DIY: How to Stretch Leather Boots to fit your calves

This is an optional way, a very easy way: you can do it yourself and  stretch your boots. (I bought these beautiful boots at Victoria Secret in size 7.5 and unfortunately they did not list calf size, but it is hard to find boots with big, yet not clunky fitting calves if your not a size 2, and especially in the smaller sizes of shoes.) Now these are leather boots, and I have not had this "stretching" experience with other kinds of boot materials. Although, I should note that materials that make up boots and shoes Gap/Target do seem to stretch pretty easily when worn. Meaning I can wear them in pretty easily. So if you try this with your boots that are not leather, or double lined like these, carefully observe each day to see that it is going the way you want.   

This shows you how far up the zipper got before I stretched them. Again not sure what size they are, I might guess 14 or 16 inches. And then I might say my calf is 18...again if this didn't work as well as it did, I might have been forced to measure and take better notice. And you are welcome to do that with yours.

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This is a regular kids 8 1/2 inch playground ball. I happen to have two around. I deflated them and inserted them in down to where the zipper. You could use a basketball, soccer ball, volley ball or anything that is bigger than your boot, your trying to stretch. You will also need a bike or ball pump with a ball needle. I show both here, but obviously it was easier to use the bike pump.

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Here I show the balls inserted in the boots. These boots are double lined leather and have a heavy metal zipper, I was almost scared when I opened them because I didn't think anything would stretch them. And I didn't want to buy an ugly extender, and I did not want to mess with the integrity of the look of these. And by searching the internet, from frozen overnight to extenders, I did not find anything that I felt comfortable with.  

 This shows me actually pumping up the ball to help stretch out the boots.

  This is both of them, just showing how it looked and how I left them for about a week. I kept checking them to make sure that the seems were secure, that the zipper was fine, that the color and the textures were not compromised. 

This is how you let the air out. If you are not familiar with air pumps and needles, etc. I let the air out and then removed the balls and below is what the boots looked like after the stretching. As you can see they do not look stretched and the seems are all fine. If they don't fit right away, you can always put them back in. I intended on pumping in air every other day, like two pumps. But I didn't get a chance to, and then ended up just fine. 

Its hard to tell but this is my leg in the boots!! They both fit of course, but I just had to show you them zipped all the way up. I didn't have to do any weird freezing thing and risk getting wet, besides who had room in their freezer for these boots? And I don't have to ruin these boots with a funky extender or weird alteration. I wish you luck and hope this helps you. Again be careful and enjoy!

DIY: My Little Pony Party for my daughters 5th Birthday

This is an entry about my daughters 5th Birthday Party and what I did for the My Little Pony (MLP) theme. Below is a couple of the decorations and two the home made centerpieces. One I used a MLP bucket available at Partycity.com, the other items are photos that I printed off the internet and cut out and matted, then added some embellishments from a craft store.

This is the MLP Piñata I also ordered from the Partycity.com.

 This is the MLP cups I made into party favors.

 This is the balloons we got at the Party City store. But I had to order the various different mylar balloons from different websites because they were only available in certain places: Walmart, Target and Party City.

 This is the cake I had made by Piece of Cake in Mesa, AZ. I added the MLP minis that I bought at Toy's'R'Us and added them at home.

 Going with the theme of the rainbow, I made these rainbow Jell-O shots out of the left over jello. Below you can see that I tried to make a rainbow jello bowl. I tried what I saw on Pinterest but I think it works better in smaller cups, in this wide of diameter and size of bowl, it just brown from the top. 

This you can see the bags I made for the candy in the piñata. 

Here is a better look at the mylar balloons.

After all is done, she finished her collections of various MLP's. She got all the minis, the regular figurines, the plush TY Babies, and the MLP Girls.

She also got a medium, 20 inch plush of Twilight to round out that collection too.

Here is a closer look at the collection of the TY Baby MLP. To see more about my thoughts on the differences between the TY MLP's and the Hasbro Plush MLP's. See my previous post. Enjoy!

