Home For the Holidays Let's Make Some Magic Inspiration for an unforgettable holiday celebration. Explore The 2016 Holiday Lookbook Now Trending This season's most popular productsWe spent the weekend in Texas and I have been saying y’all way too much since then 🙂  I’m barely recovering from jet-lag, a 4 am (Boise-time) flight, and coming home to a couple of sick boys.  But we can’t ever leave you empty-handed (or is it “empty-posted?) especially on a Monday!  So I wanted to share a quick tip with y’all (YES, I said it one more time.)  I’ve been doing this lately and it’s been sooo convenient!  I love to share a good tip when I find one; this one came from Karen’s Cookies. There are a million options when you’re using piping bags.  You don’t always need to use a coupler, and sometimes you can even just pop your frosting in a ziplock bag and toss it when you’re done.  There are re-usable bags, disposable ones, or you can make your own with parchment.  N

o matter which option you choose, when you start working with multiple tips, flavors, or colors of frosting, it can get a little tricky.  I have to always think ahead of time, “okay, do I need to change the tip on this bag at any point?  Do I need to use this tip on more than one bag?  Will I need to wash this bag to use a different color? Ehis little trick is actually really handy.  You can use one bag and several colors of icing and never even have to wash the bag!  Check it out.  Y After your frosting is prepared (this is a new chocolate one from our new cook book!)  plop it right on a piece of plastic wrap, like so: Wrap the plastic around your frosting, kind of like a log And then take both ends and swing it like you would a jump rope.  You know, a tiny little jump rope for someone who is 6 inches tall.  The long ends of the plastic wrap with roll up tight like this: ke one end of that frosting-jump-rope and string it right into your piping bag and through the tip.  I’

ve got a coupler in my bag so I can change tips with the same batch of frosting. Pull it really tight, and then take a pair of scissors and snip that end off, as close to the coupler as you can get. pe away, and make beautiful cupcakes (I’m writing a whole huge tutorial right now about decorating cupcakes, and different frosting techniques, so stay tuned for more info on that!) But here’s the coolest part.  When you’re done- or if you want to change colors or tips, just pull the plastic-wrapped frosting out from the back end again: There’s a little bit of frosting left in the tip, and all you need to do is remove the tip, or wipe it out.  The bag itself is completely clean!  You put it away to use again later, or fill it with a different color and be piping away again in a matter of seconds. I thought that was a great little trick and if you work with frosting a lot, you’ll quickly find how useful it is!  Enjoy your Monday, and make sure to eat a cupcake.  Wo

rds of wisdom:  weeks that start out with cupcakes are always better than weeks that don’t.  Make sure to check in on Wednesday- I’m going to show you tons of behind-the-scenes fun from our weekend trip to Texas!how do i get the iron curtain in tf2It's May and that means PROM time! e38 curtainsI'm advisor for the Class of 2017 and it was our turn to plan this year's prom. eclipse thermalayer curtains walmartI've been thinking about this event for over a year and even started a Pinterest board to gather lots of ideas. solaris blackout curtainsWe decided on a circus/carnival theme and had lots of fun crafting and getting creative with a tight budget! curtains and blinds yarraville

Below are some ideas and resources to create your own 'Night Under the Big Top' event! We hold our prom each year in a spacious waterfront venue with gorgeous views. curtains keilor rdThe room has sloped cathedral ceilings and is pretty much a blank canvas, which can be a bit overwhelming to try and fill. kasey kahne curtainsMy initial thought was to try and create a circus tent of sorts on one end of the room under which would be the DJ and dance floor. After doing some research to find something affordable, I purchased several red and white plastic tablecloth rolls from Oriental Trading Company. These long rolls of tablecloth, along with some rope and duct tape, became the basis of our tent! It really defined the space and added that 'wow' factor as kids walked into the room! They had a blast dancing under the big top!

