In Da Hood

For those of you that don't know, I've been a huge fan of fairy tales for a long time, since I was a little kid. I've watched pretty much all the Disney movies ever made (multiple times) and each time I watch one I feel like I'm watching it for the very first time and I feel just like a little kid all over again. It's a great feeling, and it's the same one I get whenever I read fairy tales in addition to watching them. There's something about fairy tales that immediately pulls you in and make you wander what's going to happen with the turn of every page. Even classic fairy tales like Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel and Gretal and even Goldilocks and the Three Bears have always seemed, to me, to have a little bit of fantasy (along with a dash of magic) mixed into them and that's one of the things I love most. Even though these fairy tales are set in a kind of modern day time time, things happen to the characters of these stories (like little red riding hood being tricked by the wolf, Hansel and Gretal finding a house made entirely of candy, and Goldilocks stumbling upon a cabin in the woods that is home to a family of bears) that hint at the fact that even though these characters are ordinary people, strange and magical things can still occur in everyday life. Amazing to think about, isn't it? It leaves me feeling hopeful that maybe there really some magic in the world. :)

Having this love for fairy tales and also a love for writing, it's only natural that I would want to try and combine the two into a fabulous story of my own. But the question is, how? I know that there have been dozens of reworkings of all of the fairy tales mentioned above, but the two that I've been most hooked on lately are Little Red Riding Hood and Hansel and Gretal. Each of them have elements that I love (like the wolf in LRRH and the evil stepmother and candy house in HG) I'm trying to figure out a way to maybe combine elements from each story into one new story without making the story seem strange or confusing, plus, of course, I'm always looking for a way to make my stories different and unique from everyone else's, so, if you wanted to combined LRRH with HG, how would you do it? How would you make it work so it wouldn't seem like you were just squishing two fairy tales together? How would you make the story unique and different?

I've been searching around online and found some great websites that might help:

*Who is Little Red Riding Hood
*Little Red Riding Hood by the Grimm Brothers
*Little Red Riding Hood on Wikipedia
*Little Red Riding Hood the song
*Hansel and Gretel by the Grimm Brothers
*Hansel and Gretel on Wikipedia

I hope those are helpful! If you come across other websites about Little Red Riding Hood or Hansel and Gretel that you think might be useful, be sure to leave a link to them in the comments along with suggestions on how you would successfully combine the stories of LRRH and HG into one story and how you would would make the story unique/differnt!

Your suggestions are very much appreciated! :)
~Ella