Dr. Seuss Costume Accessories Giveaway and Photo Booth Ideas

Get ready to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday with some fun photo prop costumes.

We got to check out some fun Dr. Seuss accessories from Pure Costumes.  They sent us the Lorax Truffula Tree Boppers headband, the Cat in the Hat headband and the Lorax Accessory Kit (includes hat, sun glasses and mustache).  We also have a set to giveaway (see how to enter below). Here are my kids photo booth style.
Costume Review:
All three products are very professionally made.  They are not indestructible though, so I had to warn my kids to be soft with them so they didn’t break the first day. 
The Cat in the Hat, tiny hat, was squished when it arrived.  I tried to fluff it but it wouldn’t budge.  I finally grabbed an empty toilet paper roll and cut about 1 inch off the end then used the remaining part of the tube to stuff in the tiny hat and it fit perfectly and helped it keep its form.
As with all photo booth props, you probably want a grown-up monitoring the use of props or kids will get out of hand with them. The mustache is held on with a plastic thread that hooks around your head. It may not be great to have multi-users with this one if kids lick it or stretch the cords. 
Over all, I’m excited to use these photo booth props at our upcoming school Dr. Seuss carnival next month.
Pure Costumes offered an extra set of these Dr. Seuss costume photo props to give away to one of my readers.

GIVEAWAY ENDED 2/25/15.
GIVEAWAY RULES:  This contest is open to U.S. residents with a U.S. postal address. Must be age 18 or older to enter.  Pure Costumes is responsible for the prize package and will ship it to the winner. Contest ends Wednesday, Feb. 25 at midnight CST.
a Rafflecopter giveaway

DISCOUNT:
Pure Costumes has also offered a discount code for any of my readers.  Use code: OBSEUSSED to receive 10% off your subtotal. It cannot be combined with other coupon codes and it expires 10/31/15. Take a look at all their fun costumes, perfect for celebrating Read Across America and Dr. Seuss’ birthday.

Disclosure: I received the 3 Dr. Seuss accessories to review for the purposes of this post.  All opinions are 100% my own.

Pure Costumes also has a fun free Dr. Seuss Printable.

They also have a simple Dr. Seuss Pinterest Contest happening. See more details on their site.

Dr. Seuss Pinterest Contest from Pure Costumes

Dr. Seuss Photo Booth:
I created a Dr. Seuss photo booth corner at our school Dr. Seuss carnival.
I used fabric (from Wal-mart) for the background and to cover the bench.
I’ve been collecting a variety of items and creating my own as props over the years.


At the carnival we had a station to make your own photo booth props.  My son made this headband and attached a Lorax mustache with popsicle sticks.
Another way to make a Lorax mustache is to get a yellow feather boa (can be found at craft stores).  I cut it into strips (it gets messy). Then I hot glued two craft sticks (popsicle sticks) together at an angle. Then I glued the feathers on.

I found this blank wooden had prop at Michael’s Crafts Store. My son helped paint red and white stripes on it. Then we drew black sharpie marker on the lines and added extra lines to help it look like the illustrated hat from The Cat in the Hat book.

For the Truffula Tree we found a craft feather boa at Joann’s Crafts and cut a circle from a strong poster board. I hot glued the feather boa into a circle to cover the poster board.  We found a piece of scrap wood in our garage and painted it yellow and again added the black lines with a sharpie marker to add illustration details.

I cut out a white piece of felt and used a black sharpie marker to write THING 1. Then I used a safety pin to attach it to my son’s red shirt.  The turquoise hair is actually an old pillow cover that got ruined so I kept part of the fabric to use as hair.
I found similar fabric on Amazon (search faux fur turquoise) you could make a bunch of little wigs or cut into strips to glue to headbands.
Pure Costumes has Thing 1 Thing 2 wigs and headbands too. I really want some of the headbands for our photo booth but they are out of stock right now.  Keep checking because these will be perfect for dressing up.

I got the READ banner from Oriental Trading and the tall Cat in the Hat display from a bulletin board set. (Amazon affiliate link.)

I made the Truffula Trees using a pool noodle (again drawing black lines with a sharpie marker), a plunger from the dollar store and a spiky poof ball made out of purple and green tissue paper.  You could make so many different colors.

We were lucky to have our local PBS station, KBYU, bring their Cat in the Hat character to our Dr. Seuss carnival.  This year I plan to set the photo booth props right next to his station so kids can dress up and take photos with the cat.

Costumes are a great way to celebrate Dr. Seuss’ birthday and Read Across America day. Don’t forget to enter the giveaway above.

