Pretty Princess Dress

Recently I got the idea to make a princess dress for Ariana. I wanted it to be a tutu dress, but didn't want to use the crochet top that so many others have (something about them is too revealing for me). So I set off to the store to buy my supplies and after a few hours worth of work, here it is.

Can you tell who it is? Yep, Snow White!

It's not perfect, but a great start. I actually bought material to make a Belle one as well, but it will have to wait (for now). After that I want to do Rapunzel.

To make the top I bought some elastic thread. All I can say is LOVE. After this project I'm addicted.

 

I'll be back again once I get the others done, but for now I'm entering this project into a crafting challenge.

 

 

Little Girl is Growing Up!

So, since this blog is about our daily life, I feel it's necessary to update everyone on what's happening around here.

For the past few days, Ariana has been potty training.

It all started on Saturday when she refused to put on a diaper after her morning change. I gave in and let her run around without the diaper just to see what she would do. In a matter of 30 minutes, she had two accidents and refused to sit on the potty after each one. At that point I decided the diaper was going back on. She wasn't ready and I didn't want to force her.

Then on Sunday we had the same issue once her morning diaper change came around. At that point I decided to up the ante to see if I could entice her to sit on the potty. I went through my stash of left over candy and found a few lollipops, I showed them to her and explained that if she went potty, she could have one. Well, that didn't go over so well and 20 minutes of screaming followed. But, after those 20 minutes were over, she walked into the room, sat on the potty, and made her first pee. All by herself. I only knew she had gone when I heard her laughing and went to check on her. She was so excited when she got to have her lollipop.

Since then, she has gone on the potty all but one time (last night we were outside playing and after we came in she had an accident). Each time she has gone, it has been unprompted. We leave the bathroom door open so she can go in whenever she needs to to go.

The only issue we are having right now is the fact that she is clueless when she wears underwear. She hasn't yet learned that she needs to take them off before she goes, so she has been holding it in. Each time I try to teach her, a huge fit ensues (we're in that stage, oh joy). So, for now, she just runs around the house naked and goes as she pleases. I'm hopeful that in the next few weeks she'll have everything down and we can call this a success.

Advent Calendar: Day 1

Tonight, A and I (J isn't here) made a handprint wreath. I decided to do this on a night J wasn't here because we already have one that he made back in 2010 that we hang every year. I thought it would be nice for A to make one that matches his.

Fun at the park

Yesterday, A and I decided to spend a nice mommy/ daughter day together. We had plans to go to story time first, but since it wasn't meant for littles, we decided to go to the park instead. It was such a nice day out (in the lower 70s), so I knew some much needed outside time would be the best bet for us.

This was the same park we had A's party at just a few weeks ago, and ever since then she has requested we go play with the dinosaurs. Here she is giving her dinosaur friend some love.

 Next, it was time to "drive" the firetruck. I was impressed that she was able to climb in and get it to rock, all on her own.

 After that, it was on to her favorite activity while at the park. The swings! She would stay in there all day if I let her. I let her swing for a little while before we moved on to the next fun thing.

 

I tried to get her to climb up onto the merry-go-round with me, but she just wasn't having it today. Instead she decided to play in the water left from the light rain that morning. Here she is acting innocent... mommy knows better.

Of course, keeping her away from the swings didn't last long and she soon requested for more pushing. With a face like that, how could I resist? But this time she requested that I swing, too. Again, how could I say no?

 

After a while of side-by-side swinging she was ready to move on. Now she wanted to go play with her friend, dinosaur. I actually have a really cute video of her telling the dinosaur to "move," but I'm not sure how to upload it yet.

Then we come to the end of our park play date. Sadly it didn't end the way I had hoped. My plan was for A to slide down the slide a few times and then we'd get in the car to go home. So, she climbed up the steps to the top, I took this cute picture, and then she acted like she was going to slide. However, instead of sliding (which I was waiting for on the other side) she turned around to go back down. I guess she turned too fast and proceeded to fall all the way down the steps. She was only about three feet up, but in my eyes she fell 30 feet! I quickly picked her up, checked her for any injuries, kissed the ones I could find, then got in the car to go home.

