Thanksgiving Hostess Gifts

Thanksgiving means turkey...

turkey means cooking...

So, why not make Thanksgiving potholders as the perfect Thanksgiving hostess gift from the grandkids!

I considered having the girls make the usual handprint turkeys (which they are super fond of). But after seeing this idea on The Charmed Mom's blog for fingerprint turkey cards, I figured why not translate these turkeys to our potholders.

So it was off the Bed, Bath & Beyond armed with my 20% off coupons to find potholders to use as our canvas. After scouring the 'kitchen textiles' department, I found fabulous yellow oven mitts for our project.

We began by making rows of thumb print turkey feathers which slightly overlapped the previous row. We then added the brown thumb print turkey body in the center. And another brown thumbprint as the head.

 Once the body & feathers were dry, we added details like eyes, legs, beak and waddle.

 And of course, we used our extra paint to make these happy handprint turkeys!

We delivered one potholder to each of the grandmas on our double turkey dinner marathon day. The turkey plates made great gifts for the aunts on hand that day!

A Thanksgiving Tradition

After our yearly trek into the city for Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, the Clarke girls also participate in the annual making of the place mats. Back in 2008, when Kirsten was just 2 years old, I began a Thanksgiving tradition. Thanks to Better Homes and Gardens, I found this adorable printable placemat. The link to it no longer exists on their site, so thank goodness I saved it here:

Each year, the girls and I spend some time completing our placemat, which I then laminate. I am not really sure which I enjoy more, the ideas they choose to record, the details they include in the self-portraits, or the progression of their handwriting.

Let's take a trip down memory through our Thanksgiving placemats.

Kirsten's First Thanksgiving Placemat, 2008

2009

2010

2011

2012

Ode to Halloweens Past

As I mentioned in yesterday's post, Halloween was cancelled due to the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. As blessed as I am, it was still difficult to swallow my girls' disappointment. Even in our attempts to celebrate in new and creative ways, they just could not understand why...

I thought it would be fun for the girls to reminisce of happier Halloweens! So in honor of Halloween's past, here is a trip down Halloween lane:

Kirsten's 1st Halloween 

Halloween 2007

My Adorable Insects, 2008

love that stinger

2009

Dorothy & Glinda

2010

2011

even Chris joined in on the fun

Hurricanes & Halloween Don't Mix

Hurricane Sandy put a bit of a damper on Halloween for the northeast this year. Unfortunately, she created a lot more damage and devastation for so many loved ones and friends. We were so blessed to get by unscathed and maintain power in its aftermath. Having LOTS of company this week was another blessing we received.

Since Halloween, in our town and many others, was cancelled this year, we attempted to create some normalcy for our children by having a makeshift Halloween get together. My gracious neighbor, Katie, invited us and the children on her block to a backyard Halloween party. My girls were so excited to put on their costumes and march (well, run) around the corner. We took our house guests and our 5 pound bag of candy!

After sprinkling the candy all over the backyard, we let the kids loose for a candy hunt.

The candy, fresh air, and running around was just what these cooped up kids needed!

Alice in Wonderland Tea Party

As I mentioned in my post about Julia's 4th birthday, Julia's 5th birthday was presenting a challenge to me since she just loved last year's party. She easily selected her theme, Alice in Wonderland, since Alice is her favorite Disney 'not really a princess' princess!

Once we had our theme, which naturally leant itself to creating a tea party, we began by creating the invitation. Julia loved this black and white original illustration from Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, drawn by John Tenniel, so I incorporated it into our Queen of Hearts playing card idea.

For our decorations, we went with a pink and blue color scheme and created a simple tea party for two.

Pink cylindrical and blue spherical lanterns from Target hung above our table. The table was set with

bright pink wavy plates from Party City, which sat atop metallic teal chargers (on sale at Michaels for just $1.00 each - boy do I love a sale). 

It was also adorned with talking flower centerpieces made from fancy glass olive oil bottles from Home Goods, with keys tied round their necks.

Alice needs both the key and the little bottle reading 'drink me' (which Julia & Kirten both LOVED drinking from) in Chapter 1 of Julia's favorite story.

For dessert, Pillsbury Funfetti cupcakes were a must with our favorite buttercream frosting tinted pink. 

Four cupcakes were tea party ready, being baked in silicone teacup shaped cupcake molds, which came complete (I believe from Home Goods) with plastic serving saucers!

My Home Goods cake stand and Dollar Tree silver serving trays made for quite a lovely presentation! And of course, our Alice figurines (minus the Cheshire Cat, who seemed to have disappeared a long time ago) made their way to the table with some help from none other than Julia.

A Tangled Party

Julia's 5th birthday is quickly approaching and an Alice and Wonderland themed party is in the making. But, that's for later. Unfortunately right now I need to figure out how to make her next birthday as memorable for her as last year's. She continuously reminds me that her Rapunzel party was "The BEST birthday EVER!"

We started with the invitations!

After seeing really cute Rapunzel tower invitations from supermommoments.com, I knew we had to make invitations with long Rapunzel braids. After creating the invitation in Photoshop, I had them printed as 4 X 8 photos.  With some golden embroidery floss and super skinny purple ribbon, the braids were whipped up in no time!  A small slit made with an x-acto knife... pull the braid through... a little glue... and voilà! 

Next up, was a full-size version of Rapunzel braid from the invitation.  This took a bit more time to create, but I just threw in a movie on a Saturday night (how fun my Saturday nights are as a mom!) and fashioned this super cool braid.  I wish I had taken some pictures of the process. It entailed marching around two support poles in my basement to wrap the yarn around and around and around and around and around until I had enough to make a braid.

Next we found this template from Disney to make these adorable Pascal party blowers.

Of course we needed to continue our theme and incorporate it into dessert.

I found these cupcake liners at Michaels and thought they were perfect!  They reminded me of the purple flag bunting from the movie, but also had the shape of the lanterns...

We also created a dessert tower for Rupunzel out of cupcakes (directions here)!  

For the favors for the girls, I found this great tutorial on Do It Yourself Parties Blog for these adorable mini tiaras with attached braids....

... which I bagged and tied with personalized frying pan name tags (template from supermommoments)!

For the boys... Flynn Rider swords with personalized Wanted Poster name tags!

Julia's favorite part of her birthday...

Well okay, that was not it!

Julia's favorite part... releasing a sky lantern, just like the lanterns released by the kingdom every year on Rapunzel's birthday!