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!

First Day of School, 2012

Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Julia's First Day of Kindergarten

you can find the link to Julia's headband here

Kirsten's First Day of First Grade

To celebrate our girls' first day, Daddy bought each girl (and me, too!) a beautiful bouquet. I surprised Kirsten by replenishing her Homework Caddy with new supplies and put together Julia's very first Homework Caddy.  They have everything we need for homework and is easy for us to get to at homework time.

pencils, highlighter, crayons, erasers, sharpeners, glue

I also left each girl a sweet surprise!

Everyone had a great first day and wants to go back tomorrow!

The Party's Over

Labor Day... Back to School... & the summer is over! Well not officially, but officially in our house. This morning, the girls' first day of school, Kirsten looks at me with those big baby blues and says, "I cried a little last night. The fun is over."

Of course I try to console her by telling her about how much fun she is going to have in first grade. Secretly though, I had to come to terms with the fact that she is right.

  Kirsten, Julia, & I refer to this summer as the "Best Summer EVER!" And it truly was. Lots of time together, lazy days and days filled to the brim with adventure. Family bike rides and trips to Hershey Park and Long Beach Island. Snuggling in my bed each morning when we weren't heading out and about and playing in the sun.

So together we sat this evening to pay homage to our summer. We generated a list of all of the good times and special memories we had created this summer. I turned the list into a cool word cloud using Tagxedo.  It is super easy... just visit the site and click Start Now.  Click Load and add your words.  There are tons of font, color and shape choices.

 I am thinking of framing for Kirsten's room.  Here's to the "Best Summer EVER!"

Potholders Gone Fabulous!

When I was a kid, all I could do with plastic loom was make potholders. And I did just that... make A LOT potholders for every person in my family! I am sure EVERYONE in my family needed a potholder, especially grandpa who never stepped foot in the kitchen to cook. To this day I am still not sure why they were called potholders, since they are really only helpful if you cook in a Fisher Price kitchen.

But fast forward three decades later, and my 5 year-old began her quest to make coasters (since we realized their functioning as potholders was a complete farce) for everyone in the family. She received her first plastic loom from her Nanie while on vacation and the very same instructions that I had read as a child came with it.

A few months later something crazy happened. Kirsten received a loom for her birthday from a friend who knows her all too well. But this one wasn't your grandmother's loom kit; it was the next generation of loom kits by Creativity for Kids! Who knew that you could make things other than potholders....

A SUNGLASS CASE

A POCKETBOOK

AND WAIT FOR IT...

A WATER BOTTLE HOLDER!

So with two potholders, some ribbon, yarn & two buttons, we created the coolest water bottle carrier in town! Functional & fancy... just the way we like it!