An Under the Sea Party

A few weeks ago (sorry for late posting) we had A's second birthday party.

We were so lucky that it turned out to be such a beautiful day. I remember last year it was so hot, no one wanted to go outside (we had the party at our apartment). I knew we wouldn't be able to host the amount of people we were expecting at our apartment this year, so we decided to do it at a park in town instead.

This was a different park than we did J's party at, so it was new to me. A few days before the party, A and I went up there to scope the place out. That's when I realized that a few projects I had planned weren't going to work and I had to tweak them a bit.

But, enough about that. Now lets see some pictures...

 

This is an ABC book I made for A as a gift. It's filled with a few of her

pictures from the past two years.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

And the beautiful birthday girl

 

After all of her friends arrived all A wanted to do was play, play, play! Her favorite activity of the day... swinging on the three seater swing.

 

I hope you had as much fun reading about her party as I did planning and creating it.

 

 

 *Ocean printables found here*  *ABC book purchased here*

*Crab cake tutorial found here*  *Fish bowl tutorial found here*

*Sushi tutorial found here*  *Octo-dogs tutorial found here*

*Banner purchased here*

Happy Halloween



I cannot believe it is November already. How did that happen?

I had a lot of fun this year with the kid's costumes. I let J pick out the theme again this year and he decided on Star Wars after he saw a Darth Vader costume at the store. I knew I couldn't make one better so I forked over the $20 and called it a day. Of course, then we went on the search for a light saber. The cheapest one we could find was $10. I know that's not a lot, but I really wanted to keep cost down so I tried to come up with something different. My search led me to the Halloween accessories aisle where I found a foam sword. Then with a few cuts to make it look more "saber" like and a nice coat of red paint we were set. I'm actually quite pleased with how it turned out, and for $2, you can't beat that.

 

With J being Darth I decided to make A Princess Leia (original, huh?). After doing some research (I'm not too familiar with Star Wars, so I wasn't sure what she wore) I decided to make the white dress Leia wore in "A New Hope." I set out in search of an easy pattern for a long sleeve dress and came across this one. I did tweak it a bit to make the sleeves come to a point, but other than that, it is exactly the same (it was so easy to make, I even made another one out of cute Halloween fabric). For the belt I bought a pack of key chains from the jewelry section in Jo Ann's and clasped them together, then tied white ribbon to each end and tied it around her waist. I knew A wouldn't wear a wig, nor would she stand to wear a headband, so I did the next best thing. I put her hair in pigtails but looped the last little bit of hair so it looked like a bun. Easy.

 

Happy Birthday Big Girl!!

That's right, this cutie is 2 years old today!! Time to celebrate :)

 

And here's one of her reaction to her balloon surprise this morning :) She kept pointing and saying "Balloooon!!"

6 Layer Lego Brick Cake!!

That's right, J's cake was a whopping six layers! But not just any 6 layers would do, oh no, I had to go above and beyond.

First item of business was the overall look of the cake. Originally I wanted to do a "brick" style cake and have them stacked (like this), but J wasn't sold on that. So we sat down at the computer and went through a few different Lego cake styles. At that time he picked this one and I was determined to get it done. But of course, the week before his birthday we came up with a different style, now I was going to make a Lego figurine head. Honestly, I was happy about this change. I knew that it would be more work to make and cut all of the fondant for the first one. But now I had a new issue to fix. Since the outside of the cake was going to be plain (compared to the original one) I would need to make the inside pop and be the real "wow" factor.

At that point I started to research "rainbow" cakes. I knew with his color theme (red, blue, green and yellow) a rainbow colored cake would look really neat. But the ones I kept coming across (like this and this) just seemed too girly. They were cute, but not really what I would think for a boys Lego party.

That's when I started to think outside the box and wanted to come up with something on my own, something different.

That's where this came from.

Pretty cool, huh? I think so.

 

It was actually pretty easy to make, too.

