Happy Halloween!!

Happy Halloween...a day late!! I hope everyone had a fun and safe night of trick-or-treating and fall festivals! It was a freezing and windy evening here (thanks to the effects of Sandy) but we braved the the cold and made our rounds thru the neighborhood collecting treats and chatting with the neighbors! This year both of my sisters and their children, as well as my brother and my parents all did trick-or-treating together. It is chaotic getting us all ready but everyone had a great time. We even had an unexpected guest during our walk, a large deer who came bounding out of nowhere right thru our group and then vanished into the woods behind some houses. He came through us like lightning and some of the group only heard the hoofs on the pavement because he was here and gone so quickly. We live in a very populated large neighborhood so this encounter was definitely not the norm but very cool. Luckily he didn't collide with anyone but he was very close! I think we talked about it for 30 minutes afterwards because it got us all so excited, lol! It will definitely be a memory that won't be soon forgotten!

The kids finished the evening with quite a large candy haul and I think we'll be set with sweets until Easter (yikes)!! In addition to the candy, my sister made everyone some delicious caramel/chocolate apples for dessert so that we'd all be sugared up for sure. Yum!! I hope you had as much fun as we did. I am sooo ready for this holiday season!! It's my favorite time of year...I can almost hear the jingle bells :)

A Tangled Festival of Lights Birthday: Ella's 4th Birthday Party

  My baby girl turned 4 last Tuesday. Sooo hard for me to accept. To celebrate we threw a Tangled Festival of Lights birthday party for her yesterday afternoon! It came out even more magical than I envisioned! I was able to get the "real" Rapunzel to make the long carriage ride all the way from the Kingdom to attend Ella's special day! Ella and her party guests could hardly believe their eyes. They were so amazed and it was so much fun to experience the wonderment through their eyes! She sang all her favorite songs from the movie and told wonderful stories! She even played games and did a festival dance with all the girls. Before the event was over she held a coronation where Ella was crowned a princess. It was all so magical!! The party table pulled everything together. I hope you will enjoy this peek into Ella's special day and that you'll be inspired to create some magic of your own! 

Look What I Made! Rapunzel Gown!

I had great ideas for the theme of Ella's 4th birthday this spring until she decided she wanted to have a Tangled party instead...bye bye plans, lol! It's perfect though because now I have lots of great new ideas circled around the Rapunzel theme! Of course she would be needing a dress for her event so I began my search. There are the ones you can buy through Disney but I wanted something more unique and one-of-a-kind so I searched all over etsy. I came to the conclusion that instead of spending $100 on a custom dress (which was out of the question anyway) I would just buckle down and make one myself. So, that same day (this past friday) I headed to my local craft store and bought my fabric and by Sunday evening the dress was complete! It's amazing what you can get done if you just set your mind to it and make yourself work on a project. The entire project cost me about $15 in materials and notions since I used coupons!! The gown is a bit large but this will ensure that she'll get a few years of wear out of it! Ella loves it and I cannot wait to see her wear it on her special day! I just love planning the details of kids birthday parties! Maybe I'll add it to the list of things I "do", lol!





And here's Ella practicing the Smoulder!! This "look" comes very naturally for her...I get it a lot! Followed by a ton of attitude!!



And this is another shot from when we were playing around doing Rapunzel hairdos a few days ago! Can you tell we love Tangled?!!

Rapunzel! Let down your hair!! Fun with playsilks

Those of you who have been around here a while may remember this post I did years ago when I first discovered the magic of playsilks! They are such a simple toy and simple to make using inexpensive silk scarves and kool-aid. If I remember correctly I believe I bought my silks here and you can find a line-up of which flavors produce which colors here. Not every flavor is available everywhere so you may have to do some hunting if you want a particular color. I still have a special stash of kool-aids that aren't available in my area that I bought in a SC Bi-Lo store while on vacation in 2008. My husband and kids are always trying to sneak packets out to use to make kool-aid and I am forever having to snatch them back, lol! If you'd like to make your own there are lots of tutorials online but this one is one of the ones I followed back in 2008.

My girls have been playing with their silks for 3.5 years now (my how they've changed!) and they still have tons of fun with them. Yesterday they, along with my mom came up with a fun new idea for them! Both Halle & Ella are big fans of Disney's Tangled movie so they decided to use the playsilks to create long hair like Rapunzel and run around watching their "hair" follow after them! It was beyond cute!