Happy Birthday Mom!

Shortly after the Bean drew Toy Story as our first movie night selection, we realized that my mom's birthday was that same week and we needed to do something in honor of her birthday!

So, I called my mom and asked her if she wanted a regular birthday dinner, or a Disney birthday dinner.  I guess this whole, getting my family excited, thing is working, because she chose to have a Disney birthday!  I told her that since it was her birthday, she didn't have to draw a movie from the hat, she could just pick which one she wanted.  So, she picked The Little Mermaid.  My mom has always liked The Little Mermaid and she loves to swim, so we were going to make it a pool party.  However, as we were discussing the food, my mom suddenly realized that having a Little Mermaid themed birthday probably meant she was going to have to eat seafood.  My mom is NOT a seafood lover.  So, I mentioned some of the ideas I had for a Tangled themed evening, and viola!  We had a Tangled party!

The only person we really invited was my aunt, so I sent the following invite (the original came from here) to her and the Bean.

We had three(ish) main dishes for dinner.  The first was Fettuccine Alfredo.  I chose this because I thought it would kind of look like Rapunzel's hair.  The second dish was hazelnut soup.  Ultimately, I am working around both dietary issues and a picky six year old here, so I went with two because Dad can't have pasta (gluten), and even though we probably could have made the Bean eat hazelnut soup, she absolutely loves noodles and I thought it was a cute/relatively inexpensive idea.  Finally, my mom's favorite food is steak, and she wanted a steak for her birthday, so dad fired up the grill and made her a steak (and made some barbeque chicken and grilled squash since the grill was already going.)

For our sides, we had a standard salad and I took a roll of crescent rolls and braided them to make a braid (get it, a braid) of bread.  The braided crescents were incredibly adorable!

While cooking we listened to a little bit of music from Tangled.  Can I just say that I love the music from this movie?  Good stuff.

For dessert we had apples in honor of Maximus.  I used the Krispy Apple Treats recipe found here.  

My aunt is also a fabulous cake decorator, so she made a Tangled cake for Mom. 

For our activity, I made a piñata out of a cereal box.  I used strips from an old phone book; dipped them in a paste of 1 cup flour, 1 cup water, and 1 tablespoon salt; did a couple of layers; painted it; and glued on a picture I found of Flynn Rider.  The plus side of using a cereal box is that you can fill it before you begin and don't have to worry about leaving a hole and covering it later.  The negative part of using a cereal box is that it is incredibly sturdy and difficult to bust.  I filled ours with Tootsie Rolls because that's Mom's favorite candy, and then we hit it with a frying pan!

For our craft, I was going to use an idea found at Disney's Family.com (I get the feeling I will be using this site a lot) for making a golden sun medallion, but it was getting late and we ended up not doing a craft.

While we were eating, we watched Tangled and had fun celebrating my mom.

Happy Birthday Mom!

(Rough) Shopping List

• 1 pound dried fettucine
• 14 Tablespoons butter
• 5 shallots, peeled and minced
• 3 cups heavy cream
• 1 cup finely grated Parmigiano-Reggiano
• 1 1/2 cups whole hazelnuts
• 2 medium leeks (whites only), chopped
• 2 parsnips, peeled and chopped
• 1 T cornstarch
• 6 cups chicken broth
• 2 cups water
• salad ingredients
• 2 packages crescent rolls
• 6 cups Rice Krispies
• 1 package large marshmallows
• 1 small package Jell-O, cherry or strawberry flavor
• 25 small Tootsie Roll Candies (we needed more since that's what we used for the piñata)
• green fruit roll-ups or spearmint gum
• cereal box or balloon
• newspaper or old phone book
• candy to fill the piñata
• flour, water, and salt
• paint
• frying pan (if you're not comfortable using a cast iron--they are really heavy--there is a non-toxic spray that I read about to make your regular frying pan look like cast iron)
• scissors
• scrapbook paper (2 or more shades or prints of gold)
• yellow or gold faux gems and/or glitter glue
• glue sealer (such as Mod Podge)
• beading monofilament
• sewing needle
• gold seed beads

We have been having a lot of fun with this, and I hope that you all have had fun reading about it!  Maybe someday someone with a similar idea will stumble across this and find this all very helpful; though, frankly, the shopping lists are really for my own convenience.  :)

Godspeed!