Have a Merry Christmas!

Emily with her Rudolph and reindeer balloons at a book signing. We're all done with our signings now! We had a great time! We sold lots of books. And helped raise money for lots of things -- public libraries at the Texas Book Festival and our school library and even Kent Cummins Magic Camp! It's been a fun ride and thanks to all of you who came and saw us! Have a great holiday!

Great fun at Barnes and Noble

We were so nervous about going to Barnes and Noble but it was fun! Aaron from Kent Cummins Magic Camp taught everyone how to do balloon animals. Elizabeth got on stage and twisted two balloons too! We passed out balloons to everyone and helped them make their first twists. Some of the kids were really good!

Barnes and Noble ordered a gazillion books and we sold most of them! And $2 of every book went to the magic camp for scholarships so kids could go to camp next summer. Come to camp!! We'll be there too!!

If you came and got our bookmark and found our web site, THANK YOU!

And if you missed us, we have one more book signing and balloon twist on Dec. 6. See the side bar for that. Or buy our book on Amazon!

MORE PICTURES!

Great day at the Texas Book Festival

Okay, it was fun. But TIRING! We made lots of balloons and gave out lots of bookmarks and sold books too. For a long time it was nothing but grown ups, and they didn't want any balloons, but finally we found some kids!

We made brown bats and black cats and white ghosts. The white ghosts went as fast as we could make them, and they were cool!

Tomorrow we have a book signing and balloon twist workshop at Barnes and Noble at the Hill Country Galleria.

If you can come, well, come! Kent Cummins Magic Camp will be there, and everything in the store helps them let kids go to camp. And it's an awesome camp! We go! You should too!

Release day is here!

We're so excited! We have three book signings! It's time! It's time!

Countdown!

The countdown is over! Our book is out!

Hooray!

Capybara balloon CHALLENGE

So, after we posted about Caplin Rous, our favorite capybara, Caplin's owner challenged us to make a capybara balloon!

We checked the internet first, to see if anyone had ever made one, and NO ONE HAD! Or hadn't posted one, anyway.

So we set out to do one.

First Elizabeth tried it the usual way.

But the balloons were too skinny, and capybaras are not skinny AT ALL.

Then Emily tried a couple of things, using two balloons, one to make a round body and another one for the head, legs and tails.

We popped a few balloons.

Finally, we settled on a modified "bicycle helmet" twist for the body, and added a nose, ears and tail. We figure advanced balloon makers who have lots of different types of balloons could do something fancier, but this suits us just fine! And Caplin put it on his blog!

Capybara fever!

We CAN'T BELIEVE we forgot to blog about Caplin Rous!

Caplin is a capybara, which is a really big animal that looks like a guinea pig but weighs a hundred pounds. They come from South America.

Melanie Typaldos got one for a pet when Caplin was a baby. Then she wrote a book about cats and capybaras called "Celeste and the Giant Hamster."

We went to the Buda library to see Caplin at a book reading. He did great! He even jumped up on Melanie, like he missed her even though she was right there!

We had met Caplin before, at a party for when he was on Animal Planet. Emily got to feed him blueberries. Elizabeth wanted the book so we ordered it on Amazon. Maybe we can get Caplin to sign it! Visit Caplin at his site!

Book Trailer!

Elizabeth decided she would be the one to do the book trailer and show everyone how to make a balloon animal bee!

She messed up a LOT. We might even do a bloopers video. But here it is! Get a balloon and make one too!

We got to see Jon Scieszka

Jon Scieszka came to our school yesterday for an author talk and book signing! Mom had a really old book of his from 1992 called The Stinky Cheese Man and Other Fairly Stupid Tales.

He told us about how he sent his first book, The True Story of the Three Little Pigs, to lots of publishers and no one wanted it. Then the illustrator made some pictures and then the publishers told him not to ever send him anything again!

But he did find a publisher and later, Stinky Cheese Man won an award! He has a new funny book called Truckery Rhymes where he changes old nursery rhymes to have trucks in them instead.

The lines were very long and all the people made us nervous about when we do our balloon signing in a couple months, but Mom said it would be fine. Since it will be Christmas, we're going to make CANDY CANE BALLOONS. We think.

We're off to read!

We have a cover!

It's here! A cover!

We can't wait to see the whole thing!

Emily took the What High School Musical Character Are You? quiz!

She didn't much like the results. It's a boy!

My Result: Zeke
First of all, you are an awesome player and put the cherry on top of the team. You can cook a mean creme brulee! It's okay to dream big and have crushes on people like sharpay! You will eventually snag her!

Disney Princess Quiz!

Elizabeth took the Disney Princess Quiz and the result is:

Jasmine!

Which Disney Princess Are You???

According to the answers you have just chosen you are most like the Disney Princess Jasmine.

An exotic and fiery beauty, Jasmine doesn't want much. She just wants to marry for love and to experience life outside the palace. A strong independent woman, she is ready for some adventure and is quite capable of taking matters into her own hands by rejecting unsuitable suitors and sneaking off into the marketplace alone. When she meets Prince Ali, she begins to get a taste of how the other half lives and finds the freedom she has longed for.

We LOVE Mitchel Musso!

We got to see Mitchel Musso (Oliver on Hannah Montana) in a concert at Six Flags Fiesta Texas. A couple other people sang first, and it started pouring down rain, but we stayed!

He was great! We love "Hey" and "In Crowd." We heard them practicing "In Crowd" when we were waiting to go on rides, so we knew he was going to sing it.

It was awesome! Our first live concert!

Behind the Scenes

We finished all the photo shoots today! Hooray! This was a pretty easy day because Emily only had one balloon left to make and then we had to take pictures for the last page.

We made lots of silly balloons. A lot of them were terrible! And we popped more balloons today than any other day.

Elizabeth tried to make a snake but got tired of drawing on it halfway.

Emily ended up reshooting one hat because we found one we liked better than the one that was already going in the book.

Elizabeth had to reshoot her video of the bee, although she didn't want to because she lost a front tooth!

Here are a couple pictures as we got set up. On top, Elizabeth waits for the photographer to check the lighting.

On bottom, Emily practices making some new balloon designs so we have stuff in our book that isn't anywhere else!

It's lunch time! Later!

We have a blog!

Ha! We have our own blog, and we can say whatever we want!

We're figuring this Blogger thing out, and we'll be putting up stuff about twisting balloons. And Pokemon. And whose Webkinz has more Kinzcash, Emily's or Elizabeth's. (Stop buying so many CLOTHES, Elizabeth. Go for the POOL!)

And funny pictures from when we were making our book. Like this one.

Later!