50th Anniversary Party Projects

Here's the latest and greatest on my mom & dad's golden anniversary party projects. =) I still have lots to do...but wanted to show you what I recently finished. =) I had this great idea that I wanted to do face-hole cut-outs for their party. I was going to do 4!!! My husband said I was being an over achiever, so I opted for just 2. =)

Basically, I just found some images I thought were humorous and cute and made them into the face-hole cut-outs. I also wanted a lot of lawn games...so I decided to make a football toss game...& I threw in some extra projects I completed (that I LOVE) at the end. =) Enjoy!!

Original picture found at www.clipartof.com 

 This is Branson & my caricature that we had done in 2008 at the Maryland State Fair!

 I love this!! haahaa!!

 I started out by taking my images and putting them up on the projector like I did with my cornhole set and traced the images onto our primed & painted plywood boards.

Little tip on big painting projects like this...ask your family & friends if they have different colors in latex paint that you can use. I had some of my own colors, but not nearly enough of what I needed to finish this project. My mom & my brother helped me BIG TIME to get most of the colors you see. Don't forget you can mix colors if you want a certain look or shade. 

 If I'm using the same color I like to go back & forth from face-hole cut-out to face-hole cut-out basically painting both of them at the same time...as to save time/paint.

Starting to look like the picture!

I love to see the progress! =) I like to make them my own too...I added a tale to the horse, I fixed the pole from being crooked (look at the original picture...the bottom portion of the pole), & I added a top to the pole to 'finish' it...technically it should be attached to the carousel, but I wasn't about to paint that too. =)

 Changed this up a bit too.

 I love how big her hair is! =) Reminds me of a Southern diva! =)

It's getting there.

I painted everything in my kitchen. =) The basement is too messy to do these projects in. =)

My hubby is getting ready to cut the faces out...first he had to drill a hole so he could get the jigsaw started.

 LOVE them!!!

He also routed the edges so the edges would be nice and rounded.

Haahaaa! My crazy face...but I love the finished product!!!!

I love the macho man on the carousel horse!! haahaa!! =)

 Original picture found at www.istockphoto.com

 So my family loves the Steelers...so instead of doing the Eagles I went with the Steelers colors!

 I just printed off a picture of a Steeler uniform so I could paint my football guy correctly.

He's looking good! =)

 The hands I had to go over with gray so you could see the outline of his fingers.

 We'll cut some holes in it so a football can be thrown thru.

 Love the expression on his face! =)

 We wanted 2 different sized holes for the football toss game....1 super easy hole & 1 semi-challenging. Branson used a 5 gallon bucket for the semi-challenging hole & our trash can lid for the super easy hole. =) Pretty innovative idea. =) haahaa!

 It got dark out really fast so we decided to try it out in our messy basement (I tried to crop out all of our mess) haahaa!

 This is my mom & dad's cake topper that I made.

There is a great tutorial how to do this at Style Me Pretty

 I embellished mine a bit. Since this is my mom & dad's 50th I wanted some gold on it somewhere. I went to Walmart and found some 'scraps' that they had on sale....got the lace, gold rick-rack, & gold rope for super cheap. Always be on the look out for things like that in Walmart clearance sections.

 The sheet music I had...I know I destroyed a vintage piece of music. It's actually a cute song. You can listen to it on YouTube, How Sweet You Are. One thing I did with the paper that the tutorial didn't do is I covered all of the paper with Modge Podge...that way it would protect the paper against the icing so it won't leave "grease" marks on your cake topper. This is a great thing to put on display in your house, so you want to keep it in the best shape possible.

 This little darling could possibly be my most favorite thing I've made so far. =) I got the idea from an Esty listing. Basically I didn't want to pay for something I knew I could make myself...& of course I've embellished mine....BUT if you don't want to take the time to do something like this yourself visit HeatherBoyd. I put my wire hot air balloon in a shadow box as a keep sake for my parents (my mom LOVES hot air balloons). =)

Well, that's all the sneak peeks you get for now until the party....I can't wait!!! My friend & photographer Josh Berg is going to be documenting the party! He does AMAZING work! Can't wait to see how everything turns out! =) Here's praying there's no rain....because EVERYTHING is outside! =) I'll let you know.