2011 Christmas Celebrations

Our Christmas Celebrations are always jam packed with activities, family and food!  This year was no different.

Christmas Eve Afternoon
We spent the afternoon at my grandparent's for lunch and games.  Grammy has the most beautiful china and always gets to set a lovely table.  She also researches great games, puzzles, and trivia for us to play to bring back great childhood memories, learn more about the history of Christmas or just have fun. She served her famous Swedish Meatballs that take forever to cook and she hates them for months after serving them but they always are a huge hit with everyone!

Grammy's beautifully set table

Christmas Eve Night
We spent the evening after church at my parent's house.  We enjoyed playing BuzzWord and snacking on a wonderful Bass spread of Christmas jello, clam dip, chips and dip, cheese and crackers.  After the game we opened our yearly Christmas Pajamas and Ornaments.

Jeanine's famous Christmas Jello

Christmas Day
The morning each family spent at their individual homes unwrapping presents.  The afternoon and evening were spent at my house for games and dinner.

Every Christmas Dinner I like to try a different recipe but always with lamb.  This year was Herb Crusted Rack of Lamb with a Cabernet sauce served with Roasted Carrots, Mushrooms and Brussel Sprouts and Mashed Potatoes.  My sister and I artistically plated each serving and provided extras family style for people to have seconds.  After two years of rack of lamb its been decided we will try a different cut of lamb next year to spend less time getting to the meat ;)  I still think two chops look the best and so elegant on a plate.

Table set for Christmas Dinner

For our wedding we received a large trifle bowl as a present but it cracked in shipment. I returned it and decided to get 12 individual trifle bowls from Pier 1 instead.  I love them for entertaining.  I wanted to make a family favorite, Raspberry Trifle, but my husband doesn't like fruit deserts. He wanted chocolate.  So I ended up making half Raspberry and half Chocolate.  Not only do the deserts look delicious, they are much easier to make then they look and with Sugar Free or Fat Free options can be a nice lighter desert.

Raspberry Trifle and alternative Chocolate Trifle

The best part of hosting a party is seeing all the empty plates and licked clean bowls of desert.  We all enjoyed a round of Disney Apples to Apples, a Christmas present opened that morning, while moaning at how wonderful the meal and the entire day was.

Clean bowls and fun games!

A Cinderella Costume fit for a Princess!

This year we made several costumes for a Disney Birthday Celebration for the baby of the family. She's been our Princess since she was born and wanted to really celebrate it for her 20th birthday.  She's been wanting a dress-up party (did I mention she is 20?) for the past several years and finally talked me into it (so I could talk our mom, Jeanine, into it).

As we do with most of our Creative Tradition special orders and new products, I shopped for the fabrics, patterns and trim then Jeanine would sew everything.  We were really lucky with the fabric. We discovered a Joann's store that was going out of business. We couldn't shop till the weekend since it was a bit of a drive... but EVERYTHING was 90% off.  The trick was we couldn't cut fabric... we had to buy the entire bolt!  That means you would get 10 yards of fabric for the price of 1 yard!  I think we only spent $15 on all three fabric to make the dress. That same trip inspired us to start making our Me and My Barbie dresses.

A custom Disney Sleeping Beauty Rose (peasent Aurora) costume

For my sister's 20th birthday, she wanted a Disney costume party.  I knew who I wanted to be from the beginning, my favorite Disney character, Aurora from Sleeping Beauty.  My costume was easy to decide on, the Rose forest dress, but harder to find the exact pattern I was looking for.  I knew I wanted a black corset,  a nice flowing skirt, and a three-quarters sleeve collared shirt.  It couldn't be THAT hard to find right?

A custom Disney Sleeping Beauty Prince Philip costume

My husband was a sweetheart and was actually willing to dress up for the Disney costume party. I didn't want to push my luck so I needed to choose a pair of characters that I liked but would have a very simple costume for him.  For instance, he couldn't be Beast and wear a mask all night... or worse Hercules and have to wear a toga!  No, I was going to need to incorporate regular clothes like jeans to ensure he wouldn't be too uncomfortable... and be more likely to dress up for our next costume party ;)

So we decided to be Rose and Philip from Sleeping Beauty during their first meeting in the forest.  Both characters were very casual during that scene yet memorable too.  I found a small picture online as my inspiration and started hunting for patterns that I could alter to be the perfect costumes.

I needed to keep it simple for Philip's costume.  I started off with the basics including jeans and a long sleeve colored black shirt.  Then I made a tan tunic and pulled it all together with perfect accessories!

Disney Costume Party: Minnie Mouse Apron Costume

Costume parties are great fun, but sometimes as a hostess it can be a bit bothersome trying serve food in a costume.

So for Jeanine's costume for her other daughter's 20th Disney birthday celebration, I made a polka dotted pink and white apron. The apron is one of our standard patterns with a bib and skirt.  I added an ruffle to the bottom to make it a bit more whimsical. Instead of our usually ribbon ties, I created fabric ties for the side and a neck loop.  We finished off the costume with a cute Minnie Mouse headband from Disney.com.

Interested in getting your own apron costume? We're selling this exact apron and ears online or you can contact me for a special order.

Disney Costume Party: Birthday Celebration!

Creative Tradition's Jenn and Jeanine

I've been mentioning on Facebook that our current projects were costumes for a Disney Birthday Celebration for the baby of the family.  She's been our Princess since she was born and wanted to really celebrate it for her 20th birthday.  She's been wanting a dress-up party (did I mention she is 20?) for the past several years but kept getting it pushed off due to sibling weddings and babies being born.  

The costumes, and the party, were a great success!  In total we assembled 6 costumes, 4 of which were designed and sewn within three weeks.  I'll be breaking down the costumes over the next few blog posts and share how you can make your own costumes using the same patterns

Creative Tradition Costumes
The Princess in a custom Cinderella ball gown.
The Hostess, Creative Tradition's own seamstress Jeanine Bass,  in a custom Minnie Mouse apron.
The Photographer (as a Tourist) in an eclectic collection of Disney wear and camera equipment.
The Party Planner, me, in a custom peasant Rose dress from Sleeping Beauty.
The Party Decorator, my husband, in a custom Prince Philip ensemble.
"I-don't-have-a-costume" Party-goer in a previously created kimono.