I've been described as a Hobbit and I've come to embrace the idea - I love good food, parties, a comfy home and family. However I would probably be of the Took family line since I do like adventure also. Share in my creative adventures and remember "Not all who wander are lost."
When I started a blog I had no idea I would have so little time to do it, or that the big drive to do a post would be so I could pin something on pinterest and have it credited to me LOL. And even now I don't have a ton of time but I wanted to share how awesome this Halloween turned out!
First is my Michelangelo Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle Boy!
Found the costume at a thrift store and the shell at WalMart. He wanted his head shaved for his costume - yep we're a dedicated family. ;) I did his makeup with Ben Nye green and orange and we sprayed his head. Even with powdering it off with baby powder to set the makeup he still was rubbing green off all over the place and the bath Halloween night left a green ring in the tub! LOL!
Next we have Princess Anna. There were tons of Elsa's but she was the only Anna at school. She had a light blue shirt but I made the bodice, skirt and cloak. I used puffy paint for the flower embroidery on the bodice and skirt and also for the light blue scallop on the bottom of the skirt. I used this guide to look at, I didn't make a stencil just freehanded it but it was very nice to have the guide to look at. I used this tutorial for the cape. Also, we dyed her hair red. Yep, no fake wig or messy spray - we did the real stuff and she looks great with it! I used Ben Nye white hair paint for the stripe. We even found her some great boots! I'm so happy with how the whole thing turned out, she looked perfect!
These two together were very cute and funny.
And for me - I was going to be a dead bride but I recently started working in the kids school lunchroom (yep, I'm a lunchlady!) so big poofy white dress wouldn't work so well. So Halloween morning I was trying to figure something out, I was thinking of doing a Day of the Dead makeup when I found my Nightmare Before Christmas skirt so I figured I'd do more of a Jack makeup and then I thought it would be fun to do half Jack and half Sally. It turned out so nice and I got a lot of compliments - I might do that more often, simple costume or no costume and focus on some cool makeup instead.
It's March 14th in 2014, which I thought everyone was considering epic pie day. Upon a little further look I found that next year is supposed to be the epic year - 03/14/15 but I also distinctly remember people getting excited that this year the whole month is Pie month and yet I haven't eaten any pie at all yet.
(to see the results of the above tournament go here but I would suggest you go through it yourself and come up with your own winner, at least that's my plan for the next week) ;)
But wait! Is it true? Is this what we should all be eating today:
We do combined birthdays a lot since the kids birthdays are only 2 days apart and I usually go big with 20+ kids for 4 hours and I make everything myself and we have a meal as well as cake and icecream. Or we have just a few kids but I make everyone their own costume. (no joke, did that for my daughters fairy birthday party, need to blog about that one too someday) But this year we decided to go a little smaller, less kids, less time and buy a lot of stuff rather than make it all. It felt really weird (especially when everyone left after only 2 hours) but it worked out ok. Life's been a little crazy and there just wasn't the time or energy to go super epic big. The important thing though is the kids had fun and enjoyed it. I have to admit that yes, some of the really super big epic parties can turn into something that's more for me than the kids. True there's the high bar of the pinterest world but for me parties are just one of my things, I did big ones before I found pinterest and even before I had kids, even back when I was a teenager.
The themes this year were My Little Pony and Spiderman. The main thing my son wanted was a Spiderman pinata, both of them like My Little Pony so it was a great fit all around. I bought a My Little Pony tablecloth, birthday banner, gift bags and plates. We also bought Spiderman plates and gift bags. I did make a few things including two cakes and a Pin the Tail on the Pinkie Pie game.
For the cake I mad a rainbow/tiedye interior following the method on this site (I've done this a couple of times now and it always turns out so cool but I did learn my lesson, since we live at a higher altitude and have to add extra flour and water to the cake mix, it makes too much batter so that's how we got the small cake that I put on the top) and for the outside decoration I followed this great tutorial for a Rainbow Sprinkle Cake
Pin the Tail on the Pinkie Pie!
