Easy Elephant Ears!

I had to share these with everyone real quick! They are yummy and quick!
I wanted an elephant ear and the fair is not in town :/ all the recipes wanted me to make a dough😓 that is way too much work! That is why I came up with my own recipe.

I always have flour tortillas in my fridge, which seem much easier than making dough. All I did was fry the tortilla in a thin layer of oil until they puff up and turn a golden brown on the edges. When they are done add a little cinnamon and sugar, melted butter, or whatever topping you prefer and enjoy!

Carter Turns 1! Dr. Seuss style!

I can't believe my adorable big baby is already 1 year old! I had so much fun planning his birthday party! My family thinks I may have gone temporarily insane and gotten slightly carried away....but I think it was awesome! I like to refer to the experience as my first post-Pinterest Birthday Party!

We went with a Dr. Seuss theme basically because I love Dr. Seuss, but so do my kids. I love how timeless his stories are, I read them as a kid and now I read them to my kids! Plus his illustrations are so fun and have tons of color! The basic colors he sticks to are red, white, blue and yellow, so I started with those colors, and went from there!

I made this onesie with my embroidery machine. I was able to fin "Cat in the Hat" fabric at Fields Fabric and appliqued the 1 onto the shirt. Then I added Carters name in curly-q letters. I think it turned out pretty cute. If you don't have an embroidery machine and want to do something like this you can always iron transfer (or call Justine's Surprise!).

Using my basic colors I bought lots of balloons! I filled up 20 for the photo shoot to do the balloon wall, and 80 for the birthday party. I am very thankful that my vacuum has an attachment that changes flow and blows up balloons! (Or air mattresses for my family to sleep on!) I then strung the balloons using yarn and a needle in a pattern. I surrounded the dining area with my balloon garland, and also had a 20 foot long garland going down the center of my tent outside! It looked so cool, but some popped when it got up to 96 degrees outside!

From this angle you can see the tables covered, again in my basic colors. You can also see my truffula trees off to the side! All supplies for the truffula trees and table covers were purchased at the dollar store! I used the dollar store quite a bit to keep decorations budget low! The tops of the truffula trees are made from Martha Stewart's tissue paper pom pom tutorial.

http://www.marthastewart.com/how-to/tissue-paper-pom-poms-how-to

I then attached them to dollar store swim noodles!

To add another touch from "The Lorax" I made moustache straws! I just made a basic moustache template and then traced them onto foam paper and cut them out. They are hot glued onto the straws. The kids and some of the adults loved using them.

For my favors I got basic brown lunch sack bags from the dollar store...I have alot left! Inside the bags I put some juju fish in all different colors, "One Fish, Two Fish Red Fish, Blue Fish", in baby food jars. I also had some bubbles and a Dr. Seuss eraser. I found the "Cat in the Hat" hat cutouts at Michael's along with the erasers. I also found all different characters from Dr. Seuss books and they were all over the house. I double sided taped the hats to the outside of the bags and then folded over the top, hole punched and tied with a ribbon! The party hats are also hand made. I used my basic colors and cut them out of cardboard scrap booking paper. http://funfamilytips.hubpages.com/hub/How-to-Make-a-Birthday-Party-Hat-Free-printable-template

I found a birthday picture of Thing 1 and Thing 2 and printed them off and taped them to the front of my hats. I hot glued a piece of yarn to hold them on the head!

 I made Carters welcome sign using inspiration from Etsy and Pinterest. I don't know if you know this, but you can download Dr. Seuss font for free to your computer!

Here is one of the cardboard cutouts i found at Michael's! Above it you can kind of see the birthday pennant banner I made for Carter.

 Here is my front door entrance with truffula trees and the welcome sign!

My friend Sophia made the cupcakes!She did a great job! They were adorable and tasted great too! Let me know if you want her info!

To go with our cupcakes we had some normal snack, but also multi-colored goldfish and I made a "One fish, Two Fish, Red Fish, Blue Fish tag, and gummy bears with a brown Bar-ba-loot sign.The blue and white polka dotted plates and napkins came from the Dollar store as well!

The Cat in the Hat showed up to play with the kids (my father in law did this as a surprise!)

 Carter enjoyed his cupcake, probably in the most delicate manner I have ever seen him eat. He even wore the special party hat I made him!

 I wrote up a poem to ask the adults to leave a note for Carter in a copy of  Dr. Suess' "Happy Birthday To You!" that I picked up. If you can't read it from this picture it says

"Thank you for celebrating my birthday,

I was so elated to see you today!

It's hard to believe I am already 1,

But I am sure it will be tons of fun!

Please open this book and leave me a note,

I can't wait to be able to read what you wrote!"

 I also made up some Thank Yous for the adults using a picture of Carter from our balloon photo shoot. I wrote a little poem saying "Today was good, Today was Fun, Thank you for celebrating me turning 1! -Carter" I looked on Etsy at first to find a Dr. Seuss themed thank you and then realized they would just give you the digital file for $12 to go print. I just went to Snapfish and looked up Dr. Seuss and they had this style available. You just added your picture and your own words. They had lots of other styles too, this one just went with my theme!

