After Halloween last year, I bought some spiderwebs in the clearance area at Superstore, and miracle of all miracles, I actually remembered I had it! Last night, I thought it would be fun to decorate the house with the kids, so we got to work creating monster window decorations, while Matt had a night out building something with one of his friends.I stole the idea from a friend of mine, Niki.
We used sheets of black poster board (which happened to fit in our windows perfectly!) and tissue paper from my wrapping/gift bag stash. The poster board was 2/$1 at the dollar store, so the total cost was $4.50.
We had a blast doing it. The kids kept pretending the hanging monster with the arms was going to grab them, and they'd squeal and run away. Too cute! They were especially happy that I let them stay up late to see how they looked from outside after dark.
Since I last posted, we had Miss A's 5th birthday. She wanted to have a makeover party, so we invited a few of her friends from school and had a great time. Here's her invitation:
Seven little girls showed up. The thought crossed my mind to invite all the girls in her class, but I decided that I'd probably go insane, especially if parents came and brought younger siblings... my house is not very big!
I couldn't really think of any traditional games that had anything to do with makeovers for the girls, but I came up with a few weird things that went over pretty well. First I put a dollop of Vaseline on the girls nose and they had to get cotton balls to stick to them. Miss A refused to do that one because she hates being dirty, and Vaseline is sticky. She is definitely Matt's daughter. I found these super long straws at the dollar store. I put a bowl full of water and dish soap inside a big plastic bin, the girls had to blow the straws until they filled the whole bin with bubbles. Then, I had a few balloons and the girls had to use a hair dryer to blow the balloons into a laundry basket tipped on its side. The bubbles was by far the most popular of the games.
My wonderful stylist friend Jen agreed to stay at the party to help me with the hair and nails. We put hair bling in the girls hair, as you can almost see in the photo of Miss A, and painted their nails. We also stuck a little jewel to most of their nails, but those didn't last too long. I was happy that the kids managed to keep their hands glued to the table until their nails were dry, for the most part, and I didn't have to deal with any nasty nail polish mishaps. I'm grateful for those cheap plastic tablecloths.
The cake was a sad story. I stayed up until 4:30am and the fondant was a nightmare. My first batch had to be thrown out at 11:30pm, due to the paddles on my Bosch mixer exploding into shards through the fondant. My poor Bosch. I went ahead and made my second batch. For some reason, that batch never got to the right consistency probably due to an overtired-not-thinking-straight error on my part. Overall, it was a heartbreaking mess. Finally at about 4am, I decided I gave up and threw the ugly, bumpy, crumbly fondant on the cake and called it a night. It was supposed to look like a bottle of nail polish. Not one of my best cakes, that's for sure. Oh well, at least I tried.
We were able to go to Saskatchewan for Thanksgiving and also for my great grandma Dorothy Palmer's 100th Birthday party. Her birthday isn't until next month, but you don't want to put off a party for this occasion too long. It was nice to be able to go and see her, though she doesn't remember us anymore due to Alzheimer's. Almost all of her descendents were able to be there.
Great grandma Dorothy lived a block down the street from me when I was growing up. I can remember watching the ants on the peonies that lined the front of her home. I used to push our lawn mower to her house to mow the grass for her. I always remember her front room had bright red carpet and all sorts of trinkets that we weren't allowed to touch. She's a hard worker. She still washed her own floors (probably on her hands and knees) when she was 90. Grandma Dorothy hated wastefulness, and has a sweet tooth like no other. She had a tin foil collection in a drawer in the kitchen. Before the Alzheimer's struck, she had a great memory for peoples names and birthdays and who they married. I didn't inherit that trait, but my grandma sure did. Grandma Dorothy is a great woman whose legacy will last long beyond her time here. She only has one daughter, 5 grandchildren, 16 great-grandchildren, I think there are 23 great-great grandkids (my kids fit here), and I know there are some great-great-great grandchildren now too.
Thanks for everything, Great Grandma Dorothy! We love you!
