Today marks 15 years since my dad unexpectedly passed away during the night from complications of pneumonia. I am still sad that I never got to say a final good-bye, but also relieved that he passed quickly and there was no prolonged suffering. We all knew he had extensive health issues, but I don’t think any of us were expecting to say good bye so soon.
About a month before Christmas I came across these behaviour sticker charts at Dollarama. I had actually looked over them on previous trips to the store, but after a week of trying behaviour from both my children I grabbed two out of desperation.
When doing my research for our Disneyland trip 2 years ago, it was hard not to become completely sidetracked by the pictures and reviews of all the amazing foods Disney has to offer in their parks. There are blogs dedicated solely to sharing the world of Disney eats and one could easily spend a large portion of their time in the parks hunting down and enjoying a variety of sweet and savoury treats plus fine dining meals.
I hope you all had a great Christmas! It is time for a New Year and a bit of a new focus on Dolled Up Design.
My lovely sister shared with me that, instead of a list of New Year’s resolutions, she was focusing on one word for the year: Believe. I loved this idea and In order to give myself some clear direction and motivation with my blogging this year, I decided to try and come up with a similar simple mantra to follow.
Somewhere between having 2 kids and becoming a stay at home mom, I became a coffee drinker. I managed to make it through 4 years of university without touching a cup of coffee, but the sleepless nights with newborns and long days with toddlers quickly turned it into my preferred form of caffeine.
Are you looking for a fun and imaginative gift for the young kids on your gift giving list? This Gingerbread Play-dough Cookie Making Kit is sure to spark creativity and add extra cheer this holiday season. It is quick and easy to put together with my printable labels and a bit of cooking to mix up the gingerbread scented dough.
Last year I posted my list of 15 Great Advent Calendars to Countdown to Christmas 2015 and I have some fun new additions available this year. My kids loved their Lego and Fisher Price Little People calendar’s last December and I am looking forward to seeing which one their auntie selects for them this year. Continue reading “14 MORE Great Advent Calendars – Christmas 2016”
Even though I knew I would be spending way too much time making our Pokémon themed pumpkins this week, I didn’t want my daughter to feel completely left out. When I saw a bag of tiny white pumpkins at the grocery store, I knew right away that they would make the perfect wheels for a quick and easy Cinderella Pumpkin Carriage.
We have carved our pumpkins a bit early this year thanks to a Pumpkin Carving contest at my son’s elementary school this week. Since I was tasked with running the contest, I knew I had to come up with something awesome for our submission.
What better place to go for ideas then your children? When I asked my 6 year old what kind of pumpkin he would like, he quickly suggested Pokémon as our theme. Since his favourite character is Eevee, it was no surprise when he asked that I recreate one in pumpkin. And you can’t have a Pokémon without a Pokeball so my husband also suggested we find some small pumpkins to transform into Pokeballs.
My Eevee was actually fairly simple to carve and create using 3 pumpkins. I found a great white pumpkin that I knew would work great as Eevee’s fur collar and found a smaller orange pumpkin to stack on top as his head. I then purchased an additional oval shaped pumpkin I could use to cut out his long pointy ears.
For the Pokeball’s, I found these great little round white pumpkins that I knew would work perfect with a bit of paint. I was intended to make the traditional red and white ball, but my son requested that I also make an Ultraball and a Masterball. Who knew there were so many different types?!
I made a template to carve out each of the pumpkins to look like the balls were opening up and a flash of light was coming out like in the show/game. I then painted their tops with acrylic paint and finished them off with a ring of black electrical tape and a black and white paper circle glued to the center. For the ultraball, I added yellow electrical tape for the stripes and used a pink sheet of foam and white duct tape for the finishing details on the Masterball. Since the pumpkins were already white, I was able to leave the bottom portions as is.
I think the finished pokeballs look awesome both on their own and lit up, and are the perfect complement to our Eevee.
I usually like to theme our Halloween pumpkins to the kids costumes, just like my Olaf and BB8 pumpkins from last year, but this year I really struggled to come up with anything to go with the kids Batman and Batgirl costumes. I was apprehensive when my son suggested Eevee and I was unable to find any inspiration online, but the actual carving of the face was pretty simple. I am happy with the final result and hopefully my pumpkin will help inspire the other Eevee fans out there!
I am not sure my carved pumpkins will survive until Halloween night, but we did end up winning the Halloween carving contest (I promise it wasn’t rigged). Watching my son race around the kitchen island in excitement after I tallied up the votes and told him we had won was enough to make it all worth spending my entire Wednesday evening carving and painting pumpkins!
Welcome to one of my latest crazy projects.
For our ice cream social this year, I decided to go with a Peanuts theme and wanted matching themed costumes to get a cute photo of my kids for the invitation. Since seeing the Peanuts Movie way back in the winter, I have had it in my mind that my son would make a great Charlie Brown and his blonde haired little sister would be the perfect Sally. Continue reading “Peanuts DIY Kids Costumes”
dolledupdesign.net 