Carter ended the party riding his favorite toy, I mean playing with his dog Sweetie!



John Ball Zoo Dandy!

A little over a week ago I saw a post from grkids.com looking for people to sign up to be a zoo dandy. I had no clue what this was, but decided to sign up anyways because a free trip to the zoo is always fun! Besides I never get picked for anything. Lucky for me, I got picked. With this opportunity we got a free tour of the zoo before opening hours and passes to some of the fun summer activities at the zoo! One of my favorite things about being at the zoo before opening hours was that we got to hear the lions roaring as they were waking up, Awesome!

John Ball Zoo is a nice sized zoo, especially if you are with young children! I try to do things in the morning, and JBZ is just the right size to see all the animals and do a couple activities and still be home in time for 1 pm nap! They have increased their size by 50% in the last year. We got a sneak peek at the new things that are coming to the zoo!

Like next year they will be completely redoing the bear exhibit so that you can see it from both sides including the boardwalk above. In two years they are going to put in a tiger exhibit where the tigers will be strolling right along next to you on the boardwalk!

Speaking of the boardwalk! It is 500 ft. long and only 4 trees were removed to build it! It was a nice easy slope to push a stroller up. If you aren't interested in walking up the funicular will be open later this summer and you can ride to the top in less than 4 minutes!

At the top is this awesome new treehouse! It is available for events and weddings and seats up to 200 people. It has its own private deck that can be used for cocktail hour! They are also planning on building a childrens tree house in the next year for the kids to play in!

A view of Grand Rapids from the top of the 2nd highest hill in the city!

We also got to see a game they play with the chimpanzees in the morning where they hide food all over their outdoor area and then let them free to find it. The chimpanzees were pounding and calling to be let out, which made all the children laugh.

We got to pet the pigmy goats in one of the two petting areas. There is also a petting zoo in the childrens zoo area, with pigs, goats, and chickens!

This is the sting ray petting experience which costs only $1.

This is where you can fees the birds! For $1 they will give you a stick with some special bird seeds and when you hold the stick out the birds will land on it and eat! If you can see in the picture I am holding two sticks with two birds!

They are very pretty birds!

We had a fun time and an awesome tour provided by Krys and Kristen of the John Ball Zoo Society. We want to thank the zoo and GRkids.com for choosing us for this experience! We can't wait to go back and ride the funicular!

Aprils Come and Gone...oops

April came and went relatively quickly for me, which is my excuse for no blog posts. Pretty lame I know. We were really busy though. We left the first of April on a trip to California to visit my husbands family and it was mid-April by the time we got home. Ok we wereonly gone for 8 days, but it felt like forever. In a good way though!

I was tentative about the trip at first. We haven't spent much time with my husbands California cousins. In fact I had only met most of them oncwe in the 9 years we have been together. We had the pleasure of getting to stay with his Aunt Tammy and Uncle Fred while we were there. They were great hosts and so loving and welcoming. They live in a house in the hills of Southern California. The view is breathtaking and they have so many beautiful plants everywhere, and an amazing view of a valley. The original purpose for the trip was to attend Rob's cousin Georges wedding. It also became an awesome chance to get to know the cousins better and for our kids to get to know some of their second cousins. We were welcomed with open arms and had the best time possible.

We got to do all sorts of fun things like go to the San Diego Safari Park with his cousin Kenny and his wife Janae and their three children Wyatt, Zaya, and Canon!

After the safari park we were welcomed into his cousin September nd Dan's house. They have four kids. So we had 9 kids total doing easter eggs!

On Saturday we attended the wedding. We got to ride with the whole family in the motorhome and even that was tons of fun!

Sunday was easter and we had a great time celebrating with the whole family and doing an easter egg hunt!

Monday we went to the Oceanside beach with Janae and the kids and then got to go to Kenny and Janaes beautiful home for dinner!

Tuesday was Legoland (Rob's lifelong dream)!Tammy September and her four kids (Kassidy, Kenadie, Kendon and Kaidance) were able to go with us. We had a great time and Caleb got to go on his first roller coaster!

After Legoland we went to dinner at an authentic Mexican restaurant, you kind of have to in South California! We spent Tuesday night at September and Dans house hanging out! Wednesday morning we packed up and headed back North and were able to spend our last day with my Aunt Barbie! She took us out for an amazing seafood dinner and we had a great time just spending time with her!

Thank you all again for an amazing trip!

That only gets us to April 14th though....Within 24 hours of arriving home I received 6 seperate sewing requests and another 2 the following week! Awesome! They took some time but nothing like the other project my husband and I decided to do....the deck!

