Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!!

Wishing Everyone a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year from our family to yours!

A Look Back - Halloween 2011–KISS Costumes

I can’t believe it’s been a year since the girls dressed up as KISS! This year we are going a bit more low key – stay tuned! Thought I’d re-post and join in the fun over at the CSI Project.

Well it's been a year in the making - some of you may recall what my girls went as for last years Halloween as seen here:

The Chipettes–Brittany, Eleanor and Jeanette

 

This was so much fun, I began to think shortly after what they could be to top this next year…and it came to me – KISS! 

 

 

At first, the girls were NOT on board, so I was going to can the idea - I felt guilty for trying to push something on them they didn't want to be - but their Daddy, who had been working SO hard teaching them how to "throw the horns up" convinced me to go for it!

I'm so glad I did because they LOVE the costumes and I am so happy with how they all turned out! I knew Halloween morning would be crazy so we had a dress rehearsal before I had completed the final touches on the costumes!

 

This one wasn’t so happy so I didn’t have her in complete makeup…

As always, we prepared a little music video for your entertainment!!

I spent the most time on the “Demon” – the boots were my biggest challenge but I am so happy with how they turned out! You can see how I made them here. They laid out their clothes for school…I think it’s a first where there is no pinks, purples, dresses or skirts in the mix!! Quite a change from the Chipettes but so much fun!

And here are the costumes all filled up!! Happy Halloween to everyone!

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‘Tis the Season

We’ve have had a VERY busy two weeks with Christmas parties and concerts and shopping and decorating…I wanted to share a few little videos of my girls showing off their talents!

It was Poppy’s Daycare Christmas Concert and she has been singing her sweet little heart out around the house for the last couple of weeks gearing up for the big performance!  As a belated birthday present to myself, I had ordered a new camera and crossed my fingers in the hopes it would arrive before the big day and it did!!

We gave Poppy the big “pep” talk telling her to make sure she smiled and sang really really loud so that Mommy and Daddy could here her!

The day arrived and she got all dolled up! I must say, she was looking pretty darn sweet…

 

….well it turns out she got a little stage fright! But it was all still so very sweet to watch!!

 

The following week is was Ila’s turn – her ballet recital which she has been telling me from the beginning that she DOESN’T want to perform at the end and she does not like to be by herself! I of course, was expecting a performance much like the one we got from Poppy but I was so impressed with how well she did and enjoyed every last minute of it! These little girls were so sweet, it just made your heart melt to watch them.

Here is my little “tiny dancer”

Happy holidays to everyone and enjoy every moment you have with your family! Moments like these seem to go in the blink of an eye!

…Bouncy Castle Birthday Party (with a little bit of “Cars 2 thrown in)

 

Well as you know, our little PJ Party Cakes turned 3 and being a working Mommy and busy all the time I kinda dropped the ball on her birthday party. I tried to do the “easy route” and plan a party at our local gymnastics club but it was all booked up. Soooooo….I bit the bullet and decided to throw her a little party at home with 12 little girls and boys!

I was able to get my hands on a Little Tikes Bouncy Castle and we inflated it our basement – this was perfect for a bunch of 2 to 5 year olds that are so hard to organize and tame to partake in any little games of “pin the tail on the donkey” or musical chairs – this way we could just let the rascals loose and have at ‘er!

My third little princess is more of a tom boy at heart and asked for a “Cars 2” birthday party – not just a “Cars” it had to be “Cars 2” Mommy. (my first two wanting NOTHING to do with anything other than Polly Pockets and babies and PINK had left me a little in the dark about how to go about doing this) Well thank goodness for Pinterest! I found these cute little cupcakes on there – mine don’t look as good as those ones but I was able to please a little 3 year old which is all that matters!

For the goody bags – I’ve been seeing DIY snow globes all over the place so I stuck with the “cars” theme and made little snowglobes for all the kids to take home.  These were so easy (and  super inexpensive) and it was so fun to see the kids light up when you handed them their very own to take home.

I also made each child a little bottlecap necklace! I was able to get the template from here (which I actually found through isharecrafts)– thank you so much to the Craft Nest for the template and tutorial – these were a hit! Specially when you can personalize each one, I remember as a child not having anything with my name on it because my parents decided to spell it a little differently so I love being able to give the kids something that is their very own!

 

I think it was a success and after they had all left it was only 6:30pm but felt like midnight! Mommy and Daddy had a couple of glasses of wine and went to bed!

Happy birthday to my beautiful sweet little Poppy Jean! Don’t grow up too fast.

The Wee one is growing up

Today at 8:36 am my baby girl turns another year older.  It’s hard to believe that 3 short years ago I was wheeled into the operating room to finally meet the little bump and find out if we were going to have another little girl or a baby boy to complete our family….

When they finally pulled her out we were so  happy to find out she was a healthy 6lb 10oz baby girl with all ten fingers and ten little toes!

I should have known with all the worries our Poppy caused me during my pregnancy that she was going to be a feisty one but I wouldn’t change a thing about her.  She’s our little angel who is full of spunk and is just the sweetest little girl a Mommy and Daddy could ever ask for!

It took us awhile to give her a name but when we finally thought of “Poppy” it just seemed perfect. She is named after my grampa and her great grampa “Poppy”.  He was in WWII so the fact that he was a war veteran and she was born so close to Remembrance Day, “Poppy” had even more significance.  Unfortunately, we lost our dear “Poppy” a few weeks ago – he made it to 99 years of age and though we will miss him terribly and his kind gentle heart and his silly sense of humour, we are comforted by the fact that he is finally at peace and with his sweetheart – our Nana.

We were able to visit with “Big Poppy” shortly before he passed away and had some special visits with him that will always remain dear to me. Just before I took this picture he had grabbed little Poppy’s hat from her and put it on, she still giggles about that when she talks about him. I’m so thankful we got to see him and that he was around to meet his 16th great grandchild and namesake.

Happy Birthday Poppy Jean – I hope you get everything your sweet little heart desires and have a wonderful birthday! We love you so much!

i heart faces Photo Challenge | Black

 

We had to have one of our beloved Douglas Fir trees taken down due to the Western Bud Worm epidemic we’ve experienced up here in the Interior of British Columbia.  But the girls and I got to watch it coming down – it was pretty cool and I even got it on video!

 

This photo was entered into the I heart faces Photo Challenge|black

 

Check out the video here:

Timber!!

Halloween KISS Costumes–PART 2 DIY Demon Boots

So when I set out to make the KISS costumes, I scoured the internet for ideas on how to make the Demon boots. I was unsuccessful in finding a DIY site that didn’t involve me having to make my own plastic molds! YIKES!
Here was my inspiration – I believe you can buy these HERE but I didn’t have the money to spend on the originals….

So here is what I came up with:

Take one pair of old rubber boots

Now here’s where I could have done something different in retrospect, applied something that the molding clay would adhere to, I just started to work the molding clay onto the boot and hoped for the best!

Once this was done I let it set, another thing I would have done different was use a clay that hardened! I don’t know how the hardening clay would have worked  but mine stayed soft.  Next step was to create the dragon scales. I used black foam paper and cut out semi-ovals – lots of them – about 5 sheets worth! It didn’t take as long as I thought but was a bit time consuming! Once they were done, I started to glue gun them onto the top of the rubber boot starting from the top and overlapping them working my way around to the bottom.

For the top portion, I took a big long sock and filled it with a couple of Lysol Wipe containers so it would stand up and then glue gunned the scales onto that as well. This worked out well cause it made the boots super easy for my daughter to walk in because the top part had a lot of flexibility.

Now the fun part! I spray painted the entire boot and scales with Krylon Metallic Silver spray paint. This is when I started to get giddy cause I could actually see the boots starting to resemble the KISS demon boots I was going for!

I then took some black craft paint and dry painted the middle of each of the scales to give some depth and then added some black paint to the dragon face as well. Then painted the eyes red and VOILA!





As an added precaution I mod podged over the molding clay cause I was worried about how it would hold. Unfortunately they didn’t last the night but she was able to wear them to school that day and I was happy with that – for trick or treating that night she just ended having the top part of the scales with some black boots – no dragon faces but you can’t win them all! I hope this helps someone and if you try the hardening molding clay let me know how it works for you!

 

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