The long awaited for Ballerina party!!!!

The long awaited for Nutcracker Ballerina party!! It had a lot of twirling..

Tutu's

Let's not forget my PINK and silver Christmas tree (yes, I did put up my tree for 24 hours, so sue me. :P)

Each guests tutu was on the tree labeled

The candy for decorating gingerbread houses, and the white chocolate dipped marshmellows (with pink sprinkles of course!)

Some of those big tissue flowers

A few more...

The cakes on those fabulous cake platters. :D

I didn't get a good picture but the crepe paper roses are on the tablecloth and the tree.

Kiddos playing by the tree before guests arrive

Finishing up Kari's ballerina hair

Jill's adorable tutu

First thing we did was get girls in their tutu, then put glitter all over them!!

Kari's little tiara

And the back of her hair

Decorating gingerbread houses (and see at the bottom of the table, there's a bit of those roses.)

Kari licking her gingerbread. lol!!

Ballerinas watching the DVD of the real Nutcracker Ballet

Which of course leads to dancing!!!

Jill chewing on a book. :P

Girls dancing together

And generally there was a lot of twirling...

whirling...

and good clean fun. Happy birthday little Karielle. Momma loves you so much.

Crepe paper roses

Okay, this is a quick one because I am currently baking EVERYTHING. So. Take those party streamers (also known as crepe paper) rip them into 24 inch strips.

Crumble them up to make them look for like fabric, smooth them back out.

Start from one end and roll in a few times. Put a dot of hot glue (I like to use my cool setting on mine because then you don't burn your fingers)

Then start twisting as you roll so that it looks like a flower, not a pink cinnamon roll, I fold towards me, like this (but with two hands, this was hard to get a picture of.)

every couple of rolls, glue to keep it from falling apart. Just keep rollin', just keep rollin', just keep rollin', rollin'. :D

This is what your back should look like.

Done backside. lol!

Ta da!! Now make a million more because you're crazy like me. Muah hahaha!!

I'll bet you're as excited as me to see everything put together huh? Just TWO MORE DAYS!!! :D

Giant tissue flowers

So I wanted to do these gorgeous Rose balls here BUT didn't want to spend an arm and a leg on the foam balls so, I decided to do these big tissue flower balls instead. Thank you Martha.

Take 8 sheets of tissue (a little pack usually comes in 9, so just pull one out) and start folding it up accordion style. About an inch and a half or so.

Find the middle..

Use floral wire to secure the middle.

Cut the tips to make a "petal" shape

Start pulling up (GENTLY) the sheets, one at a time, we'll fluff in a minute.

Make sure you're doing both sides.

I usually pull one from one side, then one from the other side like so.

Fluff it and play with it to give it the right flower like shape

On one side, I leave more open. This will be the side that you either glue tulle or ribbon from to hang from the ceiling so you can get away with it or you'll be pinning it to the wall and need that flat side.

Make a few more. :D