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The day after Thanksgiving, we had a house guest arrive at our door. We found him peeking out of the window of Esther's doll house, and every day since then, he's been perching himself somewhere else to keep an eye on the kids for Santa.
His name is Buddy.
Have you been elfed?
My two oldest kids have to take turns having big birthday parties with lots of friends. That's what happens when your birthdays are two weeks apart, both smack-dab in the middle of the holiday rush.
This year, it was not Emma's turn. She had her big party last year. But on the actual day of her birthday, we invited all the local family over for cake and presents.
I asked her what kind of cake she'd like for the party, and she asked for cheesecake. So I made my way to Pinterest to see if I could find a good recipe.
I found 5.
Plain Cheesecake
Triple Chocolate Cheesecake from Woman's Day.
Red Velvet Cheesecake from MyRecipes.com
Chocolate Caramel Cheesecake
Recipe from Smitten Kitchen.
Cheesecake Stuffed Strawberries.
Recipe from The Sweets Life.
Seriously, is there a better theme for a party than cheesecake? I think not. Donnie says I went a little overboard with the food. Oops. Blame pinterest.
A couple notes about the cheesecakes:
Always place a pan on the oven shelf below the baking cheesecakes. All cheesecakes leak a little. Some leak a LOT. And some leak so much that your oven catches on fire, and you have to stop everything at 11 pm to take your oven apart and clean it. Hypothetically.
Second, you'll notice that I didn't include the recipe for the plain cheesecake. I actually made something called an Italian Cheesecake, which called for 1/2 ricotta cheese. Everyone said they liked all of them, but I think they were lying. The ricotta stayed kinda gritty. I would not make it again.
And lastly, if you make one of these cheesecakes, I suggest the triple chocolate. I don't know why it's only called a triple, because with the the topping and the chocolate cookie crust, there are actually FIVE layers of chocolate in this cake. This is the cake they'll serve in Heaven. It is AMAZING!
I can't believe I have an 8-year-old!
On my side of the family, between my parents, siblings, and their spouses and children, there are 17 of us. So, instead of worrying about gifts for all of them, we started drawing names. Since we only have one gift each to think about, we added the rule that it must be hand made.
Here's the beginning of my gift this year. A stack of thrifted, washed, men's shirts.
Ready to be cut into strips to create something like this...
Hmm... lots more to do before the reveal.
I surprised Emma by getting her out of school yesterday to go vote with me. I thought I'd have to talk the office ladies into letting me have her, but they seemed really excited and impressed that I would let her see how the process works.
While I've heard stories of crazy-long lines, and multi-hour waits, there were only a few voters at our location in the middle of the day, so we were in and out in a matter of minutes. I wanted to get a picture of Emma turning in my ballot, but they tend to frown upon things like cameras at polling stations.
Before going back to school, we took a quick detour to Starbucks, since they were giving away these cool bracelets. So patriotic.
I might have shared a sip or two of my coffee...
The caffeine and sugar only affected her a little bit. I'm sure her teachers could handle it.
I'll have to brainstorm to come up with some other school-office-approved-midday outings. I miss them so much when they are there all day!
After school, when Ethan found out I'd taken Emma on a field trip, he felt scandalized. I cheered him up with a project I had set up for them both.
I found a map online that was complete with electoral college points. During the election coverage, I gave Emma a red pencil, Ethan a blue, and set them to work keeping track of the votes as they became official.
This way they felt completely engrossed in the outcome of the election. They weren't able to stay awake for the end, but when they woke up this morning, they were both curious to hear what the result was.
I don't believe in involving children in the grown-up politics and emotions of the presidential election, so I didn't make any big deal about which side I was going for, but it was fun for them to feel connected to it, and get an art project in at the same time.
Next time I might have them add up the electoral votes while they color.
Here's a gift idea that might come in handy for someone in your own life. But I think I'd only use it for someone I really knew well.
My sister Abby and I were out shopping together, when one of us saw this book
Her birthday was coming up, so I made the mental note to go back and get it for her later. But when I did, I flipped through it and got totally jealous! I wanted to make some donuts, too!
So I decided to pick a recipe from her book, make it, and include the completed donuts with the gift. If you do this, be really really careful not to get ingredients on the gift-book. And like I said, save this for someone you know well. Not everyone would appreciate the fact that you used her gift before giving it to her!
I got the box from our local bakery and covered their logos with some stickers of my own. There was only room for 9 donuts in the box, so my family had to sample some of them. Oops.
Abby loved the book. She didn't seem mad at all that I had used it first. Or maybe she's just really good at hiding it...
Happy Birthday, Abby!
The theme: Monster's Inc
From left to right: Emma is the one-eyed, slithery-haired Celia; Ethan is Mike Wazowski; Esther is "Boo"; and I'm big, tubby, furry Sully.
