I was excited to take my nieces to a “Something on Ice” show and thought back to when my dad took me to some “Fairy on Ice” thing when I was a kid. Then I remembered the stupid fairy flashlight I begged him to buy me because all the kids had something that glowed in the dark. That stupid flashlight was probably $10! In 1990!
Plan ahead and bring your souvenirs!
The party store had cheap glow-in-the-dark rings, toys and jewelry and the girls were thrilled! They gave out extras to other little girls sitting nearby.
Last year, I took Dakota to a dinosaur show (Jacquelyn was too scared to go with us) and I brought a dinosaur coloring book, dinosaur stickers, a toy dinosaur and dinosaur “eggs” (candies) for her during the show. I gave her dinosaur pajamas (that were way too big for her!) after the show to sleep in. Everything was at Target, and the toy dinosaur was exactly the same one they were hawking at the show (but $9 less!).
With a little pre-planning, you can avoid the begging, pleading and tears over show junk. Here are some ideas for items you can bring with you to shows, zoos, and amusement parks:
- toys
- coloring books and crayons
- candy
- shirts or slippers
- glow-in-the-dark stuff
- stickers
- hair accessories
- hats
Also, if you’re taking a little girl to Disneyland, you should be aware that the trend is to dress up as a princess. There are even little beauty parlors in the park that will do hair and make-up! My sisters arrive at the park prepared with princess dresses from Target and save a bundle over buying dresses in the park.
Whew – that weekend went fast! I can’t believe it’s Monday already… I had THREE birthday parties on Saturday. Two were for my weekend gig and one was for my very best friend in the whole world, Laura. (she comments on every post – how awesome is that?) She had a cookie decorating party because she loves to decorate cookies. I’ll post some pics soon.
One of the weekend gig parties was a pop star karaoke party for a 9 year old girl! It’s a lot of fun singing karaoke and teaching the girls my dance to “Nobody’s Perfect” by Miley Cyrus. I also painted faces (with glitter!), did the limbo, played freeze dance and played “WOULD YOU RATHER” with the kids. Oh, and I got a $40 tip… so, that was awesome.
My problem with “WOULD YOU RATHER” used to be that I could only think of questions that were totally inappropriate for kids (“Would you rather have small boobs or big boobs?” or “would you rather freeze to death or be lit on fire?”), so I compiled a list of questions for kids and it’s one of my most favorite games to play at these parties.
Here is my list of go-to WOULD YOU RATHER questions for kids (along with some notes):
(more…)
Remember the last minute gift I got for my nieces? Well, my 6 year old niece designed her dress already! Actually, she designed TEN different dresses (including a “rainbow” dress, a “halloween” dress, and an “apple” dress), so we picked out her favorite design. A couple weeks ago we went to pick out the fabrics and last week I was able to present her with her dress!
Here’s the dress she designed (pink with black flowers on the bottom, and pink on the top – please notice that she CROSSED OUT the ruffle on the bottom. No ruffle, Auntie Jeannie) with the fabrics she picked out:
And HERE is the finished product! (more…)
Want to know a secret? For over a year now, I’ve been a princess on the weekends. I dress up for children’s birthday parties (between 1-3 parties most weekends) for a local company to earn some extra cash. Of course, I’m not always a princess. Sometimes I’m a pop star or a clown (my least favorite). Sometimes I assist the “head” characters (your purple dinosaurs, blue monsters and explorer girls) and just do face painting and games. One day, I’ll share all the tips I have for children’s birthday parties. Today, I’m going to share a mini-lesson I gave at the last party I did. The mom was having a princess tea party and wanted me to give a tea party etiquette lesson.
Here’s the lesson I gave:
First, ask the girls if they knew what “Tea Party Etiquette” is. Listen to their answers and explain that “Tea Party Etiquette” is how princesses act during a princess tea party.
Here is some tea party etiquette (from easiest to hardest): (more…)
My six year old niece left a voicemail on my cell phone in 2005 that I saved on my phone for 4 YEARS because it was so adorable (she was 18 mos at the time) I couldn’t bring myself to delete it. Every 21 days, I would have to re-save it. And every time I wanted to listen to my saved messages, I would have to skip the adorable message… it got to be a bit of a pain. But I loved it so much… I just couldn’t delete it (you’ll love it to – listen to it here).
I knew I wanted to keep it forever, but I wasn’t sure how to do that. I considered getting a digital recorder and recording it, but I figured that wouldn’t give me the quality recording I wanted.
One day (after the number of adorable messages grew from one to six and I had to re-save SIX messages every 21 days – plus, I was really getting scared that Verizon would finally just delete them since it had been 4 YEARS) I decided that I would devote some time to solving my voicemail-saving problem. I was so pleased when I found GotVoice- and the answer to my dilemma.
It’s really easy to sign-up. You can even try it for free for 2 weeks – plenty of time to save all your precious voicemails. But, if you were as grateful I was to have .wav or .mp3 files of your memorable messages, please consider supporting them by subscribing for at least a month. After you sign up, all of your new voicemails will be emailed to you as .wav files. To download your saved voicemails, simply click on “get saved messages” under the header on the left of the welcome screen. It also captures the date of the message, which is pretty neat.
I think it’s important to mention that I’m not getting anything from GotVoice for this – I just think they’re super. If you need any help getting set up, I’ll try my best to answer any questions!
It’s also worth mentioning that there other uses for this… maybe you have some messages you need to preserve for legal purposes, or just need to document information.
I’ve got big plans for New Year’s Eve… last year, my nieces (age 4 and 5 at the time) and I filled out a time capsule questionnaire and stamped it “DO NOT OPEN UNTIL 12/31/2009″ so tonight we get to open it!
Hopefully, they’ll be excited about their answers from last year. I remember that they weren’t too excited about answering the questions (they liked tracing their hands and feet, and LOVED decorating the envelope we put everything in).
Unfortunately, I didn’t save the questionnaire but I was able to recreate it. If you’d like to use it, you can download it here!
(more…)
My nephew will be 3 years old in February and I had a hard time figuring out what to get him for Christmas this year. Fortunately, he loves everything Thomas the Tank Engine. The best part about his present though was that I wrapped his present 6 times with 3 different papers… it was pretty funny watching him unwrap it…
A dear friend of my mom’s hosts a gingerbread house party most years (not every year because it’s a lot of work!). He starts in OCTOBER, making gingerbread houses for his guests to decorate. Each house has candy windows and he provides a little light that goes in the house through a hole in the bottom of the house base.
He also provides tons of candy!
All the kids (and adults) carefully “glue” all the candy onto the houses with frosting (also provided by John) and turn the basic house structures John provides into their own creation. John also gave each child a stocking embroidered with his or her name and stuffed with goodies. Oh, and everyone needs to wear either a Santa hat or an Elf hat (the whole time) and everyone brings a homemade dish to share.
John would really like the tradition to continue, so maybe next year I’ll be his gingerbread house mentor.
