princesses, dragons, and knights, oh my!

It only took about nine months... but I finally got around to making more fairy tale finger puppets! And in more colors! I decided I need to start stocking up for the holidays, since that's always my busiest time for my shop. So I started with these little cuties.

So, somehow my three-year-old knows what a knight is, and informed me that this knight was going to ride a horse and go on a quest. He never ceases to crack me up!

Here are the different color options I have so so far.

I decided to just start with princesses in pink, blue, and purple, with coordinating knights and castles. But if they do well, or if I have time, I want to add some more colors or color combinations. What color(s) would you want?

My favorite part about designing any of my puppet sets is the little details. I think my favorites on this set are the little sparkly heart on the princess's crown, the little dragon ears, and the knight's shield.

And of course, the castle doubles as a pouch to hold your puppets when you're done playing!

I've got several new sets in various stages of design, and I'm excited to get them finished over the next few weeks. And some fun Christmas crafts, and of course Halloween costumes! It should be a busy fall!

Bridal Shower Fun!

The three people who actually ever read my blog may have noticed that I haven't posted anything in ages. What have I been up to lately, you ask? Well,  the lack of blogging is somewhat because I've been lazy (at least when it comes to writing/blogging) but also because I was busy helping plan my sister's wedding! She got married a couple weeks ago, but I spent the last two months helping plan the wedding and hosting bridal showers, and keeping my mother sane. :)

Here's a picture from one of the showers of the "welcome table." We had a sign that said "Please write your name and address on an envelope. Thanks!" which I thought was a great idea for helping the bride out. In the middle we had jars for our Mad Lib game with signs that said "adjective," "noun," "number," and "verb," with little strips of paper in front of them. Last we had a sign that said "Share some words of wisdom with the bride and groom" and a little advice book made in their wedding colors.

I wish I'd gotten a close-up of the advice book, because I'm pretty proud of the way it turned out! I just got scrapbook paper in the wedding colors, cut it down to about index-card size, and tied it with lace ribbon (lace was a theme throughout the wedding.) The cover had a contrasting stripe of color, a strip of lace, and the large stamped "H" for the soon-to-be couple's last name. *You can find monogram letter stamps at Michael's in the dollar bins!

I also wish I'd gotten some pictures of the food. It was pretty amazing, let me just say. Plan a good menu, and you won't need decorations or lame games!

But we did have a few pretty good games I wanted to share with you! In fact, several people told me these were the best shower games they'd ever played!

Here's our Marriage Advice Mad Lib game! (just click the image above for a full-size printable version) I've seen a bunch floating around online that are actual advice - like, you look at the page and fill in the blanks with real responses. That is not how Mad Libs work! So I made a much more entertaining and authentic version, where guests just wrote random words and stuck them in a jar, then I picked them out at random to fill it in. 

Let's just say it was pretty hilarious. One of my favorites was #4, which ended up saying "Be the first to say, 'I'm gorgeous.'" Or #1 which said "Never go to bed sexy." Great advice!

The other game was the "He Says/She Says" game, where you ask the bride and groom different questions, type up some of their responses, and have guests guess who said what. It's a fun way to get to know the bride and groom a little bit. And it was especially fun because this bride and groom have such a similar sense of humor, that it was really hard to guess!

There's a copy of our "He says, she says" game if you want to get some ideas!

Yay sisters! (Ignore the fact that it's blurry...) Happy bride in the middle, and "little" sister who helped me organize two showers and a bachelorette party! Love these girls!

It was a busy summer, and now I'm going to be busy with helping with another sister's wedding (yay!) and also with starting a preschool group. Lots more preschool posts coming soon!