5 Years

     Five years ago today I birthed our first child. I kind of feel like I deserve a badge or something. Its an under-appreciated milestone, because, as they say, "The years before five last the rest of their lives." (No pressure or anything.)
     I mean, I have stumbled and fallen and done things I am not proud of, but I have come out of these first five years with so much more than I ever knew. I am a completely different parent than when I went in. Granted, I knew next to nothing about parenting then, just all the things I thought I knew. I used to say I would never make my kids separate meals for dinner. Now I know that, sometimes, when your child is underweight and failing to thrive, you make her a dinner she will eat because you have to. I used to think I would be pretty strict and enforce limits, etc. Now I know that treating your children like subordinates does not foster a warm and caring relationship, and that listening to their reasons goes a long way to achieving harmony. (I still enforce limits, but the manner in which I do is much more respectful.) I have learned that barking orders and expecting compliance is not a respectful way to treat anyone, and children will treat others the way they are treated. And probably the most important thing I have learned is that we need to model the behaviour we want to see from our children, so I have done a lot of work on myself in that department.

     Today we celebrated Laura, and had a really lovely day. I made her cherry oatmeal for breakfast, her favourite, and added chocolate chips because it was a special day. We went to the library for story time and brought mini cupcakes to share with our friends. We went out for dinner at Kelsey's, her favourite restaurant, and the girls were really well behaved. We had such a nice day and I could just sigh happily and contentedly, right now. I am so happy with our life at this time and I just love being a mom to these two so much.

A Very Frozen Birthday

     Last year Disney's 'Frozen' came out, and along with seemingly every other little girl on the continent, my girls fell in love with it. I thought that it would have been good to have a Frozen themed party for Laura's birthday last year, but we had been planning the Little Mermaid party for so long already! Alas, we decided that this year's party would be Frozen themed instead.


     I dreamed up a skating rink in our yard, and, of course, we would need an ice castle. Her birthday is in the middle of winter after all. But how exactly would we make one? Rectangular? Cylindrical? Much deliberation went into the planning of it. After spending some time with Google, I was still coming up blank. Apparently amateurs don't make ice castles. So, I put my brain to use and decided that, most realistically, an ice wall with a peaked arch separating the back yard/ ice rink area would have to suffice. Two-litre milk cartons would be a good size to make ice bricks. So, in October, we started saving all our used milk cartons, and come January, we had almost 40! This was great, we would be done the ice castle in about a week! Unfortunately, I had not accounted for the milk cartons ripping apart when the ice inside them expanded, so, after attempting to duct tape, and re-duct tape them again and again, we had to solicit the neighbourhood for more cartons. Several of my friends started saving theirs for us, as well. (Thanks, everyone!) And the project ended up taking much longer than the week I had originally estimated! Plans were modified along the way, but in the end, it all worked out, and the little lady was happy with it, which was the outcome we were aiming for. :) Grandma, our never failing, custom costume maker, made Laura her Elsa dress (and gifted an Anna dress to Rachel for Christmas, which she was quite excited about.)
After browsing Google and Pinterest to see what people had done for other Frozen parties, I wanted to do something a little different. I thought it would be fun to recreate the coronation celebration aspect of the movie, and have the cake and table spread modeled after that. The invitations were also modeled after a royal coronation invitation, rather than the more common blue and icy style ones. (Laura even helped me tea-stain the paper they were printed on.) :)
My mom owned a bed sheet that somewhat resembled the wall paper in the castle, and with the addition of some criss-crossed gold streamers, I satisfactorily recreated the look. I also hand painted the table cloth to match as closely as possible to the scene. The cake was iced styrofoam on the bottom two tiers, but the 'beautiful stranger tall and fair' on top was edible, modeled out of rice krispie treats with modelling chocolate features.

(Daddy helped make this!)

The table spread was a bit of a challenge, because the table in the movie is clearly only a dessert table (there is a fleeting view of another table in the movie with chafing dishes on it, so presumably they had more to eat than just cakes and pies at Elsa's coronation). So, I got creative and made savoury, non-sugar filled cupcakes, and a pumpernickel loaf in a bundt pan. A chocolate fondue fountain was not pictured on the table, but it is mentioned in one of the songs, and I thought it would be a fun and memorable addition for the kiddies, so we scored a new one off Kijiji for a fraction of what they would normally cost. The kids had lemonade to drink, and there was hot glogg (as mentioned in the movie) for the adults, which is a mulled wine. 

Of course, no Frozen party would be complete without a wintery scene, so we did the living room up to resemble the part where Anna and Kristoff meet Olaf, and all the beautifully iced tree branches hang in the background. I had toyed with the idea of turning our piano into the North Mountain, in order to steer kids away from playing it, but in reality I tried it and it was difficult mainly due to its shape. I settled for North Mountain on top of the piano instead (and no one tried to play it, anyway).

A large Olaf balloon was also in attendance. My mom helped with the 'iced' branches, taking clippings from a shrub of hers and spray painting them. I used an inexpensive bag of iridescent confetti I found at the Party Store to try to recreate the icy sparkle. In addition to the paper snowflakes I made with Laura one day and our own plastic ones, my mom also donated a bunch of snowflakes with which we decorated the ceiling (and also scattered a few hanging in the trees around the rink outside).

After lunch and skating with our friends outside, we all came in to enjoy a hot chocolate bar (which I didn't get a good shot of) and the birthday cake! 










Laura decided on the favours this year. Originally, she had dreamed up these really neat sounding lollipops that involved the characters from the movie being inside, and she had a bunch of different flavours chosen for them, as well. So we went to the local candy-making shops in town to inquire about it, but both places said they could not make something like that. So then we were going to go with her plan B, which was lollipops with snowflakes on them. Grandma Dawn had also found a snowflake candy mold, so I had intended to make a hard candy and pour them in the molds and add sucker sticks. Alas, when I read the instructions for the molds, it said it was not intended for hard candy (hard candy must be very hot when you use it, so presumable would melt/ damage the mold). So, plan C was to use the molds in their intended way, which was to use melting chocolates to create chocolate covered cookies with a snowflake design on them. We wrapped them up in little clear bags, and tied them off with some Olaf ribbon. Luckily, Laura took it all in stride and was cool with it. We also got Olaf cups to serve the hot (warm) chocolate in, and the guests got to take those home with them, as well.