Mom's Taxi Service

So, okay. It is Monday and I have already done 4 trips of pick-ups and drop-offs today. Baby Indigo is such a good sport getting in and out of her carseat, whiuch she usually doesn't like.
Here's what the Mom taxi is...drop off kids at Odea Core Knowledge at 8:30. Pick up Madi Belle from kindergarten at 1:30 at Odea. Go back to Odea at 3:23 to pick up boys. Take Jack to football practice at 5pm and pick him up at 6:30 and dinner on the table by 7pm.
Tomorrow and every Tuesday, I have to somehow get Jack to football practice at 5 AND Madi to soccer practice at 5 at different parks. And I just volunteered to be the fundraiser coordinator for Jack's football team so I will have a meeting for that at 7pm tomorrow. Madness!!! And I also just volunteered to be Odea's Odyssey of the Mind coordinator. It's going to fun, but busy busy! And did I mention that Indigo is breastfeeding like every 20 minutes this week? :)

The Rapunzel Tangled Party

Well, the night before the party, I was super busy getting everything ready. So glad my Mom was in town for the occassion and  she helped with braiding the hair (yarn) for our little Rapunzels.This took a very "long" time!  Every girl (or boy if they wanted)was going to get a long braid to wear in their hair!

The night before, I got all the food and the things I needed to assemble the cake. No Rapunzel party would be complete without a cake tower! I'm not much of a cake decorator, but the cake was relatively easy! I bought a cake dowel and a stryrofoam round for the base. The morning of the party, I loaded glazed donuts and a blueberry muffin for the tower and a waffle cone with purple frosting for the top. Then I decorated with green icing the vines and grass around the tower. Then I made cupcakes and added flowers to decorate around the tower. No sweat!

And here again is a pic of our decorations I hung by our door, so they wouldn't get "tangled"

What's that tower you see? Well at Target the day before the party, my Mom and I found a regular princess castle pinata on clearance for only $5. It was a castle with 3 towers on it. So I cut off the outer 2 towers and created a Rapunzel tower. I covered it in butcher paper, spray painted it gold and added Madi's Rapunzel doll and a few extra touches to resemble her tower.

So the day of the party, which was at the park near our home. The food we served was baguettes and cheese because that's what Rapunzel and Eugene ate when they were at the kingdom on Rapunzel's birthday.

We found some "wanted Dead or Alive: Flynn Rider" posters online and Ezrah posted them on the trees, just like they were throughout the forest in the movie.

All the kids had a faboulous time and it was truly a great party! Madi my sweetie, totally loved every second of her Rapunzel party! At the end of the party, we did the lantern send off and it was amazing! All the kids...and adults too...were amazed! Of course, by that time I was so busy I forgot to get a picture of it! Oh and here's a quick picture of Madi's favorite present and the girls showing off their Rapunzel hair! It's so much fun having such a girly girl!

Getting Tangled Up in Preparation

Okay, so I have 1 Rapunzel sun banner done. Boy am I glad I am the anti-procrastinator because these are taking forever! Jack showed some interest last night in cutting out some sun medallions so I put him to work! I stopped at Michaels on Sunday and got a few more supplies. We decided on paints for the party favor and I'm going to take off the packaging and add lables that say "Rapunzel Paints". I mean, Rapunzel had got pretty skilled at painting after being locked in a tower for 18 years!

So today I will be working on the banners. After seeing the movie, Madi saw that when Rapunzel and Eugene were at the kingdom there were also these garland with flowers hanging up and she said she wanted that too. So I grabbed some garland out from our Christmas decoration box and tied fake flowers onto to them, which I bought at the Dollar Store. So here's our decorations...

I got yellow yarn and I'm going to start braiding for hair extensions for the girls. I ordered the "floating lights" and am so excited for the kids to see those. That's goingt o be the highlight. Still no work on the tower cake, but my mind is racing with ideas. I'm picking my Mom up at the airport tomorrow night. I hope when she gets here she will be excited to help with the preparations. And she has got to see the movie Tangled when she gets here! She's super creative, so maybe she'll have some more ideas after she sees the movie!
Oh gosh, i have a poopy diaper to change...

countown to school

Jeez, feeling like a lot's going on. We've got school on 11 more days, Madi's birthday in 11 days, The amazing Rapunzel party in 9 days, my mom coming for a visit in 6 days. Being the anti-procrastinator that I am, all the school supply shopping is done, so that worry has left my brain. I actually had a dream, well more like a nightmare that I was school supply shopping and everything was sold out. God, the things Moms dream of!

