Convertible Dress

Are you one of those people with overflowing drawers and stuffed closets in your home yet you stomp your foot in anger and shout, "I have nothing to wear!"  I know I'm not the only one. :)  I think my husband would classify me as a hoarder with clothes.  I have our main closest, plus a dresser and part of the guest room's closet...  Does that make me a hoarder??  I'm just a girl who loves clothes!  And the worst part is every few months I'll get rid of garbage bags full of items and yet everything is still sooo  stuffed.

Well, I gave myself a little challenge last week.  I decided I need to start wearing those dresses that I "had to have" that are currently being squished together in the guest room's closet.  I need to let them breathe a little! Problem is, I get so paranoid that my dresses are "too fancy for work".  However, they really aren't all that fancy!  Our office is just more on the "casual" business side.

So, I see my Victoria's Secret black convertible dress peeking out.  I bought this dress on sale (but not TOO on sale.. it was still pricey) because I figured you are getting about 10 dresses for the price of one!  I vowed to myself that I would wear this dress ALL.THE.TIME.  Sadly that vow only lasted a day..?  Ok.. A few days.  Still not long enough to justify. :)

I can count on one hand how many times I actually wore this.  Which is a bummer because it's super comfy and so fun.  

I pulled it out and searched youtube for a quick reminder of how to make this dress work, and wore it.  

I'm pleased with the results!  It was such a rainy day so I felt this was so low maintenance and I didn't need to worry so much if this dress got wet.  Being so black though, and so gloomy outside, I put one of my flowers and clipped them on to the sash for a dash of happiness.

I'm determined to wear this dress AT LEAST once a month from now on.  I truly love it and it's so fun to change up the look.  Black is so basic and can be switched up more than the styles of the dress! 

Dress:  Victoria's Secret

Flats:  Target, Clearanced $5

Flower:  Me, LittleLoveTales

My Niece's Hunger Games Party

Finally I'm getting around to showing you all the goodies from my niece's Hunger Games Party!!!  I have to say, I'm pretty proud of my sister, husband and I for how the decor turned out.  With rain in the forecast, some plans were tossed but I think we made up for it, as best as we could.

Let's start out with the Birthday Girl!

Headband made by me, thanks to the tutorial by the wonderful imbeetlebailey.  I love how it turned out and will now be making one for myself! :)

Shirt made by the birthday girl,  thanks to Average Jane Crafter.

In fact, we all made shirts the weekend before after seeing the movie (my third time :D)

The back of our shirts, in order from left to right:

Mutt 12, Katniss 12, Peeta 12, Peeta 12, Gale 12

 I know people hate comparing The Hunger Games series to the Twilight series with the "teams", but if you want to know my two cents, anything  having a potential love triangle will always create teams.  I have teams for everything!  Twilight just made it more "known" to the world and made it a big thing.  So yes, we did pick our teams for our shirts and we stand by them :)

On to the decor:

Our cornucopia was made by my husband.  We combined our vision from the book to what we saw in the actual movie.  I think it's darling.. If I can even say that about the cornucopia. :)  At least it's filled with sweets instead of weapons. (Unless there was a food fight!  Sadly, this didn't happen, but would have been fitting) :)

The cupcakes were made by my other sister who is phenomenal at decorating!  Doesn't the fire look amazing??

The cupcake flags, invitation (not shown), and bookmarks (not shown) were all downloadable content here:
http://www.livinglocurto.com/2012/02/hunger-games-party-printables/

They were perfect little touches!


I loved the candy buffet set up!  Definitely had to put our thinking caps on and received insight from others.  We decided to incorporate each district in the buffet, so we tried to get things to follow the designated district.
District 1 - Luxury:  Ring Pops & Candy Necklaces
District 2 - Masonry:  Pez "Bricks"
District 3 - Technology:  Twizzler "Wires"
District 4 - Fishing:  Swedish Fish
District 5 - Power:  Gobstoppers
District 6 - Transportation:  Disney Cars Cheez-Its
District 7 - Lumber:  Pretzel Rods
District 8 - Textiles:  Sour Rope "Ribbons"
District 9 - Grain:  Chex Mix
District 10 - Livestock:  Animal Crackers
District 11 - Agriculture:  Popcorn
District 12 - Mining:  Chocolate Covered Raisins
District 13 - Graphite, Nuclear:  Fireballs
The Capitol - Lollipops


The morning of, I actually woke up at five, frazzled and exhausted and fighting sleep..  Seems like my mind won over sleep again. So I decided to make my extra time useful and baked!  I was inspired by this idea from this pin I found on Pinterest a few weeks back.  I'm not computer savvy by any means and absolutely *adored* the tags they made, but I think my own attempt at the tags turned out pretty well!  If you are not computer savvy like me, feel free to use my tag for your own "coal" cookies:

We had a fun little scavenger hunt using "orange backpacks".  There were two teams and we held a reaping to figure out teams.

 

Hope you enjoyed my niece's Hunger Games party and found it full of inspiration!  I'd love to see or hear all about your ideas/parties/plans!

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Happy Birthday to my oldest niece!  I hope you had a great time, Kelsye!