American Girl Crafts, Books and Printable

My daughter reads the American Girl book series and enjoys learning about girls from different time periods. I’m glad the American Girl doll company emphasizes reading along with their line of dolls.  You can see our other posts about American Girl books here and here. (Keep reading for the free printable reading incentive.) 
The past few years they have branched out to include a craft line for girls.  American Girl Crafts, by EKSuccess brands, can be found at Michael’s Crafts stores and online.

My daughter has several boxes full of these crafts including stickers, scrapbook supplies, felt and wooden crafts that she can do all by herself.  When I heard House Party was looking for families to host an American Girl Crafts party I immediately signed up. (Click here to see what parties they need hosts for next.)  They sent a huge free party pack of crafts, including 12 scrapbooks and all the supplies, for my daughter and her friends to try out.

My Life Scrapbook, memento envelopes, 3-D stickers, puffy stickers, decorative tape strips, doll stickers, stamps and more.

GREAT GIFTS:
Below are some fun American Girl Crafts kits offered at Amazon. My daughter made  the owl case and garland last year.  She often gets these kits from Santa and the Easter Bunny and for birthdays. She loves to give them to her friends as gifts too. So many items are under $20. Take a look. I am an Amazon affiliate and receive a small portion of sales made through these links.

AMERICAN GIRL CRAFTS PARTY
The Scrap and Stuff book comes with a glue stick attached and was easy for the girls to glue their photos and embellishments onto.
The bubble puffy stickers were the most popular as the girls used them on the page to describe themselves.
There were so many crafts we had to use a ping pong table to spread out. It was perfect for our 13 girls.  My daughter made American Girl Crafts flower mobiles in advance to hang from the canopy as decorations.
The girls were so focused on creating their books they they didn’t talk much while crafting so I put some music on to make it more festive and fill the void.  They talked more as we snacked and had lunch. We had jelly beans and a gumball machine out while they crafted.

We ate lunch in our family diner and the girls all signed our graffiti wall. The girls were very chatty during that time.


Most of the girls brought a doll with them and they had a party on our front porch.

My daughter had the idea to make doll headbands as party favors for the dolls.  She did the simple straight stitch sewing and flipped them right-side-out then I helped attach the elastic at the back.  I used this easy pattern I found at Pintrest Challenge.

She made 12 headbands. We found the red with silver-stars fabric on sale at Joann’s Fabric store. We had several star decorations, balloons and cookies and used the star from the American Girl brand as our décor theme.

My daughter has finished reading several American Girl books that she wanted to give away at the party. I love to recycle and pass on books so we stuck them in a wooden crate on our porch and told the girls to pick 2 books each to take home. They were so excited to look through the box.

We also found beautiful gift bags at Michael’s Crafts store in their dollar section.  They fit the scrapbooks perfectly and their book favors and we split up the left-over scrapbook supplies for everyone to take home.

FREE PRINTABLE READING INCENTIVE DOLLars
My daughter loves getting American Girl books, crafts and doll items.  The expense adds up so we have her earn these American Girl DOLLars I created.   She can earn 1 “DOLLar” for every two chapter books she reads. You could also use these for chores or other incentives but I like having her earn them for reading. Then she can save them to buy American Girl items.

Just copy and paste into a document program and print as many as you need. I printed them on red paper. FREE for personal use only.

AMERICAN GIRL BOOKS
Here are a few American Girl Books to try out. I am an Amazon Affiliate and receive a small portion of the sale of books from this link. Check them out at the library first if you can. My daughter loves to have them lined up together on her shelf and re-reads them all the time. She also loves the DVD movies. Kit is her favorite, but she just saved up and bought Saige Paints the Sky last week.

She loves the classic American Girl Book Collection sets below. If you don’t want to spend a lot on a large doll, try the cute mini doll with book sets.  The dolls are detailed and adorable.

And lately she’s been reading the newer line of American Girl books by Innerstar University that are “choose your own ending” style for middle grade girls.

Do you have a daughter who loves reading or American Girl brand? What books or items does she like most? How do you encourage your daughter to read more? Leave a comment below.

Handmade Christmas Gifts from Pinterest

I was amazed by the handmade Christmas gifts our family made for each other this year. I’ve spotted many of these ideas on Pinterest so it was surreal seeing crafts from my pin-boards in real life. You may want to save some of these ideas to make for Christmas next year.

FELT OWLS
One of my favorite gifts was from my sister-in-law; felt owls hanging on a branch for my son’s nursery room.

