prizes!  In addition to these grand prizes, there will be several TpT products given away by various sellers.

Here is how the Scavenger Hunt works.  Click HERE to see a list of Scavenger Hunt participants.  Click on each participants' link to visit their social media site.  Look for the secret word on each person's site.  Once you have visited all the sites and collected all the secret words, go to beautifulspeech.blogspot.com and enter the Rafflecopter giveaway.  You must enter all the secret words into rafflecopter in any order to enter the giveaway for the grand prizes.





In addition to the grand prizes listed above, we are giving away our Articulation Ring-a-Lings Complete Set Bundle, a $10 value.  This bundled set of Articulation Ring-a-Lings includes over 600 color articulation cards for the speech sounds: p, b, m, w, n, h, d, y, k, f, g, t, r, l, v, j, z, s, th, sh, and ch. Each card is marked for ring placement for easy storage. This product also comes with sentence facilitating strips to help students produce sentence level responses.




Secret Word:  Ring-a-lings

To enter to win the Ring-a-Ling Bundle, leave your email address in the comments below and follow us on TpT :) 

Good Luck!

"Speachy" Feedback Linky Party

We are so excited to be linking up with Nicole Allison over at Speech Peeps for her "Speachy" Feedback Linky Party. We love getting all of your feedback and want to personally thank each of you for your kind words.

We looked though our recent feedback and have chosen Jackie K. as our winner.

 

 

Thank you, Jackie K. for the awesome feedback about our Articulation Stations! Please email us at soundslikefunslp@gmail.com and let us know which item you would like from our store.

 

 

 

We would like to thank everyone who has left feedback at our store. Be sure to check back at Allison's Speech Peeps to see if you might be a winner.

 

 

 

Thank you for visiting our blog :)