Legoland Florida

We spent today at Florida's newest theme park, Legoland.



The $12 parking fee was a bit of a shock, but after we got inside the gate we had a lot of fun. Blaze loved it!















The Legoland park is built on the site of the old Cypress Gardens Park, which was one of those "old school" Florida attractions, a garden full of lush tropical plants and a waterskiing show. Legoland has maintained some of the historic aspects of the old park, such as this carousel:



The gardens are still gorgeous, and strolling through them is a nice break from all the colorful plastic blocks.











The 80 year old Banyan tree:


There's even some wildlife.




Then back to the Legos and the rides.



























There are also shows.





This one was taught young children about fire safety:







Snowing soap suds:








I think that Legoland would be a great "starter" theme park for a young child who has never been to a theme park before. Everything at the park is geared towards children who are under 12 years old.

Gearing Up for Christmas/ The Tree Skirt

I modified a basic Christmas tree skirt pattern to make my new crazy quilt/gear Christmas tree skirt.

This is the pattern I used:




I traced the boarder pattern onto a large piece of paper ( we have a large roll of art paper) and added the gear teeth, spaced as shown in the picture below:




I made the center panels by sewing together fabric scraps in a random/crazy quilt style, with lace, rickrack, appliqués, and charms.

The Christmas Tree

We went tree shopping yesterday afternoon and today we decorated it.



Our treat after we finished decorating the tree: a vanilla ice cream ornament

The Gold Glitter Top Hat Tree Topper

This cheap party store top hat was labeled "steampunk", but was not at all attractive.




I removed the hatband and sprayed it all over with gold glitter paint.

waiting for the paint to dry:




It will be the topper for our Christmas tree, but first it was the hat I wore to school on Thursday for "silly hat day".




I think it would also make a fine New Years Eve party hat (it now has that kind of over-the-top showiness).

Here it is on the tree:

Gift Tags

I love Urban Threads! They not only offer really awesome embroidery designs at really good prices, but I have discovered that the designs made for hand embroidery make good graphics and coloring pages.

I used some of their steampunk Christmas designs to make these gift tags,



along with the Mechanical Fanfare Alphabet for lettering.

Here is the pattern for two sizes of tags. Just print out this picture as a full page:



Antiquing the edges of the was very easy. I simply rubbed the edges directly on the Distress Ink pad. I also used the ink to color the hole reinforcement stickers.



Our first use of the tags was on the Christmas cactuses that Blaze gave to each of his teachers and his speech therapist.