I had this awesome idea, do pin the tail, but use a bunch of tails from other ponies instead of her own tail. The trick was we had more kids coming than the basic characters so I started looking up a few others and I got a bit carried away and did something like 25 tails, but it was fun finding them and the kids LOVED it! They loved figuring out who the tails belonged to, some are obscure characters that I really liked the look of their tail and there are a few that are designed by fans and aren't in the show at all but looked really cool. The kids each picked a tail they liked and we played with the blindfold and then they had fun just putting one tail on at a time to see what it looked like. I uploaded a PDF on my deviantART account that you can download for free
While waiting for their turn to pin a tail on the other kids colored My Little Pony pictures.
For the pinata it worked really well to have the kids sit on the stairs so they were out of the way but could still see.
Then it was cake and icecream time! Yep, let's blindfold and spin the kids around for not one but two games and then stuff them full of sugar. Best Party Ever! ;)
We had all the kid friends over on my daughters birthday and on my sons birthday 2 days later we had some family over so I made him a Spiderman cake. It was my first icecream cake and the first time I had ever made my own fondant. I made marshmallow fondant with these directions and it came out really well. The topper is a bank we bought at ToysRUs and I loved the way it worked out!
Have you ever been swallowed by the internet? Found yourself exploring random things and come across something so different and yes, strange, yet you couldn't help but keep looking and it seems like a trivial thing and you really should get on to "more important" things yet suddenly an hour or two have passed and all you've done is delve into the bizarre new find?
(I swear someone in the back just shouted out that that describes their typical every day situation)
I said something along the lines of this and my husband said "Welcome to the internet."
A few days ago the thing that sucked me in and despite best efforts I couldn't seem to turn away was the No Frills Twins:
Most of the videos these twins from Australia have posted are the two of them singing. Often they are doing covers of other songs but they have a few they've written themselves also. I listened to a few of their songs and liked their Hallalujah cover but there was something about their look that just kind of snagged me. So I watched more of their videos of their school outfits (like the one above) and found myself not only watching, but liking what I saw - even wanting to do some myself.
So I realized that part of why I couldn't stop watching the No Frills Twins, part of why I have tons of pins on my colored hair pinterest board
is because I really actually like it. I love retro fashion, as well as
some of the crazy fashions, and bright colors and wacky hair.
So why
don't I do it?
Oh sure there's a list of reasons such as not having the
money or not having an "occasion" to wear it to. Those twins are young
girls who go to school and can show off their fun stuff to everyone.
Most days the only ones to see my fashion taste is my kids, the cats and
the dog. But even if we had an occasion to leave the house - I'm not
sure if I could leave the house wearing some of this stuff. But there
are times I have. I often leave wearing medieval clothing and for awhile there I was doing really good at trying out retro hairstyles and makeup.
But I go through an internal struggle whenever I do this kind of stuff
because I'm afraid of what other people will think. My introverted side
wants to go hide in a corner, blend in and not be noticed by anyone.
So when my husband came home I said to him how I wish I had done a few things in high school that I can't do now. He asked what I meant and I mentioned briefly the twins video and things like wearing blue lipstick or dyeing my hair orange. He asked "Why not?" and my reply was "cause real mom's don't do that."
He then taught me a valuable lesson - 1. Who decides what "real mom's" do and don't do and 2. He wants our daughter to see her mother dressing and doing her makeup and hair the way she wants and the way she feels good not the way others tell her, whether that's wearing a My Little Pony t-shirt or wearing blue lipstick.
I had expected his first response as he says things like that a lot (he's awesome like that) but his second response really blew me away. In fact it made such a big impression on me I decided to make this blog post about it and start a quest - to find things that will help me prove to myself that there are things that "Real Mom's" do. I'm going to look for other blogs or books and if I can't find something that fulfills this, I'll do it myself! Here on this blog I'll post pictures of Real Mom's doing all the things that society says they "can't do" so I can show my daughter - and myself that we can define ourselves and don't have to fit into a box that is the stereotypes around us.
This is probably also why this song has really been tugging at me lately, because I want to Let it Go:
