Crafting A Bow-tique

Today was a very busy day for party prep. I started with the butterfly bow mobile. It was easy enough to print and assemble based on their instructions. I made two of them. I used fishing line to sting them so they'd look like they were flying. I added hot pink, white and purple curling ribbon at each end for an embellishment.

Once I was happy with those (thanks Disney for making them so simple!) I moved on to paper bows. Click the link above and print her template. If you're using them for Minnie Mouse bows you don't need the ribbon part. I made both sizes of bow so I could embellish signs and goody bogs, etc.

Now after the tedium of tracing and cutting a few dozen bows it was time to glue and embellish. Make sure you add your decorations to the outside of your bow. If you do glue sequins or any other 3D element I recommend folding and then unfolding your bow so you can see where the creases are. Some of my ill-placed glitz popped right off.

Then fold them up. Bring each end to the middle. I used tacky glue. It worked best when I used a small dot, spread it into a thin layer with my finger and the dipped the top layer into the glue puddle before pressing and holding them firmly together. Mike cut a kitchen skewer down the middle so I could hold many bows firmly in the center at once.

Here's the bowtique's paper inventory.

Stay Tuned: Tomorrow goody bags, signs and other miscellaneous decor.

Potty Party

Toilet paper streamers? Must be a potty party. Unlike most of the "potty parties" I found online we were not trying to potty train a group kids. We were celebrating the successful completion of potty training with a group of kids. The last of the big girls achieved the milestone recently and it felt momentous so we threw something together.

Toilet paper streamers, a potty party banner, a "we did it" sign, panties as prizes and cookies on marshmallows to look like potties.

I baked large sugar cookies for them to decorate. They used food coloring markers and chocolate chips to make them pretty. Then Mrs. D. put small chocolate chip cookies on top of large marshmallows to look like potties. The girls danced some of the sugar off to Laurie Bernker's Party Day video. After that we played games for prizes which included pretty new panties. Also in the "booty" they received were small bottles of nail polish so spontaneous manicures broke out at the end. Goodbye diapers don't let the door hit ya on the way out!

(Note the coffee, this has been a busy week.)

Meet the Teachers

Normally, one of four local libraries has Lego Mania on Wednesday afternoons, but today was the fifth Wednesday so the our library had a puppet show. Now, there are two kinds of puppet shows at the library: 1)The ones based on books (ex: Rainbow Fish) and 2)The original pro-library puppet shows the staff makes up. This one was the latter, it was called The Princess and the Pirate. Three guesses what the "treasure" was. It was cute, but it could've used a bit more action. The puppets looked great though. My kids certainly enjoyed themselves.

I did very much enjoy the pop-up book they read before the show. It was The Castaway Pirates. Mike is especially a fan of a well illustrated pop-up book and I appreciated that this one has lots of action. It's on my list of things to get Miss Roo for Christmas. Speaking of books, Isaac has finally grown into some of the books we gave him two summers ago. He just finished Uncle Albert and the Quantum Quest and really enjoyed it.

As it turns out he was the only student in his grade to complete his summer reading list. They even featured this tidbit on the morning announcements last week. Exciting stuff. For those of you who don't remember he only completed 4 battle books all school year last year so this was a dramatic improvement. This evening we went to open house to meet Isaac's teachers.

Mrs P. is his homeroom teacher, she does language arts. He has Mrs. S. for math and science. I liked them they had clearly both been teaching a long time. They were very grounded and seemed pretty unflappable. This was a huge relief to me since some newer younger teachers have been overwhelmed by Isaac in the past for various reasons. I could tell things would be handled in a swift and effective manner in their classrooms. That being said neither seems excessively stern of cold in the least.

Mrs. P's got Isaac's number and it's only week two. She said "He's VERY curious about many, many things. He's a sweet boy, but he gets his heart set on something and if it doesn't happen ..(she make a hand gesture and sound effect to represent a rapid deflation)". Um, yup. Captain Entitled, that's him. If you point out how his bratty behavior is negatively impacting others he usually reigns it in though. Isaac tested his teacher that very afternoon. Do your kids always act up before open house and conferences too? Every time. Anyway, she handled it the way I would have. No warnings or coddling just an appropriate set of consequences and move on.

I hope he has as much fun in fourth grade as I remember having. It's good to be one of the "big kids". Fingers crossed all our work this summer paid off.

Happy Dancey Girl

On the "hurricane that wasn't" day:

The cuteness overwhelms sometimes.

Ok, so that was yesterday. Today was library day! Music time is over now that school's back in session so it was story time. Not to worry they bookend the storytelling with songs though. I goofed and arrived early and barged in on the baby program, but it worked out because we got to "Shake our Sillies Out".

For the the big kids it was farm day today. Riley danced it up! We read Mrs. Wishy Washy while we were waiting for the program to start, but they didn't have any copies for check out, sigh. No worries, I requested it (on my phone!).

Spin around and fall down. Do it again. Seriously though they were doing "Shake Your Body Down", which is a great workout by the way. After that, believe it or not, they settled down for stories. The first one was my favorite, Cock-a-Doodle, Quack Quack. It's about a baby rooster trying to figure out which sound would wake everyone up on the farm. Total crowd pleaser. The other two were pretty lame. She should have listened to me about Mrs. Wishy Washy.

They played some participation games after that. She seems so old when she marches up to put her farmer on the board or calls out the correct number of kitties! She was just sitting up when we started coming to the library for story time, sniff.

After that they danced one more time. It's a wonder she had any dance left in her for dance class.

But she did!

Caption This: Toys Edition

You know you've got one! Let's hear your captions. Anonymous comments happily accepted. It's quite a party in there...

Circus Baby Shower Details

For the detailed post explaining all our fabulous decor, food and entertainment: Big Top Baby Shower

Guest of honor rocking her "Mom-to-be" top hat

Welcome table with vintage circus alphabet guest book

DIY party hat and polka dot bucket of antique ice cream scoops

Close up on our big top.

DIY baby's name banner

DIY pink and gray popcorn boxes and fresh popped popcorn

Sundae Bar! Pickles & Ice Cream!

Cotton Candy!

It wouldn't be a circus without cotton candy

Oh, Yeah she's been to the circus