Matching Freezer-Paper Stenciled Bike T-Shirts

I love to make things for my boys. Both of them have summer birthdays and I had plans to make them special birthday shirts that matched.

Well, that didn’t happen.
Eventually, I decided to just buy matching shirts and embellish them. I got started with the little guy’s shirt and just didn’t like what I did to it. So it sat. And sat. And I was too busy to fix it.


Finally, I decided to make the older one’s shirt. (The week after his birthday.) So much for matching birthday shirts.


And I ended up loving the bike. And the gray paint color. So much that I wanted to cover up my original work on the little guy’s shirt. 

So I did. Is it obvious?

The method I used to do the bikes is freezer paper stenciling. I have a tutorial for freezer paper stenciling here. And no, I do not have a vinyl cutter or stencil cutter. I cut these from the freezer paper with my own hands and a sharp craft knife.


The moral of this story is that I should not try to be a ‘perfect’ mommy and throw a ‘perfect’ birthday party.  I had great ideas…like I would make a beautiful cake.

And this is what I ended up with:


This is the cake's good side:


But you know what?
It was a great birthday anyway.

Even though the boys didn’t have handmade matching shirts and my oldest didn’t have a perfectly decorated birthday cake, it didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that I didn’t have handmade printable garlands and coordinating napkins and straws with some cute theme. (Though I do love those who go to extremes for birthday parties.)

My husband made ribs (it was his birthday, too!) which were spectacular. The rib-making took practically the entire weekend and splattered our deck with grease, but they sure tasted great.
So. I’ve already tried scrubbing my deck with dish soap. That didn’t get the grease marks off. Any other ideas for removing grease from an unstained wood deck?