Frozen party!

Back in January, my mom was asking what she could get the kids for their birthdays.  And I told her that I didn't really know for Kaitlyn as much- but I already knew my "Let it Go" obsessed toddler would really love the movie for her birthday.  And so my awesome mom put it on pre-order for her.

When their cousins heard that we were getting it, they all said that they wanted to see it to.  And "you should come over and see it at our house!"  turned into "we'll make a movie premiere party out of it!"  turned into "maybe we'll just call this Jasmine's birthday party, despite being two weeks after the fact".  Since another cousin has a birthday in a few days, we made it a joint effort.

Now, normally I am the type of person that rolls my eyes at "Pinterest parties".  Seriously, some moms spend hundreds of hours and hundreds of dollars, and the practical stick-in-the-mud part of me says "bah, humbug, what a waste".  But I found a printable pack that was really cute, and lots of cute ideas online, and figured I might as well try some of them out.

And it was such a huge hit!  I couldn't believe how much the kids loved the little touches, like the "snowball" cake pops or the "ice cube" Jell-O jigglers.  Apparently the lady with "melted Olaf the snowman" labels for her water bottles wasn't that crazy after all.

This was one of my favorites.  I took the cute cupcake toppers and put "Happy Birthday Jasmine and Mollie!" on the other side with pictures of them.  They aren't all that professional looking, scotch taped to a toothpick, but everybody thought they were pretty cool.

Including our birthday girl, who still hasn't gotten the hang of blowing out candles yet.

Lucky for her, there were a lot of kids to help her out.

Kaitlyn helped me cut up a couple of the dollar store tablecloths to make the backdrop and doorway "icicles".  The funny thing is, I didn't even call it that- the kids named our basement "the icicle room" and loved going up and down the stairs through the fringe.

Kaitlyn cut out the little circles for the banner, and Tyler strung them together along with the snowflake that Kaitlyn and I made.  That is another reason it was worth it to have some fun with this party- it was a fun thing for us to do together.  The kids love helping, and if we learn pattern and cutting and sewing skills along the way, all the better.  We had pizza, veggies and cupcakes upstairs, but down here I had a stash of snacks that they could fill their little baggies with to munch on while they ate.

Tyler loved that bag.  He was so proud that "there are two Olafs! And it says Tyler!" once he got his name on an Olaf bag to match his Olaf shirt.  And then he filled that thing with a ton of blue marshmallows, chocolate candies, and blue cookies.

Christopher was worried the kids would all just go crazy and no one would be able to heard the movie, but I gotta tell you it was a very attentive audience down there.

Jasmine does love her Frozen!

Elsa's dress

I finished this a week or so ago, but I waited until I got snow pictures to post them up here.  Kaitlyn finally got her Elsa dress!

It has been a fun ride getting here.  First I saw a pattern that some people altered, but our Jo-Anns were out.  Then I saw someone online that needed pattern testers.  And my mom found the pattern and sent it to me about the time the blogger said she would love to have me as a pattern tester.  From no patterns to two in one day.  And then one and then a second friend wanted to sew along with me and make dresses for their daughters.  And then the blogger got delayed getting the pattern to me, so after all that I ended up just drafting my own pattern after all.

Whew.

I learned a few things making this dress.  Well, I always do.  This time, I learned about sequin fabric.  I had two options I took up to the cut counter that day- one was a stretchy, sort of sparkly thing, and the other was this gorgeous sequin fabric.  I was going to go with the more practical one, but the guy there talked me into the sequins.  They were just to awesome to pass up!  And when you are making things for little girls, you can never have too much sparkle.

What I learned is that in order to sew sequin fabric, you have to cut all of the sequins off of the seam allowance, one by one.  Arg.  It was worth it in the end, but only for very special occasions.

My favorite part of the dress is the cape.  I made a template out of wrapping paper with snowflakes taped on, laid the sheer fabric on top, and Kaitlyn and I traced it out with fabric paint.

Kaitlyn loved having the ownership that she helped make her costume, which is absolutely worth any imperfections in her painting skills.

As a total bonus, my mom sent me a pack of 50 or so snowflake buttons about three years ago.  Jackpot!  I love how they pop against the blue fabric to hold up the cape.

The hilarious part is that I bought my fabric when it was just going to be two dresses- but I didn't have a pattern yet.  So I guessed how much I would need.  Once I cut out mine and part of hers, I saw that we had plenty for the second friend to join us two.  And now that we have about 2.75 of the 3 dresses done, it turns out we have enough to make one more dress.  So I did something I didn't think I would do- I sold it on Etsy!  I'm going to start working on that dress tomorrow, and then ship it out.  I normally would never try to sell things I sew, because I just can't compete with labor prices in China.  But the Elsa costume is sold out across the country at this point.  Disney stores here say it will be 3-6 weeks.  So there is a demand for costumes on Etsy at the moment.

