party preparations

These past few days have been filled with preparations for Fischer's birthday party on Sunday.  In case you can't tell by the photos, the theme is dinosaurs!  I like to have little party favors for the kids to take home.  I love using things that I already have around the house.  I have some  leather that my dad gave to me probably 15 years ago from a deer that he got.  I've held onto it over the years knowing that someday I'd find a use for it and I finally did,   leather  pouches for everyone!    The leather pouches are to hold all the fossils that they'll find on their fossil hunt.   This morning was spent making coffee ground fossils.  All week I've been saving my husbands used coffee grounds for this.  I made some dinosaur teeth and footprint fossils that I then turned into necklaces.  The coffee ground dough has a nice  earthy color and texture to it.  Fischer made some awesome fossils by pushing images into the dough of crabs, shells, seahorses and whatever else he could find.  With the left over leather scraps I made some dinosaur bracelets.  I used my wood burner to burn the images onto the leather, I'm not sure how this will hold up in the long run, but for now they look great.  I'm also planning on having a "cave"  with cave drawings in it.  I'm going to set up a large cardboard box with a black light over head and the kids can draw with white chalk and crayons and hopefully they will glow.  With all this preparation, I decided to go the easy route and I ordered a birthday cake!