Thinking about our limited budget, we got creative and crafty with our centerpieces. For the larger tables, we purchased some striped fabric from WalMart to drape over our rented white linens. We looked all over for affordable 'cake dummies' as they are called to create tiered centerpieces, but they were all far to expensive. So, one day over February vacation I played around with some poster board sheets and was able to create my own by cutting long strips for the sides and using some kitchen mixing bowls to trace three different sized circles for the tops! The circles were taped to the strips with clear packing tape (but any tape will work) with a little overlapping to help stabilize each layer. The prom committee students decorated the cakes by using gold spray paint and painters tape to add stripes to the poster board. Then they glued on strips of tickets and ribbon to add some color. We used wooden skewers and scrapbook paper to create the flags for the cake tops. I found lion and elephant toys at WalMart for $1 each and spray painted them gold for a playful nod to our circus theme!

For the smaller tables, we decorated large mason jars with ribbon and paper rosettes then added cotton candy bouquets (we rented a cotton candy machine and a popcorn machine and had a table with food, too). Large gold stars were cut out of wrapping paper and fabric pennants were made by cutting out several triangles then sewing them together with a simple straight stitch! We used sewing pins to secure the flag banners to the table cloths. The candles were purchased in bulk from Amazon. In addition to the cotton candy & popcorn tables, we rented a photo booth, had a caricature artist, and built a kissing booth, mostly just for fun pictures and to add to our carnival theme (no making out allowed...ha ha)! We filled a large jar with Hersey's kisses and had attendees guess how many chocolates were in the jar...the winning guess took home the jar! We also built a large ticket booth for the entryway into the event. Both booths were built out of inexpensive wood paneling and 2x3 boards from Home Depot (I actually found the wood paneling 75% off in the 'damaged' section).

We used red and white spray paint to fancy up the booths!hanging out in my backyard with the unpainted kissing booth) To create the lettering for both the booths, we used our projector at school to trace the letters onto foam board from the Dollar Store and cut out them out with an Exacto knife. Then the letters were spray painted and stuck to the booths using Velco (Command strips or duct tape would work, too)! Our kids eat dinner before they come to prom, however, we did have a table with some finger foods and drinks. We created a fun vignette using several plastic table cloths ($1 each at WalMart), some more fabric pennant banners (I sewed these at home), and some paper fans. The red striped tablecloth and the paper fans shown here were all purchased from Oriental Trading Company. We used Command strips and painters tape to secure everything in place without damaging the walls. The paper rosettes in the image below were actually handmade using a combination of scrapbook and wrapping papers.

Here are some tutorials to make your own if you don't want to buy them! Instead of paying to have tickets to the event printed, I actually found an inexpensive digital design via Etsy and printed out the tickets onto card stock at school. The Etsy shop owner was really easy to work with and customized the design for our event. We used the same design and turned it into a giant poster to put on the wall at the event using an Adobe program which takes the design and prints it out onto several pieces of regular sized printer paper. Then you cut and glue each piece of paper together like a puzzle to create a giant poster. You can also use this free site to create posters using the same process. I designed the small 'circus' signs in Photoshop then printed them on 11x17 regular printer paper (two signs per sheet). The students glued the paper to foam board to make them sturdy then we taped them to a wooden coat rack I keep in my classroom (the spokes to hang coats can be unscrewed leaving just the stand).

You could probably design your own signs using Powerpoint since that program allows you to layer images on top of one another. I used free digital scrapbook papers for the patterned backdrops found on Pinterest. No prom would be complete without a little treat and reminder for the students to take with them as they leave! These were designed in Word and glued to Dum-Dums lollipops! The kids got a kick out of it anda little reminder to make safe choices! These could easily be made with any variety of sayings to correspond with your own event and make fun favors for party guests! (For more daily pics of my crazy teacher life, find me on Instagram)! Organizing an event like this for 450 students was no easy task while also juggling my normal teacher work load, but having students come up to me during and after prom to tell me 'thank you' and that this was 'the best prom EVER' certainly made all the hours spent planning and creating and emailing and decorating and cleaning up TOTALLY worth it!