Mickey Decor

Time has escaped me lately! Where have I been you wonder? In Mickey Mouse land...that's where! I will make a separate post about my sweet Logan's 3rd birthday party, but I will talk about my homemade decorations here...since that has been my life lately. We decided to have the party at our house...so I needed to make the place look as festive as can be....however, I wanted to be frugal at the same time. And well...if you know me, you know I love crafting!!!.

When Logan had decided on a Mickey Mouse theme (I kept giving him 2 options and it was a Cars party for a while...until the MM idea came along. Thinking back, if given the option of a rocket party, I wondered if he would've changed....he is so into rockets lately!) I immediately started looking at party decoration blogs for MM themed items to see what people did. I got a lot of great ideas and it helped me to think of some my own as well. I made the decor during naptimes, awake times and after bed times. Logan helped on quite a few items, so I was glad that he had a hand in decorating for his own party. The Dollar Tree was my best friend in coordinating all my decorations...I only bought a few things at Party City...the rest was at the Dollar Tree....where everything is actually a dollar or less.

The first thing I made was a Mickey wreath. At the dollar tree, I bought 2 small woven wood wreaths and one big one - I spray painted them black and attached the small ones as ears with black pipe cleaners. I made a sign that said "Welcome to Logan's Clubhouse" and hung it behind the wreath on my front door (which just happens to be red-ish.)...yay! My main decor was pretty much wrapping my current wall art in plain white paper and then putting some sort of Mickey decor on them. On my huge painting above my couch, became a giant Mickey head...there was still a lot of white paper showing. While the look would have been fine and nice and clean, my friend Jen had an excellent idea! She suggested for Logan to paint in the white part. So one day when Carter slept longer than Logan, Logan and I busted out the red and yellow paint. Logan is one to want to cover the area, so I had to help him move around the painting. I held his hand once and dragged the paintbrush, the rest...he did on his own. I just kept turning the painting and would suggest areas for him to paint. Then we took a circle sponge brush and I showed him how to 'dot' the paper. He even said 'dot, dot, dot' as he painted...very cute. Towards the end, he started brushing with the 'dot' paintbrush...and then we called it done. I threw his initials LWB in the bottom corner and voila - it looked great! I was very proud of him. I actually don't want to take it down cuz it is his work of art....however, I don't love Mickey Mouse that much to want a permanent decor. Although...I did just get the idea to buy plain canvases when they are on sale and have the kids paint them and use them as artwork...oh, I love it!!!! See how this blog just helped me with a good idea?

Other pictures I covered was above the goodie bag table. In plain white paper, I had a red huge Mickey Mouse head and wrote 'Goodie Bags! Thank you for coming, friends!'. Above a game, I covered 2 paintings. One said "Mickey"; one said "Buckets". I used a stencil for these letters and colored them in black, yellow, red and left some white. I added a picture of Logan with Mickey & Minnie and a glittered Mickey (which I'll get to later). I covered a kitchen painting in white and did block letters (all free-hand, which later I kind of wish I would have done stencils, but whateve...) and wrote "Hot Dog, Hot Dog, Hot Diggety Dog". Our dinner theme was hot dogs, so it was perfect! I unframed a picture and wrapped it (so it still had a framed look) and did block letters "Meeska Mooska Mickey Mouse" and in each letter I did a different design (polka dots, strips, squiggles, etc.).

Other decorations....I found Mickey Mouse frisbees for $1 and hung them with string and put them in various places....I found $1 MM puzzles and glued them to construction paper and attached string and hung them around on the surround sound speakers....I hung a professional picture of Logan that he just had taken in his Mickey Mouse halloween costume in the kitchen.....I made Toodles and attached him to a giant bubble wand (I didn't use him like I thought I would, but at least he made a good decoration)....for our Mickey Buckets game, Logan and I painted the board red and put yellow polka-dots...we did red bags for goodie bags and cut out black mickey heads with red inner circles with their names on it....and my friend Jen (thanks Jen!!) helped me make a generic banner which we hung in our great room. Then there were the glitter Mickey's. I bought styrofoam circles at the dollar tree. Each Mickey was about .75 to make. I painted each Mickey...Logan helped paint. Then I spread glue on them and shook my glitter shakers to my hearts content and covered the sucker. Some Mickey's were hung free, a couple had sticks glued on the back and either went in plants or in styrofoam blocks as centerpieces. I had to shellac the glitter Mickey's so that I didn't have glitter everywhere.

My friend Julie is an artist. So right away I asked her if she would do a 4 foot Mickey Mouse cut out. She did a fantastic job - all the kids loved him!

For the food, I bought red buckets, white buckets, red bowls, white bowls. On the red buckets, I put two white circles to mimic Mickey's pants; the white buckets, I drew a Mickey head and colored it in.

Now are you ready for my over-the-edge crazy decoration??? Trust me...I was made fun of a lot and rightfully so.... The kleenex box I had was a bunch of fun colors...but not Mickey Mouse colors. I whipped out my red and black felt and my trusty hot glue gun and yes.....I covered my tissue box!! John walked in when I was doing this and asked what I was doing....I said that I was on overload and perhaps took things a bit too far, but I just kept going.

So that is that....after listing it all it really is a lot of decorations. I had fun doing it and would do it all again in a heartbeat. With every decoration that I hung, Logan's eyes lit up. (I was so thankful that he did not get sick of Mickey Mouse!!)