Tinkerbell and Robin Hood Costumes

Halloween inspired a new sewing project. The kids wanted to go as Tinkerbell and Peter Pan. Hayden decided that the bow and arrows that Robin Hood carries were much more manly than the little knife or sword for Peter Pan.

Lucky for me, since the costumes were already made, the accessories were the only thing to swap out. Thanks to friend at work I was able to borrow arrowless arrows and a bow. I had the tube left over and added a rope with the hot glue gun to the top rim and drilled holes in the tube for the rope to slide through the bottom.

I did buy a pattern for the dress and shirt. I added a skirt made of tull and the rounded edges on Natalies front to look like the actual Tinkerbell. The wings came from Joann Fabric and were even green with sparkle.

Both costumes were a big hit!

Tinkerbell-Princess Birthday Cake

So this blog is a few months past due. Natalie had her 4th birthday at the end of September and I tried my hand at the doll cake. I used the Pampered Chef recipe and glass mixing bowl. This worked great because I could bake the cake in the glass bowl and it came out no problem. Here is the cake before I Tinkerbell was shoved down into the cake.

That is exactly what I did too. I took Tinkerbell (the doll of choice this year) and pushed her down in the middle.

I bought premade frositing for the skirt and added green food coloring to make it match the doll. Wax paper on the plate works well so that after I finished frosing and removed the paper the plate was perfectly clean. I also attempted for the first time using cake decorating tips. This was a ton of fun and I enjoyed trying various tips to make different designs. The frosting for this step I made from scratch so that it would be the perfect consistency and added blue and red food coloring until it was the right shade of purple. I did add some purple sparkles to the skirt too.
Natalie loves to have a theme for her parties. Where does she get that from? So this year's Tinkerbell, green and purple theme was a hit. The cake tasted great too. There was even extra cake for the next few days.

Fall Napkin Rings

Since Thanksgiving dinner was going to be held at my house this year, I decided to look for place card or napkin rings that I could make to add a little fall to the decor. I was tempted to put all the fall decorations away and get out Christmas stuff, but to my luck I came across a website that had felt leaf napkin rings. This was a ton of fun to make and didn't take very much time at all. The website with tutorial is http://www.merrimentdesign.com/.

The supplies I used were: green, yellow, and orange felt, scissors, thread in various fall colors, and ranom buttons.

Here is how it turned out:

I made enough for every place setting. The kids helped pick out buttons. Wrapped each one around four different styles of cloth napkins.

The other decoration that was used as centerpieces were glass vases filled with nuts, silk flowers and tied with a fall ribbon. So easy and so many compliments. Thanks mom for this one!

Here is what the table looked like all set for company.

Did I mention we had two yummy turkeys, sweet potatoes, stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce and lots of left overs to enjoy in the days since. Yummy!