I don't think I will make many more (you would think 4 would be enough), because honestly the reason I sew is right there.  I love seeing their happy little faces light up as they dance around in them.  Kaitlyn has been thrilled to wear hers as often as she can, and that makes it all worth it.

In fact, one day Jasmine desperately wanted the expensive Anna doll at Target, so I went home and made an Anna dress for a doll kicking around the house.  It was just the scraps from Jasmine's costume, which means it was free and matches her perfectly.  Making costumes for the entire family AND the dolly is probably a sign I need to back away from the sewing machine, but that just isn't going to happen any time soon.  I'm an addict at this point.

Forgotten pictures

It turns out that I have a lot of pictures that never made it on here.  Huh.  I was cleaning off my SD cards today, and had to check the blog to notice that a lot of things never ended up here.

This one is a funny story.  Christopher told me that he had a craving for a corn dog, and since we had hot dogs and corn meal I told him I would try making them.  And he looked at me like I was insane.  "You don't make corn dogs.  You BUY them."  Well, now it was a challenge.

Which I failed.

The people on Pinterest made it look so easy!  My batter just ran away from the hot dog as soon as it hit the oil, and it just made a crispy, greasy mess.

We now have a box of store-bought corn dogs in our freezer.

We've been heading to the cabin when we can, but that hasn't been terribly often.  I'm just glad we have the Argo this year.  This winter has been relatively mild, but even in nice weather, it was a chore to shuttle our family of 5 up to the cabin on snowmobiles.  Now we just pile from the car into the Argo, with all of our gear on the roof.  No problemo.

The melting and freezing of snow is actually fun to see sometimes.  Our driveway was covered in this- diagonal ice shards reaching outward.  Pretty cool.

This last weekend was still very snowy . . . in some areas.  The roads were still too slushy to drive on.  Half of our lawn was grass, and the other half was three feet deep.  Christopher took his shirt off and leaned back in his lawn chair to enjoy the sun while the kids played in the snow, but I'll spare you all that picture.

I think by the time we get to go up again, we'll be able to drive there.

Let's see, more pictures. . .

Ohh, and this was my favorite steal!  I have always wanted a cool leather jacket to ride on the motorcycle with, but never wanted to spend the money.  And I scored this one at the thrift store for $3!  Made my week.

For Christmas, my brother got our kids these butterfly and dinosaur cutouts for their new rooms.  So we put them in old T-shirts and let them paint them to their heart's content (since we only gave them the room colors, we figured it couldn't be too bad.)  Jasmine LOVED smooshing the paint around for as long as we would let her.

I just love the paint on her happy little toes.

Oh, and speaking of that funny girl, we keep catching her asleep in the most random places.  It was worse when she first moved into her room, since she didn't like staying in her toddler bed for whatever reason.  Every day she would pick a new spot on the carpet to nap on.

One morning Kaitlyn woke up to find her sister asleep under her bed.

Another day, she fell asleep on the carpet less than five minutes before the babysitter arrived for the evening.

One day I found her in her bed, but she dozed off in the process of spreading the wipes all over her room.  I took this picture, and then filled up an entire gallon ziploc with her efforts.

And this picture takes the cake.  One day she wandered off from where Daddy was playing with the kids in the basement.  He went to check on her and found this.  Apparently she climbed the stools to get to the Oreos, but she can't get down from the stools by herself so . . . she dozed off in her spot.  I am so amazed she didn't fall.

For Valentines' day this year, Kaitlyn needed to make a box for homework.  She had an old shoebox her princess shoes came in, so she cut a hole in the top and wanted to call it good.  The practical part of me said that was all we needed to do!  But then I remembered Crazy hair day.  She was excited to just frizz her hair into a little curly afro and call it good, and when I took her to school she saw all the kids who went WAY over the top.  One girl even turned her hair into a flower pot, complete with sprayed colors and everything.

That, and her teacher's note said that she hoped the Valentines box would be a project families could work on together.  "You could make it out of fabric, buttons, paper, paint . . .", her list went on for nearly a paragraph.

So Kaitlyn and I made a castle out of an Amazon box and some felt.  Not bad.  She even let me braid her hair into a heart.

And last but not least, I cleared off the iPhone pictures.

Everyone was so impressed at our ward dance that Christopher's tie matched my dress.  Since he had it since high school, it was just a coincidence!

And this picture is from the Blue and Gold dinner.  Tyler is still loving scouts!  It is a good challenge for him to keep up with the boys his age.  And he has awesome leaders, so I know he is in good hands.

