Mary Poppins Costume

This is my Mary Poppins costume from 2011. 

My black umbrella has a hand-crafted clay parrot head. (Unfortunately I didn't realize until too late that it wasn't the type of clay that can air-dry. I had to be very careful not to bump it on anything. 

My carpet bag is a pretty silly thrown-together utility bag with floral fabric wrapped around it. Luckily, being an awesome utility bag, you can keep *lots* of candy in there, so it seemed more Mary Poppins bottomless-bag-like.  

As for the costume itself, the only thing I had to make was the little red bow on my collar. The hat, shirt, jacket, & skirt all came from The Costume Loft in Albany, OR.  (Check them out here.)

The shoes (which you may not be able to see too well) were my most exciting find at a yard sale for only $1!! They were new & just the right size. 

My 1 regret for the day: not getting a photo of just my husband & I together in costume! He surprised me by showing up at the end of my work day dressed as Burt. He'd even crafted himself a chimney brush!

(Should have buttoned the jacket)

Photos by: stalnakersphotostudio.com 

I did get a photo of the whole family together though. The kiddos did a Plants vs Zombies (game) cosplay together. (I'll make another post about that effort later.) 

Photo(s)-a-Day: tablecloth streamers

So this is something that I found on Pinterest, read the brief description, lost the pin, found the pin again, but the source page was removed. (Follow me so far?)

Other pinners were asking what the instructions were, so I tried it for Thing 2's birthday party & it looked WONDERFUL. :)
Now I'm blogging & pinning it so others can do it too.

All you have to do is go to the dollar store (we have Dollar Tree) & purchase coordinating colors of plastic rectangular table cloths & matching balloons. I picked up a variety balloon pack from Dollar Tree & was able to match table cloths with some of the colors.

Next, open the table cloths & cut them in half, length-wise. Now you'll have 2 long skinny plastic "cloths" from each table cloth.

Find your room's center. Take a "streamer" & attach to the ceiling in the center of the room. We used tacks to hold them on our textured ceiling. Pull the streamer out towards the edge of the room & attach to ceiling. We spread the outside ends out to their full width when attaching them.

We then attached a few of the coordinating balloons (with tacks into the tied ends) at the center of the streamers.

"streamers" going up

the center, with balloons attached

more of a room view, with balloons attached