Fairy Tales in Different Cultures-Vasilissa and Baba Yaga

Today we will look at a Russian version of Cinderella. I found two picture books with basically the same story and we will look at both today, but first a bit about Russia. Somehow after a week of a deep freeze in New England, Russia seems like the right country to talk about. (I literally heard a radio host mention a town in Russia for having the record for lowest temperatures. She kept checking them because it made our temperatures seem so much better.)

Face Painting, Pirate Birthday Party and a Dollhouse

Sharing Saturday is open until Wednesday if you would like to stop by to share a child-oriented craft or activity and check out the features!!

Today was the pirate birthday party that Hazel was invited to. We all went and had a good time. They had the most amazing face painter. Check out Hazel's rainbow butterfly.

She loved it! They also made clay sculptures that they decorated with feathers, buttons, beads and beans. Then they served a wonderful lunch and had this gorgeous cake.

Then they had a pinata and a treasure hunt! She had so much fun and did not want to go home.

Front Views

When we did get home Steve and I moved some furniture around so we could bring up the dollhouse I made that I have been saving for her. After I spent some time making some changes to the furniture (so she doesn't break the expensive stuff) and making it easier to play with instead of worrying how it looks, she played with it until dinner.

Interior when I first built it

Here is a view of the interior details before furniture and such were added. I originally was going to light it, but something happened with the wire and they didn't all work so I didn't bother with it.

Then this is how the interior looks now.

I took out the fancy master bed and put a plastic one in that I had when I was a child. I also took out the fancy kitchen and put in the basics so it would be easier to play. Needless to say she is loving it!! We pulled out all of her various dollhouse people from her tree house and elsewhere and she was making up stories and such all afternoon.

Sharing Saturday 13-4

Thank you to everyone who shared with us last week!! I know we were blown away by the ideas and creativity. Michelle over at Having Fun at Chelle's House has the most clicked and a few of her favorites, so make sure you go and check out hers as well. Here are a few of my favorites from last week!

1) From Happiest Mom on the Blog: I Spy Bags (Class holiday gifts, but could be used as Valentines)
2) From Pinkoddy: Snowman Indoor Activities and Crafts (So many great and different ideas!!)
3) From 4 kids, 2 guinea pigs one happy family: Lessons on London (Wow, some great activities all to review after trip to London to see the Olympics)
4) From Ginx Craft: Sophie the Dutch Doll (What great memories to share with her daughter and hopefully have her daughter create her own with the adorable doll)
5) From KiKi's Korner: Scratch Card Valentines (Such a cute idea and great tutorial!)

Thank you to everyone who shared last week!! I hope you will join us and share again!! If you are featured here or earlier this week, please feel free to grab a featured button to display proudly on your blog. 

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From Your Hostess: This week we had several multicultural and book posts plus a couple pirate posts. I will share a link to my pirate ship one.

 

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Now for This Week's Party 
 
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A New Pirate Hat

As I mentioned previously, Hazel is going to a pirate themed birthday party this weekend. Since pirates scare her, I wanted to make a friendly pirate hat for her to wear. I used the tutorial on From The Hive. I sewed it on my machine and did the seam inside. Here she is modeling it.

My cute, friendly little pirate! What do you think?

A Belated Martin Luther King Jr. Celebration Snack

So in the book we took out of the library on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, it defined celebrate with the word party in it. That is of course what Hazel took as the meaning. So she wanted to have a party. She called Nonni and asked if they could have a party since Nonni usually has her on Mondays. Nonni planned a pizza party for them. I got to wondering about snack/party ideas. I googled and really only found ideas for classes like have everyone bring a different fruit for a fruit salad or doing an entire multicultural meal. I did not have time to plan this and wanted something fun to do with Hazel. I had been saving a sugar cookie mix from Trader Joe's (they only sell them around Christmas, but we love them). So we pulled out our hand cookie cutter (that I bought for our church's Stewardship campaign last year) and made some sugar cookies. Now with more planning I could have been more creative. Next year I am thinking we will do this but the colors will be frosting using the book The Colors of Us as a guideline. You know start with white frosting and make different skin tone shades by adding food color similar to what we did with paint in this post.

Our first task was to bake the cookies. I had pulled out our hand cookie cutter as well as a dove one. Hazel wanted to make more doves, but luckily I was faster than she was so we got more hands.

While the cookies cooled we organized our decorations which was a task in itself since they were all in one bag. I thought of using M&M's since they are one of Hazel's favorites. In fact I bought a bag or regular and a bag of Valentine's Day so we would have pink, white as well as the brown, yellow and red. But I got to thinking about how the red is so red and they no longer do the tan. Then I thought of the candy store at our big furniture store where you can buy M&M's by the color by the pound as well as jelly beans. Since they did not have skin tone shades of M&M's there, I went with jelly beans. (And yes one of the local furniture stores has crazy attractions in it. The one near us is themed as Bean Town and has a candy store, a local ice cream stand, liquid fireworks, Omni theater and more. The one near where I use to live was themed as New Orleans and had a whole multimedia show of Bourban Street and looked like a theme park.)

Then we got to decorating. We did one hand of each color and then we did some of mixed colors to represent mixed races. Then we decorated one dove in white. The rest I told Hazel she could do what she wanted. While she finished them, I arranged the hands and put the white peace dove in the center.

Then to make her happy we put all the birds in the center.

And a close up of her birds:

So next year we will do something similar but take the time to make the different shades of frosting. I am also going to think of some other fun foods/party foods we could make to celebrate the day. Do you have any ideas? I would love to hear them!