Whew!  I think I got everything cleared out!

Jasmine is 2!

Jasmine will one day get very sick of us telling her that she could have had a unique birthday for Leap Day, but that she rejected it to have a boring, regular day.  In the meantime, it always makes me laugh.  Some people thought Leap Day would be a cruel birthday, but in my mind, you don't usually celebrate your birthday on the actual day anyway.  It often ends up being the next available day, or weekend, or whatever.

And this year, Jasmine's party is postponed until her gift from Grandma arrives.  Grandma and Grandpa Jones already ordered the Frozen movie to arrive at our house as soon as it comes out.  That quickly turned into a party with the cousins that were also excited to see the movie, and we figured that might as well be her birthday party.  It is almost three weeks after her birthday, but she's too young to know what a birthday is anyway.

So for her actual birthday, she unwrapped one present when no one was looking (ahh, that girl), and she got her finished Anna costume!

I made the costume a bit big.  After all, I'm hoping they will still fit for Halloween.  But hopefully everything isn't too baggy in the meantime.

By far, the best part of this costume is the embroidery.  Most people making this costume have stenciled the designs on, but lucky for me, one of my awesome friends has an embroidery machine that she inherited.  I can't get over how beautiful the colors look on the black vest!  In fact, I did some google searching about this costume.  The characters in this movie are wearing bunad, which is the traditional dress in Norway.  And up until 20 or so years ago, ALL embroidery was done by hand, covering the vest and bottom of the skirt.  Even now, a machine embroidered version is considered the cheap option (since all that hand embroidery makes the dresses about $2,000 or so, according to my other friend who grew up there).  Bunads are gorgeous!  And I sorta want one.  For . . . no reason, since I have no where to wear it.

But I digress.

My friend was kind enough to let me camp out at her house for a day and a half as we figured out the machine a bit together.  (First the bobbin ran out, then we had the wrong bobbin thread, then the needle was dull . . . typical sewing day, it seems!)  We decided to use some of the flower designs she had already on her machine rather than try to match the original, simply because we weren't sure they would be the right size.  So the end result isn't a perfect match, but it sure is awesome.

I have even convinced her that the cape isn't her enemy.

Convincing her to look at the camera is always another story.  I'll take more pictures once Kaitlyn's costume is done, but these will do for now.

Jasmine's birthday snapshot:

*Nothing gets between this girl and her food, still.  She wakes me up at 6:30am and asks for "sawa", cheering me on through putting my glasses and robe on so I can trudge down and get her cereal.  And then she often asks for some toast, or a cheese stick.  And then when the kids get up at 8, she has to have more cereal with them.  Annnd maybe eggs with Daddy after he comes down.  She is a sweet, happy camper when she is well fed, but if you skipped any food she will follow you around and ask "snack?  SNACK?" until she gets fruit snacks.  She often eats more than Kaitlyn does, and she has nearly finished off a pack of blueberries in one sitting more than once.

* Most people can't understand anything she says, but I spend enough time with her that I can tell the babbling is actually almost all an attempt at English now.  Daddy says that "I hear Jasmine say nonsense, but then I hear Mommy repeat back something perfectly normal.  How do you do that?"  She is very good at saying "dank u!" now every time we give her something.  And Daddy is very proud that she asks everyone who sneezes "you kay?"  (Christopher has always asked me if I'm okay after I sneeze ever since he heard the story of the time I sneezed and landed in an ambulance.) She calls her siblings "Ty-la" and "Tay-ya", but I still haven't figured out what she calls herself.  Actually, she kinda thinks her name is Baby.  We should probably stop calling her that soon.  Oh, and every time we get in the car ("tuck") she asks to go to "Dampa?" (Grandma's) house.  She's pretty sure the car should only take her to Grandma Skarda's house, and the phone is only for talking to Grandma Jones.

*She is still totally convinced that if she can't see us, then we can't see her.  She ran away from me in the yard the other day, and when I caught up to her she was tucked into a ball on the grass with her face down.  She was pretty sure she was invisible.  I wish I had been able to take a picture.

*Just like her big sister, she didn't tolerate hugs or snuggles for the first couple of years of her life.  But she has started to let me rock her to sleep sometimes.  And I sorta love it. :)  She is a Momma's girl, which came from being so addicted to food back when I was the only source of it.

*Most of all, she is our spunky / sweetie.  When she is happy, she is the most adorable little girl who loves to give us kisses and giggles.  And when things aren't going the way she wants them to while she is tired or hungry, people in a half block radius can hear about it!  We're working on that, and it really has improved a lot now that she has words to express herself.  In the meantime, I just soak up all of the happy Jasmine time that I can.