We had been saying for years we needed to replace the deck...it was old, small and wobbly! We got home from vacation with money left over and thought"How hard can it be?" So the Saturday after we got home we got out the tools and took off the deck in three hours. Rob dismantled and I cut down to size and stacked the old boards. Did I mention that the railing fell off after only one hit?Ya, it definitely needed to be done! It took numeroud visits to the hardware store and countless hours, but we were able to build a brand new 28ft x 12 ft deck in 10 days! It is awesome and beautiful and ready for the weather to get better for a deck party!

The last weekend in April was spent at my parents cottage getting the dock and pontoon boat in and cleaning up. We are so reasy for summer here! Aren't you?

I promise my next post will contain a sewing tutorial. I have some pictures to take before I can post it. I am going to do a tutorial on hooded towels!

Pettiskirt Tutorial

There are tons of Pettiskirt tutorials out on the Internet. I read quite a few before I decided to try making some. I took what I liked from each tutorial to make the pettiskirt the way I liked it. For the first one I made I did not use a ruffler foot and it was SOOOOOO Hard. I invested in a rufller foot and my tutorial will reflect that.

Materials
5 yards Nylon Chiffon
1/4 yard Satin
17 inches 1 inch elastic
thread

Process
Step 1: Cut Material
- 6, 45 inch strips 4.5 inches wide of Nylon Chiffon (top Nylon tier)
- 12, 45 inch strips 6 inches wide of Nylon Chiffon (2nd Nylon tier)
- cut the rest of the 5 yards into 2.5 inch strips
- 45-48 inches of satin 9 inches wide

Step 2: Sewing          
Bottom tier - this is the tier that looks like a cloud of ruffles on the bottom of the skirt. I often find myself singing Everyday I'm Ruffling to the tune of LMFAO's "Everyday I'm Shuffling during this step" because it feels like you are ruffling forever! First sew all of your 2.5 inch strips into one long, seriously, really long strip. You also want to sew all of the 6 inch strips into one long strip. i use a ruffler foot. You can do this 2 ways.
The first way is to ruffle the long 2.5 inch strip and then sew it onto the bottom edge of the outside of the 6 inch strip.

The second way is to sew the 2.5 inch strip onto the 6 inch strip while ruffling.
The most important things to remember are you are ruffling the 2.5 inch strip down the middle and attaching it to the bottom outside edge of the 6 inch strip.

Middle Tier:
You now sew all of the 4.5 inch strips into one long strip. You are going to sew the bottom outside edge of the 4.5 inc strip to the top outside edge of the 6 inch strip while ruffling the 6 inch strip. (you can also ruffle the top of the 6 inch strip and then sew it onto the bottom of the 4.5 inch strip.)

It should look a little like this when done.

I then take my very long three layer strip and fold it in half lengthwise. Cut along fold.

Satin:
Sew the short edges of the satin right sides together. Leave a one inch gap from 4.5 inches to 5.5 inches.

Satin and Chiffon:
Take one section of your three layered chiffon and sew right sides together with the right side of the satin. You are going to ruffle the chiffon as you sew it to the satin, or you can ruffle it to match the length of your satin and then sew them together. Sew the two ends of the chiffon skirt together to make it a circle.

For the second layer you need to sew the wrong side of the chiffon to the right side of the satin, once again while ruffling chiffon or ruffle and then sew. Sew the two raw edges of the chiffon together to make it a circle.

Finishing skirt:
You now fold the satin in half with the inside edge on the inside, you can pin it in place around the top edge. Then sew a line around the top edge 1 to 1.25 inches from the folded edge of the satin.
Insert your elastic through the opening you left when you sewed the satin into a circle. Sew the elastic edges together tuck inside and close the satin with stitches.

You now have a pettiskirt!

With Lots of ruffles!

Thanks Rose for lending me Reese as a model!

What's the Surprise?

I named my blog the same thing as my business name, Justine's Surprise! But what is the surprise you ask, well let me tell you. Let me first tell you the backstory behind the name. Probably 6 years ago while at my friends parents house for a family dinner we were talking about bras. If you know me you know that this subject comes up way too often! We started talking about the fact that nobody carries big enough bra sizes. I then blurted out that one day I was going to open my own lingerie store that carries all bra sizes and name it "Justine's Surprise!". My catch phrase was going to be " She may have a secret, but I have a Surprise!". It was a very weird dinner. The Justine's Surprise comment stuck around as a joke for a long time. Then one day when it came time to choose a business name for a website my husband chose Justine's Surprise!. I was embarassed at first. I have now come to embrace this name. I believe alot of things in my life have come as a surprise to others.

What I do as a business was a big surprise to most of my friends and family. You see growing up I was a tomboy, and then I became a firefighter, and I studied Biology. I opted to stay home with Caleb when he was 10 months old and found myself often bored. I picked up sewing as a hobby. Sewing seemed so out of left field to my friends and family that it was a huge surprise when I was actually pretty good at it. I just kept trying new projects and trying new things and then people started paying me to make things for them and then it became a business.

Through this blog I want to share some of my projects and of course some of the other surprises in my life!