Time To Par-tay!

The Sweet Man recently celebrated his fiftieth birthday.

I guessed he didn't want a Princess Party...

... and he certainly didn't deserve this:

I thought about what he liked, and hit upon Grumpy Cat!

I picked a photo, and took out the color and made it lower contrast.

Then I played around in Word*** until I had a letter on top of each picture.

I cut out the images, punched two holes in the top of each,

strung yarn through them, and voila!

It looked awesome.

I also used Grumpy Cat's image on the Sweet Man's birthday card,

got him one of these mugs...

...and set one of these little paper dudes in front of his presents:

(Click the link to download and make your own Grumpy Cat!)

This party experience made me think of other meme-related opportunities for banners.

What about instead of a lame stork theme,

you decorated a baby shower around the Ermahgerd! girl?

You could make a banner with Ermahgerd!  Berbees!,

have everyone bring their favorite baby Berk! as a gift,

and ask for people to wear pigtails.

(Hey, I'd wear pigtails.)

And what about Darwin the Ikea monkey for a going-away banner?

The banner could read "Miss You Already"

and presents could be wrapped with homemade Darwin wrapping paper:

In addition to a banner, it would be cool to blow this image up,

and use it as a photo-booth background!

I think even Grumpy Cat would approve.

***I have Word 2003, so it might be easier/different for you to make the banner images,

but here's what I did.  I wouldn't doubt there's an easier way, but I was messing around without the Sweet Man's help:

1)  I pasted/inserted however many images I needed, at the size I wanted.  I made them so there were two per landscape 8 1/2" by 11" sheet... or at least I tried.  Word kept fighting me, so I often only had one per page. 

2) After the images, I made as many letters I needed to spell out the message.  I made them red, so they would pop against the grey and white image.  It would probably be easier at this point to make your viewing 25%, so you can see what you're doing.

3) One at a time, I clicked on an image, went to Format, chose Picture from the drop-down, and then chose Layout.  Once at Layout, I chose Behind Text.  Before I moved onto the next image...

4) I copied the a letter and pasted it on top of the image.  The image kept moving around, but it should have the box around it so that you can grab it and move so the letter is centered.  (You'll want to chose "center" for the alignment.)

If you're still having trouble, you could try running the paper through your printer twice, once for the image and once for the letters.  It would take some futzing around,

but it would be doable.