Aren’t they adorable? I have a whole Owl pin-board with samples of these that I wanted to make but never have time – and she made me eight of them, all hand stitched!
She also made me this custom menu board for our kitchen Diner.

We can change the menu as needed. I’ve been eyeing these but have never gotten around to making one. Now it looks perfect in our diner. See more of our diner here.

EVEN MY MOTHER-IN-LAW USES PINTEREST
I love that my mother-in-law uses Pinterest. I get to see what she likes and in return she sees my interests.  She made me this cute ‘camera attention getter.’

She cut up a small stuffed animal she got at a thrift store and used the extra fabric from the body to make the elastic scrunchy to fit around my camera lens. Much more fun for my kids to look at than just a black hole.

I had pinned this Elmo version from Etsy earlier in the year. It is only $10.

She also gave me a bokeh camera filter which I just discovered on Pinterest in December.

You can see DIY bokeh filters by The Friendly Fox (pictured on left) or on I Heart Faces. Both are on my pin boards and I plan to make more shapes. I took the picture on the right with my bokeh star filter. I can’t wait to use it more.

CROCHET and KNIT GIFTS
My 2nd sister-in-law makes amazing crochet blankets & hats.

She created this special blanket for my in-laws who are a split-sport family. One side likes BYU (Brigham Young University), the other likes the University of Utah. So she combined them together “BYUTAH” into one blanket so they can still sit by each other while watching games.  So creative!

R2-D2 Crochet Hat
Here is the R2-D2 hat she made my son. (I did send her a picture from Pinterest a few months ago for an idea.) She created her own pattern. See the original pattern with ear flaps at Nesting Sticks.


Matching Girl and Doll Hats and Headbands
Then she made these cute matching knit headbands and hats for my daughter and her American Girl doll.  The ribbons and pom poms are perfect accents.


She also made the ‘J’ initial hat for my son and a “U” hat for my toddler son and matched it with a T-shirt. And made another U hat for my husband.  She has been a busy crafter this season.
My sister made me the turquoise hat last year and my daughter steals it from me all the time.



















Crochet Stuffed Animals
My 3rd sister-in-law made this adorable crochet lamb for my son. Can you believe the detail?


BEARDED BEANIE and FINGER-STACHE’S
I pinned this bearded beanie a few months ago from Etsy and wanted one for my husband.


I went to a blogger’s “White Elephant Party” hosted by Kathy @ Danish Mama earlier in December and I happened to score this bearded beanie made by Ashlee of I’m Topsy Turvy. She also made the finger-stache’s that my kids love. 

See pattern for knit Bearded Beanie and knit finger-stache’s.

Funny Story:  I got them the first week of December and hid them to save as presents. My husband actually emailed me the 2nd week of December with the same pic as above from Etsy and asked if we knew anyone who could make these. I was laughing because I already had this hidden in the closet for him. He got it Christmas Eve and loves it.

DIY JEDI ROBE
I started pinning patterns for a Jedi Robe in November. I have a lot on my board. One of my friends commented saying “I used this one at Halloween and it turned out great.”
See pattern at Degraeve.

So I took her advice and whipped this one up while my kids went to a movie with Dad.


SILVERWARE WIND CHIME

Okay, I wanted to share this cute picture of my husband and son under the mistletoe – but look closely at the silverware wind chime in the background. My sister made that for my mom.

STOCKING SHELF
We don’t have a fireplace so I’ve never known where to hang our stockings until I saw this idea on Pinterest from Alayna’s Creations.

I had this shelf in my laundry room and it was perfect to pull out and hang our stockings for the month.

I got the stockings at the Downeast Home Outlet. They all had other monogrammed names on them from being returned so I covered them with ribbon, except the one I found that says “Victoria.” Just right for $1 each. We also have the matching tree skirt for $8 that is monogrammed with “The Kwans” name but we cover that with the train track and no one else knows about it (except you now).

Holiday Paperwhite Flower Planter
I also made these paperwhite planters out of food cans after seeing ideas around pinterest. See this version from Tauni at It’s a Tradition.

I bought ribbon and the fake berries at the dollar store to dress up the cans. I attached a card that said “I’m dreaming of a white Christmas” with instructions for taking care of the flower.


MERRY PINTEREST!
It was a Pinterest filled Christmas! I am still in awe of all these wonderful homemade gifts we will forever cherish.

I’m going to keep pinning ideas on Pinterest and maybe more dreams will come true next year. 
What homemade gifts did you give or receive this year?