Sunshine in my pocket

Well believe me, I cried* plenty over this one. And because of my anguish, I wanted to share my findings with YOU so you don’t have to experience the same trials. (Ok, trial might be too strong a word….let’s replace that with FRUSTRATION.)

Spilled Milk, the Making of:

I found this fantastic blog post about DIY spilled milk for April Fool’s Day. As you might know, I’m having some very serious people over on April Fools and I must make them laugh. 🙂

So, in my haste to get these beauties made, I gathered all my supplies from WalMart: Plastic Glasses (2 for 88 cents!), Glue (at only 33 cents per bottle!), and a little white acrylic paint. I was a little more than excited because this was going to be the cheapest most inexpensive craft ever!

I started out by making the milk “residue” inside the glass. Take 1 part glue, 1 part white paint, and 5 parts water. Stir it all up and pour it carefully into a glass. Swish it around a bit, then pour it back out of the glass. Set the glass on it’s side and allow it to dry.

So far so good!

After it dried, I made the “milk spill” by mixing equal parts of paint and glue. Stir well. Pour a splotch of the mixture onto waxed paper and put the glass into the splotch, as pictured below.

Easy enough, right. Allow this to dry. I let the first batch dry for 2 days. (I only made 2 glasses the first round, but my intention was to make 12 glasses of spilled milk to use at each place setting for the dinner party).  When I went to check on the dried, spilled milk, I found this:

It didn’t look like spilled milk at all. It looked like dried paint…and when I peeled off the waxed paper, they actually started to tear at each cracked area. It looked TERRIBLE!

Good thing I started early, I thought. So I made another batch. This time, I had to use all the rest of the glasses (10) because I only had 2 days until the party.

I mixed much less paint this time. Just enough to tint the glue a nice milky white color. Then I let them dry. I checked on them periodically and they seemed like they were doing much better. However, they were taking MUCH longer to dry.

I turned the ceiling fans on to help them along.

When they were finally dry enough to peel from the waxed paper, here’s what I got:

The “milk” was warped and curling by the minute! That didn’t look very realistic! I was sad and a little frantic. These were to be a main part of my April Fools Jokes. I didn’t have time to make more.

So I did what any self-respecting crafter would do. I IMPROVISED!

I took that warped and curling milk and I glued it down with glue dots to some white cardstock. Then I cut around the cardstock. And by gosh, it worked! I ended up only prepping 5 glasses of milk this way, but I think the table turned out great! I used them as a sort of centerpiece:

And, even with all the issues, I think in the end they looked realistic enough. I even had someone who saw the “spilled milk” and wanted to CLEAN IT UP! Yes, it’s reactions like that to make it all worth while! 🙂

So my advice to you if you are making these beauties, is take enough time to find the ratio that works! And if you do find that magic ratio, please let me know so I can share!

I hope this posting helped you in some small way! Happy Joking!

When my husband told me the next Events Planning Meeting for the Arizona Chapter of the BMW Car Club of America was going to be on APRIL FIRST, I just knew we had to play a few jokes. I mean, those members are way too serious, right? So I set about researching and plotting for this party. We decided to hold a dinner before the meeting outside on the back patio to enjoy the beautiful Arizona weather.

THE JOKES

My ideas were far too many, so I edited them down a bit to include some of my favorites! And boy, did we get a great reaction!

The jokes included: Brownies, Andes Mints, Name placecards, Spilled Milk, and a Logo cake (decorated by Sassy’s Cafe and Bakery). When we first talked to Sassy’s they were excited to create this cake for us because it was the first April Fool’s cake they had done! And boy did we share a few laughs with the owners (thank you, Melody and Jeff!)

THE PREPARATION

Prep for this party started weeks before. Luckily, my husband gave me plenty of advance notice (that is quite rare around here!)

1) I used my cricut to cut out the Letter “e” multiple times on brown paper. I got the idea for the Brownies (“Brown E’s!”) here.

2) The spilled milk idea is from this website, and I just LOVED how they turned out. Although, I did have multiple “spilled milk” issues. You can read about the making of my spilled milk here.

3) The mints idea came as inspiration from a dinner out at Olive Garden, actually. Every time we go there and we get their after dinner mints, I quickly open and eat mine. Then I WRAP IT BACK up and give it to my husband saying, “Here, I don’t want this.” He falls for it EVERY TIME! If you unwrap the mints carefully, you can easily take out the candy and re-wrap them to look just like normal. I unwrapped only about 10 mints to create a top layer of “JOKE MINTS.”

THE DINNER TABLE

We started out with two 8′ tables pushed together to create a giant square (like a Board meeting table). We added black table cloths so the SPILLED MILK would really pop!

Then we added some small flower arrangements (nice and low to the table so the board members could still see and talk to each other).

To give a little nod to Spring, I used yellow napkins and cups and tied the utensils together with a striped ribbon.

You may notice that the BMW logo on each place card setting is UPSIDE DOWN! I also used an alternate spelling for the “Bored Meeting.” It took the members a while to notice that! We played jokes throughout the night, at one point even announcing that one of them would win a new car at the end of the night. (They caught on to that one quickly…ha!)

My Andes Mints got a good laugh…one board member kept pulling them out of the bowl and grunting with each empty wrapper. Everyone was baffled by his actions until they learned that some were empty!

Then, we brought out the CAKE! We talked this cake up plenty…explaining how their whipped frosting was so delicious and we were excited to try the cakes from Sassy’s because we knew they had delicious sandwiches, but didn’t realize they also took special order cakes until now. The president of the club began to open the cake box, and when he looked inside he displayed a look of shock! Everyone ran over to see what the disbelief was about…and that’s when they saw it had the WRONG LOGO!! Ha!

All the members laughed even more (and was I ever relieved)….it turns out the BMW Board members DO have a GREAT sense of humor. (whew).

Not only was this cake hilarious, this cake was also delicious! It was a marbled chocolate/vanilla cake with chocolate mouse filling and white chocolate whipped frosting! Wow.

We served the cake with Tillamook Ice cream, of course, since it won our Vanilla Ice Cream Taste Test! (read about it here). And we also tried the Tillamook Chocolate Mint ice cream, which may now be among my favorites.

My final report is this: I LOVE to have an April Fool’s Day party! I didn’t think I would enjoy it, but with a few good-natured jokes spread throughout the evening, the laughs kept coming and we all had a good time (even though it was REALLY a meeting).

If you look closely, you can see TWO photographers at the same time. That’s my reflection there in the window. {A special thank you to Kait for helping with some last minute arrangements.}

If you have an April Fool’s Party (next year?), please send me over your ideas. I just might be doing this again. 🙂

Happy Joking!