 

First it started the same way the other rainbow cakes I researched did. I mixed my (store bought) cake mix in a big bowl (per package instructions) then divided it into four other bowls. Since I knew I was making six layers I just doubled the amount of cake batter for two colors.

Then I just poured my batter into my six round cake pans as usual and baked per package instructions. Nothing special. Once they were baked I let them cool so I would be able to handle them better. **I probably should have slightly frozen them, that way they would have been easier to cut**

 

Then I cut them like you would do for a checkerboard cake. Don't know what I mean? Well here's a not so detailed description.

 

First you need to make a template of your cake. To do this I just traced the bottom of my cake pan onto card stock. Now you have a large circle. Next you'll want to draw a smaller circle inside your larger one, leaving about 2 inches between the lines. Then you want to draw another circle inside of that one. I'm not sure how confusing this sounds, but what you wind up with is a "bulls-eye" (think Target symbol, ha ha). Now you'll need to cut your template so that you only have the middle ring left. Here's a picture of my template on my cake.

See what I mean? Okay, so now you need to place your template onto your cake, try to center it as best you can. While holding it still, cut around your template. Make sure you cut along the outer edge of your template as well as the inner edge. After you make your cuts, carefully separate you rings. Now you will have this.

Outer ring, middle ring, inner circle.

 

Do this for all six cakes. Now you will have this.

At this point I decided to gather all of my rings by size and color and line them up. Now comes the fun part, putting the cakes back together. You can do this in any order you choose, but be mindful of how your layers will stack. Try not to place two similar colors on top of each other. Once mine were put back together this is what they looked like.

I then just stacked them as you would a normal layer cake. Place your bottom cake layer, then add icing, then your next cake layer, icing, cake, etc. until you have all six layers stacked. Now all you need to do is finish icing the outside of the cake. I'm not a cake baker or decorator, so don't look to me for tips on that. If you need help there just Google, that's what I have to do, ha ha.

So now that your cake is assembled and iced it should look something like this (this picture was taken after we had already eaten some from the back, that's why it's leaning so much). To add the face I just used a tube of icing that was made for writing. It allowed me to control where I was putting it. Since I was using black, I didn't want to mess up.

Here are a few more inside shots, just because I think they're cool.

There you have it. A super easy and really cute Lego cake. Enjoy!

 

 

*As usual, if you have any questions, feel free to ask them in the comments*

 

The Big Party

So, on September 15th we finally had J's birthday party. Although his actual birthday was in August, I held off his party until school started, hoping kids would actually show up. Well, that didn't happen. J isn't a very social kid, so I know he doesn't have many true friends in school, but I was hoping that by him handing out the invites near the beginning of school would get to the parents easier. Oh well. We still had a blast with those who did attend.

Now here comes the fun part! All of the details.

I worked on this party for quite a while. I knew (by pushing it back) I would have to manage my time between J's party and A's party (next month) so I wouldn't get behind on either.

Like I've mentioned many times now, I love planning parties. They don't always happen exactly like I plan (but really, what does?) but I still am very proud of my work.

For J's party we decided to have it at a local park. I was origionally worried about the heat but thankfully the weather held out and it was a decent day. We also had plans to go to the splash park after we ate cake and opened presents.

I appoligize that my photos are horrible (and lacking). I'm the worst at taking pictures, especailly at my kids parties. I'm usually the one busy making sure things are going attempting to go as planned. The photos I did manage to take don't really do the party justice, there was so much more than what I was able to capture.

These are the Lego men marshmallow pops that I made. I was very nervous about making them, but I think they turned out super cute. Again, sorry you can't see many of the faces... I was in a hurry taking the picture. I origionally bought two (one for each side of the table) large bowls to fill with M&Ms to use for displaying them, but I didn't buy enough so the pops weren't standing upright. So I decided to put them in a smaller cup I had left over and that seemed to do the trick.