All was bought so no worries. And I did a massive couping excursion for the school supplies at Target too. So much that the lady in line behind me said, "Wow, that is amazing - i need to start couponing."It totally gave me a high to save $62.43 on school supplies and everything else I bought that day. God, the things Moms get "high" on!

So I just wrote my To-Do list so I can get a visual on all the things I'm making for the Rapunzel Party. I've got a lot to do. I was thinking that a lantern send-off at the end of the party would be absolutely killer! Remember in the movie, that was Rapunzel's dream...to see the flying lights. That was one of the climaxes of the movie; how could we not do a lantern send-off??? It just wouldn't be a Rapunzel party without one. More later, have to get to the baby! Who, by the way only woke up twice during the night the past 2 days!!!! is there an end in sight to the constant nighttime wakings? Possibly, but I'm not getting my hopes up for it to be over anytime soon.

Rapunzel, Let Down Your Hair!

Since the movie, Tangled came out, my my daughter Madi and I just fell in love with this movie. So, consequently, Madi knew she wanted a Rapunzel theme for her 5th birthday party. So now that it's 2 weeks away, it's time to start the invitations. No, the Rapunzel invitation at Target will just not do and niether would an Evite. Evites have gotten so popular, but how fun is it for a 5-year-old (or anyone really)to actually receive a beautiful invitation in the mail with their name addressed on it? It's fun. It is.

So, I did some internet searching and have been inspired with some great ideas; some incorporated the rapunzel's tower, some a frying pan, but all with the signature Rapunzel: her golden long hair.  Well, our invite includes long hair (golden yellow embriodary string) and a lot, I mean A LOT of braiding! I used 12 strands of golden string for each invite and braided for hours.

 I even managed to do a few nursing sessions with Indigo WHILE braiding -talk about multi-tasking! I figured this would be a great opportunity to teach Madi to braid, but she' more interested in glueing and drawing princesses. I wanted to include her in making the invites, but also wanted them to be amazing. Tough one. So, she was in charge of cutting the purple ribbon for Raunzel's hair and drawing princesses on the envelopes.

The invite idea is a window with Rapunzel's hair coming down. "Rapunzel, Let down your hair!" is just about the most famous line of Rapunzel's. I tried at first to do a cut-out square on the top, but my square puncher was just too big and it didn't really look like a window; just a big square hole. I knew I needed something smaller, so I transformed a "house" puncher to look like a window and ended up not doing a "hole" window, but making black cardstock to look like the window, punch a small hole in it and put the braid through that so it looked like it was coming out of the window.

 i hot glued that down to the card and there it is! After a few were made, my son thought it didn't look like a window, so I added "shutters" to the last ones.  So here's the finished invitation.

To make this invitation, you will need:

lavender cardstock 4.5 X 6.5

black or brown cardstock
yellow or golden embroidary string
purple ribbon

glue gun

tape

• Print or write with fun pen your text first. Leave some space on top & try to get it aligned to the right, so you will have room for the braid to come down without interfering with the text. We used "High Tower" font, not that anyone will know the font, but I thought it was significant.
• For each braid, cut 12 pieces about 10 inches long. Tie the top together and tape it to something so it's taut enough to braid or if you have a patient little birthday girl, have her hold the end as you braid. (we tried that but she got bored haf way through the first braid!)
• Separate into 3 strands of 4 strings each. You can use more if you want a thicker braid.
• Braid away!
• I tied of the end with itself, so it would stay put. Then tie it off with a small piece of purple ribbon. Cut the end even.
• Cut out your window with the black or brown using a square puncher. or if you want to just cut a square through the invite itself, you can make a cool window that way too.
• Punch a small hole in the window, put the top of the braid through and hot glue it down to the top of the invite. I also put a small dot of hot glue to bring the hair a little to the right to avoid the text and have it fall nicely.
• I added shutters to mine, per request of my 10-year-old son, by using some brown cardstock I had from a previous project. I drew with a pencil on it a small brick effect. cut them by hand to make it look like shutters and hot glued those down on either side of the window.

There you have it!