Harry Potter Studio Tour

Both of our kids' birthdays are in August, so last August (see how far behind I am?) we took the kids to the Harry Potter Studio Tour in London.  It was incredible- worth every penny!

When you go, you have a specific tour time, but once you are inside, you can walk about at your leisure.  There is no time- limit.  The only thing is that it is a one-way system, so once you leave one building, you cannot go back in- you must move forward.

While waiting in the queue for our entry time, we were still entertained with plenty of eye candy.

Once inside, our guide gave us a quick introduction and then we were ushered into a theater.  We sat in the seats and watched a ten minute or so clip of "behind the scenes" and interviews with the actors with the last scene being Emma Watson, Daniel Radcliffe and Rupert Grint pushing open the doors to The Great Hall.  The film goes off, the lights come on as the screen retracts into the ceiling revealing…..

At this point, our guide asked us if anyone was celebrating a birthday!!  Zoe was NOT leaving my side, so Noah went forward.  The people with birthdays received the honor of opening the doors to The Great Hall and letting us all in!

Half of the dueling table in The Chamber of Secrets

It was surreal to walk around the sets and know that the studio magic happened here!  It also changes you when you watch the movies again.  It is so exciting to watch the movies now and be able to say, "We sat that!!" and "We were standing right there!!"

Yule Ball dresses and robes

The gates to Hogwarts

More wardrobe- I see two of Luna Lovegood's dresses here- the yellow one and the silver one.

 Beauxbatons school uniform

 **giggle** All the educational decrees enacted by Professor Umbridge

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 The portrait of The Fat Lady!

 The Gryffindor Common Room

 The sword of Godric Gryffindor!

 All of Dumbledore's magical gadgets

 Where Dumbledore kept all the tubes of his memories for the pensieve

 Triwizard Cup

 Hagrid's Hut

 The door to the Chamber of Secrets

Inside the Burrow: they actually had the knife chopping, the dish in the sink scrubbing itself and other things on this set moving.  It was really cool!  

 Professor Umbridge's Office

 Professor Umbridge's  outfits

 Ministry of Magic

 The Knight Bus!

When you leave the first building (with all the sets), you walk out into a courtyard with some of the buildings and structures as well as a snack bar and a concessionaire selling BUTTERBEER!  It was DELICIOUS!

 #4 Privet Drive

 The bridge over the gorge to Hogwarts

The house in Godric's Hollow 

The moving chess set pieces- The Philosopher's Stone

After walking around the courtyard, you enter another building that contains Diagon Alley and a lot of the props from the movie.

 Fawkes!

The Monster book of Monsters

 Hedwig!

Dementor

 Dobby!! 

 Mandrake

 Thestral

 Buckbeak!

 The artwork for inspiration before the designs were made

This right here COMPLETELY changes how you watch the movie!  All of those scenes of that beautiful Hogwarts castle??  This model right here with green screen scenes added around it!  This is truly an amazing model but there was a boy next to me looking dejected and he told his mother, "This just ruined it for me!"  Haha!

 Everyone that worked on the movies- actors, writers, directors, etc has a "wand".

Michael Gambon is Dumbledore

 And then, after looking at the wands, you enter into the most fabulous gift shop ever!!

 Crookshanks!

 You can buy supporting gear for any house you like!

 You can even buy items from the Quidditch World Cup!

 And then there is pretty much every sweet and treat mentioned in the movie

There is a place where you can have your picture taken on a broom- as well as buy a video of yourself flying on the broom over different scenes!

 The is also a place to have your picture made in Mr Weasley's flying car- we love this one!

If you ever find yourself in London, I highly recommend a detour out to this studio!  You will have to pre-book, as all tours are scheduled, but it is worth it!

Air Force Ball- September 2013

This will be the second (and last) catch-up of the night.

This past summer, our base released the theme for our Air Force ball in September.  When I found out it was going to be a 40's theme, I was ALL OVER IT.  I LOVE this era in history and decided right then I was definitely going to this ball!  **Side note: the ball is held every year to celebrate the Air Force's birthday and since the Air Force separated from the Army Air Corps and became its own branch in 1947, they decided to go back to the era of its birth.

I ordered the dress from a site online that I used to order my dress for the AF ball at McGuire a few years ago as well as clothing for my "pin-up girl" photo shoot I did as a gift to my husband while he was deployed in 2011. I then visited some local charity and antique shops here to find my accessories.

When we got there, the decor was so fun!  I LOVED it!

Why hello, soldier….

 And an even bigger hello to you, airman!

My FAVORITE accessory that I found by chance was an old RAF (Royal Air Force) sweetheart pin.  I thought, since we are stationed in England, that was the PERFECT accessory for my outfit!

And after the ball: pajamas and pearls :)

Happy (now so belated I can almost say it again) birthday, Air Force!

This is Gonna Take Awhile

I have been suffering from writer's block for, oh… two years now?  I mean, not entirely.  As I have mentioned over and over again, a lot of my reason for not blogging since we've moved overseas is the fact that our internet is sooooo slow.  I don't have the patience to deal with it.  But, also, I have not been inspired to write like I was before.  I seemed to always have an inspiration rolling around in my head and now, notsomuch.  I have been able to dust off my pen and use that part of my brain a few times, late, so I am not completely dry.  This past fall, we had a teacher auction at the kids' school and I was put in charge of the "Wanted" posters for each teacher up for auction.  I did have fun assigning villain names and crimes for which they were wanted.  I have done several other small things throughout the year as well as helped on the decorating committee for school events.  My point is, I DO have a creative outlet, but I miss writing.

I have been fretting over the fact I haven't been writing for months now, but every time I decide I am just going to do it and open up blogger- I just sit and stare at an empty screen, uninspired, and give up and close it out again.

I started this blog to have a creative outlet for myself to write.  I also started this blog because my kids are growing up away from their grandparents/aunts/uncles/cousins and I wanted them to have a way to keep up with those day-to-day things the kids do.  So, until I am inspired to write creatively again, I will climb back in the saddle and use this blog to journal our lives here, so that our family does not feel quite so separated from us.  The last blog I posted about us involved Halloween and Guy Fawkes Night. So.. ahem… I am a wee bit behind.  I will use these next few blog posts to "catch up" so to speak.

First, we are going to back up a little from the post about Halloween.  Because- I left out the lovely crafts the kids did in October for the school library.  A call was put out for the kids to pick their favorite book and use it as inspiration to decorate a pumpkin and the pumpkins were placed around the library for decoration.

As you can see, I helped HEAVILY with Zoe's project.  I mean, really, she picked out the book-Pete the Cat- and painted the pumpkin blue and I did the rest.  But, she was happy with it, I was happy with it and it was done.

Noah, on the other hand, did most of his on his own.  He picked The Hobbit and other than the script on the welcome mat and help with some of the dexterous bits,  he did this on his own.

I think they both did really well, and we had fun out in my craft room coming up with ideas.  I wish I had taken pictures of all the other pumpkins, because they were FANTASTIC! My favorite was the one someone made of Garfield's head using I have NO idea how many pieces of candy corn for Garfield's fur.

In my Halloween post, I showed you the kids' costumes, but failed to show you what I came up with.  We had a spouse costume social for the squadron and when I was trying to come up with a costume idea, it hit me: I am a maintainer's spouse.  I HAD to be Rosie the Riveter.  And so I was.

And here is a random picture just to show you that my daughter has one fierce "stink eye".  She was at a birthday party and slightly annoyed with me.