My Little Pony Plush 4 inch and TY Beanie baby comparison

I am going to compare, make suggestions and discuss best practices for care of My Little Pony plushes of all sizes. For my daughter who LOVES My Little Pony (MLP) the show, and the characters like the plastic classic figurines with brush-able manes and tails. She has a variety of sizes of these dolls, plushes, and mini figurines. When she first started liking the show, she was 3 and there was not as much merchandise out as there is now. The new generation of MLP's show was in it's third season. So as first we kind of settled for what we could get our hands on. In this case is was the small 4 inch plush size MLP's by Mattle that sold at both Toys'r'Us and Target. They were cute enough, soft and because they had fleece like strips hair, it did not need up keeping and she could take them to school and sleep with them and no messy hair to brush. So for younger kids this plush is pretty perfect. Small enough to take with you or stick in a stroller, a pocket in the car and easy to care for. However, when the TY Beanie Baby My Little Ponies came out, it was apparent just what these smaller versions were missing. So for one, the TY MLP's are a little bigger, by about 3/4 inch in diameter and about an inch and half taller, if not two. Making then about 6 inch tall. The TY MLP's also have real hair to brush, bigger more true to character eyes, softer plush and better coloring (as seen in the photo here) The smaller MLP are just a tad darker (or in Twilight Sparkles case a tad lighter) and the features are just a tad more generic.


You can also see that on the left the TY MLP has a shinny horn and embroidered eyes and eye lashes. So a little more detail and what seems to better materials used to emphasis those details were used in the TY babies.

Sometimes it's difficult to get all the characters, or at least the six from the show in any one form: from the plastic ponies, to the small plush dolls, to the TY MLP Babies, to the Build A Bear (BAB) - there was some sort of strategic delayed release of each character. So we had to wait, and check back in at different places to see when or what character was coming out next.

Here is the collection of the TY MLP. which I first found a TY MLP at an airport about 6 months ago, and recently found all six at Party City, Mesa AZ. Just in time for my daughters 5th birthday. They are all stuffed well and stand up alone.

Here is the smaller 4inch Mattel plushes. I do not have all of the six main characters, because between Toys'r'us and Target I was only able to get or find the 4, however there were other characters like DJ (seen here) and Cherry Lee, and some other of the shows characters which I appreciate, but was most interested in collecting all six of the main characters. Because she has most of the shows characters that she likes in the classic plastic figurines,  I did not find it necessary to have them also in the plush.

          This is the collection of Twilight Sparkles. The BAB in the far back left, a 20 inch Mattel plush to the right, and then across the bottom from left to right is the TY, the smaller plush, the plastic figurine and the mini figurine. 

Here is our collection of plush Fluttershy's the large one is from Build A Bear, the far left is the TY MLP and the middle is the small plush. As I pointed out before the TY babies are much closer to looking like the Build A Bear MLP and the characters themselves. The plush and hair used is very similar. The build or structure of them is almost identical, the seams are even the same and I haven't measured to know, but they look like they could be to scale just different sizes. I really like the the BAB because of the softness of the plush and the fact that BAB sells outfits, like shoes and skates for the ponies, that also fits their other BAB animals. But it is just a fun experience to go and "build" your animal. However, be warned the BAB MLP hair is REALLY hard to take care of. We did not know this when we bought our first BAB MLP which was Rainbow Dash, the hair got terribly knotted, it seemed to be a horrible dry, course and unforgiving type of hair. Since this is my daughters favorite character she took it everywhere, including to day care where she slept with it. This further made a mess of the hair. I tried everything from water, to using de-tangler, to leave in conditioner, to trying to brush the hair out every time she came home. Eventually, I gave up and tried to talk to the BAB I got here from. I asked if there was anything we could do. They said no and they did not offer a replacement or refund. It made me hesitant to buy additional BAB MLP's but the BAB manager suggested keeping the hair in braids or in pony tails like they are in the store. So far, so good. And that is what I have done with TY MLP's hair as well.

Here she is with the MLP Dolls from the movie, the TY plushes, the classic plastic figurines and the mini figurines. Personally, I enjoy the little original Ponies because it brings back memories, but the mini figures are fun - because they travel easy!! Throw them in a bag, they can go in a pool or tub and no worries about the hair getting tangled.