These cups were filled with multi-colored Jell-o. Once they were set out I think half of them were gone the first minute. They were so refreshing on this warm day. I really wanted to attempt to make layered Jell-o but wasn't exactly sure how to go about doing it. I decided to just give it a try and see how it would turn out. I just made one flavor at a time, per package directions, the allowed them to cool. The only thing I did different was I had to do the "quick set" version of the instructions, so they would be ready in time for the party. I also attempted to be even more brave and do a diagonal layer effect. You can't really tell from my crappy picture, but they actually turned out pretty cool. Also, to decorate the cups, I attached to each one a sticker I purchased got for free from vistaprint.

These were popcorn balls that I attempted (and failed). I just couldn't get my proportions of marshmallow mixture and popcorn correct. I think if I had taken better measurements and calculated things out better, they would have turned out great. Needless to say, the few you see gone in the picture were the only ones eaten... I also added in mini M&Ms to add some color. 

Now for decorations. I wanted to keep them simple (and cheap, haha) so I just made some homemade streamers (tutorial found here) that hung from the pavilion rafters. These hung above the tables where everyone sat to eat. Again, this picture doesn't do them justice, you just have to take my word for it :)

Now this was a project I came up with on my own, homemade lego blocks. Basicly I just bought floral foam, tissue paper, and clear beads all from the dollar store. I wrapped the foam in tissue paper and then glued the clear beads on top in a lego-type pattern. Super easy and cost about $5 to make enough for three tables.

Here is a picture of J's banner (that I also got for free from vistaprint!) hanging above his cake I made. I really wanted the cake to be the showcase of the party and I think it was. It makes me so happy to see the excitment on my kiddos face when he gets to see the special things I make for him. It makes it all worth it in the end. It also doesn't hurt when I get the same sentiment from adults, too :)

And here is a picture of the birthday boy with his cake. Yes, the cake was bigger than his head! Six layers to be exact. Also, I plan to do another post about how I made the cake, so stay tuned. You'll never guess what the inside looks like...

 

As far as the other things I did/ made for the party that weren't available for photos when I finally got around to taking them were:

 

Rectangle pizza- cheese and pepperoni (to look like lego bricks)

Lego brick pinata- tutorial here, mine looked just like this one but blue without the pull strings

Homemade rectangle platters for the food- covered in theme matching tissue paper

 

One of the highlights of the party was the science experiment I did with all of the kids. I wanted to do something different, that all of the kids could help with, and I also needed it to fit into baby food jars I had saved to use for J's party. So what did we make? Slime!

 

J and I had made some a few weeks ago as a summer experiment and we both loved it so much. I knew it would be a hit with the kids at the party (ranging from two to nine years old). I also knew I wanted to turn the baby food jars into lego men heads, but didn't want to paint them, incase I decided to put something edible in them. So my solution was to draw faces on each of the jars and then tint the slime yellow.

 

Of course I didn't think the whole project through (color wise) and as we were making it, it looked like runny eggs. The kids loved it but the adults were turning green, haha. I made sure to give each kid a special task to help with the project, then when it was time to mix I allowed them all to put their hands in. The look on their faces when they felt it for the first time was priceless (I guess my memory will have to do for that image). After it was all mixed I divided it equally into all of the jars and sent one home with each of the kids.

 

 

Hello again

I can't believe how long it has been since I wrote on my blog. I have to say that I've missed it.
Since my last blog post I was given the best gift from my hubby. I'm now the owner of a cool tablet! I'm still getting used to it (this is the longest I've typed on it yet) so I may be little slow with a few extra typos along the way.
Not much has happened here on the home front. We're currently debating on buying our first home. I have to say I'm rather lost in the whole process. I'm not even sure where to start. We don't want to just jump into it so this may be an ongoing topic.
Both of the kiddos are doing great. J's asthma and allergies seem to be under control at the moment. A, however, is testing our patience. She's led me to do research on strong willed children. I know that she's almost two and most kids that age are terrors, but I'm saying this is different.
Also, be on the lookout for more coupon stuff. I'm still going strong and saving a ton of money. Actually, we had a get together for the fourth and served a low country boil for ten for under $100, that includes dessert and drinks (adult included) too.
And because it's been a while, here's a picture of my cuties :)