Although I only took a week to make these costumes, I began gathering the supplies about a month in advance. Celia's dress is her key costume feature. I found a fun, scaly green fabric at Joann's, and traced around a dress that fit Emma nicely.
Her collar was next. We found a spool of tulle ribbon in the perfect color, gathered it up tight, and sewed it by hand to the neck of the dress.
For the hair, I braided Emma's real hair into lots of tiny french braids, and sprayed it purple with costume hair dye. I bought 5 snakes from the Walmart toy aisle ($1 each) and spray-painted them lilac. (A word of advice: get the right paint for the job. These were sticky, and kept leaving paint everywhere. I coated them with mod podge, which helped, but it would have been better to start with the right paint.) I painted googly eyes on the snakes, and since I really wanted them to have rattles, I glued popcorn kernels to some of their ends. I know that's a little over the top. Oh well.
The trickiest part of Emma's costume was the mask. But the solution turned out pretty simple. Cut a large eye shape from a piece of plastic canvas, glue on a felt eyelid and pupil, add some pipe-cleaner lashes, and tie on with a thin piece of elastic. Emma actually hated the mask, and only wore it for pictures, but it was fully functional--as in, she could see to walk. Her arms are covered in purple cut-off tights.
Ethan's costume was the most time-consuming, so I had to work on it throughout the entire week. We started with an exercise ball that looked like it would cover his bottom once he was inside it. It was my mom's ball, and I didn't want to ruin it, so I covered it completely in plastic wrap.
I marked where I wanted the holes to be--for his arms, head, and legs. Then I mixed up a thick solution of flour and water, and dipped in the newspaper strips to make paper mache. Each layer has to be completely dry, which can take 12-24 hours. I put it outside in our front yard to speed this up. The first night it got really cold, and the whole thing split into two pieces! Luckily, I was able to patch it up with more paper mache. I gave the sphere three coats in all, but it was still a tad bit thin at the end. I think 4 would have been perfect.
When the sphere was completely dry, I deflated the ball, and it came away from the costume perfectly. I spray painted the costume with white, and then bright green, about 4 coats in all. The eye is sticky-backed foam, and so are the teeth. I filled in the black with magic marker and painted in the blue eye.
For the rest of Ethan's costume, I found the hard hat at party city for really cheap, and it was already the right color. I printed out the logo and glued it on. His arms and legs are covered in green tights, and since he wanted to be in character from head to toe, I found him some green gloves for his hands, and spray painted a pair of Daddy's tube socks to pull over his shoes.
This was the most time-consuming costume, but it was so worth it! He was very proud, and all night we heard people call out, "Mike Wazowski!"
Esther's resemblance to the movie character was the whole reason wee chose Monster's Inc for the costume theme. On Halloween night, she did not disappoint! She must have posed for 50 pictures. But getting her there was no easy task. This was probably my most-hated costume to make thus far!
The body of the costume was a tube of lilac satin--the cheap costume stuff from Hobby Lobby. I sandwiched two layers of satin with a layer of quilt batting in between, and then sewed the quilted stripes across the body.
For the head opening, I used an embroidery hoop at the top of the body and the bottom of the "hat". Speaking of the hat, I have no idea what to tell you about how to make that work. It didn't. But once I made it look mostly right, I added the mop for the hair, the styrofoam-ball eyes, and some craft foam for the teeth (left over from Ethan's costume.) The eyeballs were painted with craft paint. Everything was sewn or hot-glued on.
For the flippers, I found some scaly-looking fabric, sewed it into a flipper-type tube, and hot glued them to the sides of the body.
Underneath the costume, Esther was wearing Boo's other outfit--a pink shirt, some leggings, and socks.
I cannot express to you how much Esther hated wearing this costume. It was difficult to get on and off, the hat either covered her eyes, or fell back so that the top of her costume was pulled up over her face. This was not my best moment in costume design, but for one night, it was worth it. She looked so cute!
The last costume is mine, Sully Monster. I started with 5 yards of blue fleece, a yard of white fuzzy faux fur, and some felt. I used McCall's Pattern 8953, and switched between the kangaroo body and the lion head.
Since the only fur I could find was white, I had to get a little creative. I bought a package of polyester dye, and a can of fabric spray paint. They both worked beautifully.
I will definitely be keeping these two products in mind for future projects.
My costume was not the most recognizable, but it was fun to get into. And with my little entourage, most people knew where I fit in. I considered painting my whole face, but to avoid scaring Esther, I only painted my nose. And then added a little extra fur to my eyebrows with spirit gum.
So, what do you think? What did you all do for Halloween?
If I left any details out, feel free to ask questions in the comments!
XO, Anna
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