Happy Mother's Day!

Happy Mother's day to all of our Haute Moms!

Today we take the time to thank you for all your shuttling, loving, scheduling, caring and cleaning that you do for us! I hope you have a lovely breakfast in bed or- as I did, take the fam' for coffee, breakfast and a leisurely stroll around the lake. Isn't it convenient to have a Starbucks and your favorite bakery right next door to each other? The kids munched their way through an organic milk and a muffin while I sipped my venti soy skinny cinnamon dulce leche and nibbled an egg, feta & spinach wrap. Then, hand and hand with handsome-hubby-dearest, we walked around the lake. As a special bonus treat, my handsome co-parent was on keeping-kids-out-of-the-lake-patrol. He did a brilliant job. Not a single soggy child when the adventure was through.

My family gave me wonderful gifts- a lovely self-potted sunflower from my kindergardner, home made bracelets from my school agers and a beautifully scribbled self portrait from my preschooler- and an adorable designer apron from the hubby made by Heavenly Hostess... Side note to save hubby's hide: I requested this gift. ***Note of warning to other fabulous husbands out there: NEVER buy your haute mama an apron (no matter how sexy) unless she asks for it by name.*** But isn't it adorable?- Eva Longoria wore this exact print on Desperate housewives. Note the figure flattering a line shape, designer (and reversible fabrics), cute contrasting pockets and beautifully ruched bust. I can just imagine the entertaining I will do with this! Heavenly Hostess even makes petite versions to suit mom and daughter cooking. FABULOUS! You can stop by and check out the Heavenly Hostess boutique, located in old town Orange at the Orange Circle, yourself. Let Cynthia, the owner, know Over the Top Productions sent you! Happy Mother's day gals. Enjoy!

Happy Cinco de Mayo!

The fifth of May, a regional holiday in Mexico, is a fun way to celebrate diversity and culture in an entertaining and creative way. Here at Over the Top Productions, we love any reason to celebrate and the fact that this celebration has tacos, enchiladas and chips makes it even better. (My family loves the make your own taco bar and festive paper flowers.) I have assembled some links for crafts, recipes, activities and more to make your cinco de mayo "muy bueno" (very good). So, kick off your shoes, & salsa in the living room with your wee ones!

crafts, history, easy dinner, how to salsa (dance), rockin santana play list (exercise caution- youtube may have content not suited for young listeners),

Haute Mom Says: 6 Days until Mother's day. Make sure your cards get in the mail.

A Family Friendly New Year's Party

I have to admit something and it may seem strange to you: I love New Years.

Don’t get me wrong- the fall warmth of Thanksgiving and the warm fuzzies of Christmas are fabulous and they seem to get ample attention at my house- but I love New Years. The idea of a fresh start and the anticipation of the year to come gets me as giggly as a kid with a new batch of play-dough.
Every year I have a celebration with my closest friends and family and I’d love to share some of my traditions with you. Here is what our family will be doing to ring in the New Year and some tips I have found to keep it memorable for all the right reasons:

Celebration gluttony: New Years around the world

To get the most out of our party, every year we celebrate New Years around the world. (Why only celebrate one very late celebration when you can have many celebrations all night long?) Above the buffet of family friendly snacks- chex mix, taquitos and other fun finger foods- hangs a giant clock (A great goodwill find a few years back) You can find one like it by searching for over-sized wall clock at http://www.target.com/. Beside it I hang 4 clocks, set at the appropriate times (see below), each with its own label for the location it represents. Through out the evenings festivities we can watch the wall clock and celebrate each city’s new year as it approaches.
Avoiding the mid-night meltdown:
My kids are young (all four under the age of 11) and the idea of keeping them awake until midnight seems like quite an undertaking. (A little research on my part has shown that most kids aren’t really ready to see the ball drop at midnight until about the ages of 10 or 11, anyways.) In order to avoid the “up waaay past bedtime meltdown,” we will celebrate New Years around the world.
Check out http://www.timeanddate.com/ for a nifty little new years calculator. I used a world map and stuck flag pins in the places we will “travel” to celebrate. Use this site for flag images: http://www.flags.net/indexa.htm

We will celebrate these cities (Since we are in California PST, United States)
London, England :4 pm
Buenos Aires, Argentina :6 pm
Santiago, Chile :7 pm
New York, New York: 9pm

At each given hour we will do the count down and run outside with our home made noise makers (decorated painted plastic soda bottles filled with beans and decorated with ribbon and stickers) Each kid gets to open up a goody bag for each time zone with activities to entertain for the next hour- a coloring page and crayons, some play dough and a cookie cutter, stickers and a frame- whatever makes your wee ones excited. Set the bags out for display on the buffet and decorate them with a clock for each hour you celebrate.
Our own New Year’s ball drop
I love the ball drop at times square so this year we will have our own version: Our New Years Pinata Party ball. Using paper mache and some foil paper squares- make your own pinata (or buy one at the store) Hang it from the highest point of the house and lower it each hour until the long awaited ball drop (We will do ours with New York, USA.) where you can give it a whack at “midnight.”

Reflection: Looking back at the past year
I love to scrapbook. Each year I grab a few pictures of each child during a memorable event and make a scrapbook station where they can scrapbook the past year and make a page for the next year’s resolutions. Each kid makes their own page and adds it to their album. I help the young one’s with their journal entries. It’s fun to watch how their pages morph from messy toddler pages to coherent school age creations as time goes by.

No matter how you choose to celebrate the New Year with your family, you too can create traditions that they will cherish for a lifetime. I hope you enjoyed taking a peak at our New Year's traditions. We sure enjoy participating in them.