I worked all day on Friday. We’d had a last minute childcare crisis which meant Frazer came over to be with Davies and Scarlett in the morning. He was, predictably, late and stinking of cigarettes but the kids were delighted to see him and so I headed off to work, arriving a mere ten minutes after I was supposed to be starting work. I’d had a ‘chicken drama’ last week and Yvonne said to me she always knows I’ll be in if I’ve not already phoned to say so but assumes it will be due to a drama of some description, so ‘Childcare Drama’ was sufficient explanation to let me off the hook.
I did banking, rhyme time preparation, sending all the Rainbow Fairy books back to the libraries they came from as I took great pleasure in dismantling the ‘Fairy Magic’ display and made space for a ‘minibeaasts’ display instead, manned the counterm, dealt with the desk and generally had a good day at work :).
Meanwhile at home the kids had a good time with Frazer and then Ady arrived home and they spent some time off out with him in the afternoon.
When I arrived home they were already back and had eaten so I got busy with the face paints on Davies and stitched some pulling in stitches in the shoulders of Scarlett’s dress aswell as de-plaiting her hair. Davies’ outfit was very much of his own creation, face painting aside which was at his direction and he looked fantastic. Scarlett’s outfit was not as complicated and of course with her long blonde hair she was already Alice-esque to a point but we made a little blue waistcoat for her toy white rabbit along with a cardboard and string pocket watch so she had accessories to make up for less of an effort on the costume.
I’d bought popcorn, drinks and sweets from the pound shop at Lancing to take with us so fully equipt we headed off to the cinema. We have a trio of local theatres here in Worthing, all council run and arts council / lottery grant / state funded which I do like to support if possible – this year I have been three times to the cinema screens there. In looking at their website, which I regularly do I’d spotted the Mad Hatter’s Tea Party Gala Event and booked tickets earlier this week.
Davies had pretty much sorted his own outfit out after I’d shown them trailers of the film and dug out waistcoat, wig and top hat from the dressing up box. I found a scarf of mine to use as a bow tie, we dyed the wig ginger and got a patterned shirt from a charity shop for a couple of quid. Jeans and his red and gold star DMs completed the look with a bit of face painting from me.
Scarlett had a nightie from the same charity shop tied with another of my scarves, her hair was made wiggly with the help of 8 plaits put into wet hair the night before, she wore the boots she wears for Badgers and we made a waistcoat and cardboard pocket watch for her toy white rabbit.
I thought they both looked fab, proper home made creative costumes with heavy emphasis on having done it themselves:
We managed to park fairly near the cinema and followed the trail of playing cards stuck to the pavement and were greeted by staff dressed up as rabbits, Alice and the Mad Hatter. We nipped into the box office to collect our tickets and Ady saw the film posters for the first time that we’d modelled the outfits on:
As we went in we were given a box of cakes each and a cup of tea (or coffee, hot chocolate or selection of cold soft drinks) to get into the tea party theme. There was face painting (which we didn’t need ;)), hand painting, photo morphing (which the kids had done, Davies turned into a playing card and Scarlett a cheshire cat, we’ll get send those in the post) and an eat me / drink me competition with 10 different things to try and guess / identify to enter a prize draw. It was mostly fizzy fruit drinks and flavoured jellybeans so nothing too yucky or tricky.
There was also staff walking about chatting to people, photographers taking pictures of the dressed up people (he took some great ones of D & S, will have to see if they make it into the local paper) and some Pixar mini films (the ones from dvd extras, we’d seen all of them before I think ;)) showing on the big screen. It was really good 🙂
Then it was the fancy dress parade. They had children first, then adults (Scarlett was most cross with me ‘I *told* you that you should have dressed up Mumma!’ :lol:. There were probably about 30 children, lots of Alices, several Mad Hatters, a few white rabbits and some playing cards. They judged on audience applause and it was quickly obvious that Davies was going to be in with a strong chance 🙂 Sure enough, he and another Mad Hatter were named winners and got a huge goody bag from Pixar each.
I love Scarlett’s reaction captured on camera as Davies was proclaimed a winner 🙂
(you can’t see Davies as the nearest Alice stepped forward infront of him as I took the shot). He won loads of fab prizes including an Alice in Wonderland pocket watch which is gorgeous, a charm bracelet with teapots, playing cards, drink me bottle, key and so on on it, a magic key keyring, a tin of Alice in Wonderland playing cards, a torch and a voucher for 4 free cinema tickets to a film of his choice 🙂 Excellent haul 🙂
The adults were judged and winners chosen and then it was time for the film itself. It is also out in 3d and I imagine it would be well worth seeing in 3d as the effects in the 2d version were fab and there were some shots, eg Alice falling down the rabbit hole which would be excellent in 3d. I was slightly worried that Scarlett might find it scary as it is classic Tim Burton and on the dark side but she loved it. We all really enjoyed the film, thought it was very good :).
Yet another late night though as it was nearly 11pm when we got home and having eaten cakes and popcorn already still felt lacking a ‘proper’ meal so made pizzas which we were still eating at gone midnight.