Momma Bee's PartyZ

Squishy Hearts and Jedi Valentines

2012-02-08T15:50:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Day is almost here again and I've been busy working with my boys to make their Valentine cards for all their little buddies.

With my youngest, I wanted to do something that we could do together, something kind of crafty. I ended up making a card with a "Squishy Heart". Do you remember oily stickers? Well, if not you missed out. There were simply a puffy sticker filled with oil or somthing and you could squish it and smush and swirl the colors around. Me and my older sister LOVED them! We could sit there forever smooshing them. So I figured I'd try to recreate that in a card.

First, you need corn syrup, food coloring and a little ziplock type baggie:

Fill your little baggie with only about a tablespoon(ish) full of cornsyrup. Believe me, a little goes a long way. Then I added 2 drops of food coloring. And smoosh,smoosh, smoosh the baggies to mix well.

You get your card and cut out a heart shape and then color the underneath card, or you could leave a message like "Be Mine" or something else. We just added some color and a heart sticker. This is what you'll find as you smoosh the heart.

Then you reinforce your baggie (I used duct tape and packing tape) along the sides so that if it gets smooshed too hard, it won't smoosh right out of the card. And you tape it over the front side cut out heart. (The un-reinforced baggie is where your coloring or valentine's message would be)

Then you line the edges with double sided sticky tape and close the card up. You can write your To: and From: on the backside of it. (We even added some packages of Fruit Nuggets on the back for an extra treat)

Then you are ready to embellish your front side. I added some glitter around the edges and the heart. Now you are ready to squish away and find the heart! SMOOSH SQUISH SMUSH!

For my oldest, I wasn' too sure what to do. I wanted something quick and easy, but kind of cool for his age group. I'm trying to stay away from candies and such, but I thought it would nice to have a little treat of some sort.

I was playing around with the ideas of making my own poppers (like the ones you get at Xmas time) but I didn't want to spend alot to fill them up. I did find these cute heart flingers at Michaels, so I wanted to incorporate those. Then I saw a few blogs that were sending glowsticks, but I couldn't think of a saying that I really liked. Then I kept coming back to the ones where you take a picture of your kid with their hand held out and you insert a lollipop or something. Then my friend Heather over at TwinDragonFlyDesigns posted her awesome find, one of the Valentine's she did for one of her boys....(drumroll please!) and TA-DAH - A Lego Star Wars Valentine with a Glowstick for a light saber!!!! So...doing...that!!!

So glad I decided on these bacause my son LOVES them (although he wishes he could've had Ahsoka for the girls - haha!). So thank you Heather for finding this and posting and thank you to Holly who orginally made them! (link to Holly @ Stitch Craft Creations here for your Jedi Valentine Printouts)

Happy Valentine Crafting! And thanks for stopping by!

Halloween Haunt 2011

2011-11-07T22:44:00.000-08:00

Love Love Love the Halloween Fun!

We didn't have a big Halloween party this year so we put a little extra affort into our outside yard "Halloween Haunt" We change it up year after year trying to make it bigger and better! Hope you enjoy it (it's a super picture heavy post, so beware)

Our Front door zombie greeter (the zombies were a new addition this year. Maybe it was zombie fever due to the zombie walk?) And new also, is the Jason door greeter - it was sound activated - red glowing eyes and sound too!

Candied Brains???

"Killkillkillcacacaca - Jason, your mother is talking to you!"

My transplanted Eyeball Plants

Trapped Zombie (hmmm, woulda been better if you couldn't see the tape)

Zombie Crossing

Pumpkinhead of the pumpkin patch

Dr. Frank N. Stein's Lab and "Take-out" Zombie food

The Butler with a sample platter

Glowing Mad Lab

Alien Baby, skulls and specimans (a grow your own octopus in a jam jar)

Experiments
(Flubber, tonic water, highlighter dyed water and a aquarium bubbler)

Table Set Up

Creepy Peeper in the bushes

The Witch's Set-up

Witch's minion and cauldron

Nightime witchy stuff

3 swirling ghosts in a tree

The caretaker of the cemetary

the skull in our projector we got last year - worked out pretty great, I think!

Spooky Sillhouettes

My little guys all ready for some Trick or Treatin!

Happy Halloween...until Next Year, Fun Holiday, I'll miss you!

Preschoolers Halloween Party

2011-11-07T20:53:00.001-08:00

Happy Halloween Everyone!
Yikes! I know this is coming through a little late but we've had a busy busy October. I hope you enjoy anyways, even though the season is over.
I've been getting together weekly with a couple of girlfriends who all have preschoolers and each week we try to do something different with the tots. Well, I just HAD to take my turn just before Halloween and do a lil tots Halloween Party! Yay Halloween FUN FUN FUN!!!!
We made it a pot luck bring a treat and I planned a couple of games and activities for the kiddos.

Here's the "Toss the Eyeballs into the Pumpkin Bucket"
This was a game we played last year's kid Halloween Party. I found these awesome ping pong eyeballs and used some pumpkin buckets we accumulated.

The Witch's "Snack and Treat" table

I made up a batch of monster munch from Our Best Bites - YUM! and had to put out candy corn and Mmmmmm chocolate!

This was "Make a Mask" filler activity also leftover from last years party. There were supplies for pumpkins and frankensteins. There were also little bitty pumpkins for the kids to make. We actually didn't end up getting to this, the kids were just having fun running around and playing.

Most of the food table (missing some super yummy crockpot meatballs)

And a modified October Blood Punch (from Pocket Cocktails) grape juice, blueberry-pomegranate juice, ginger ale & blueberries

What's a Halloween Party without sugar cookies? Well, not one at our house! They're a must have!
And one of my favorite recipe blogs - Our Best Bites again - their caramel toffee dip with (very) cinnamon tortilla chips, apples & grapes

Oooooh and my all-time favorite (and my kids too) Halloweenies! Mini sausages (in this case, I used turkey sausages) wrapped in Pilsbury crescent roll dough! YUMMMMM!

Ghostly bread - Pilsbury crescent rolls again, but sprinkled with cheese. Easy, festive and fast.

and omg! My friend Heather over at TwinDragonflyDesigns brought these totally awesome Angry Birds cupcakes. Aren't they wicked?! Check out all her fun Angry Birds halloween fun, if you haven't already!!!

Here are two activites - Make a Pumpkin Face. Very similiar to Pin the Face on the Pumkin, just without the blindfolds. Half the kids wanted to play and the other half just wanted to free play, so it was nice that it was a low key game that didn't take much time or effort and the kids liked putting on all the face pieces. (I should have taken an after pic! It looked like it was done blindfolded - haha!)

Also, I taped laminated pumpkins on the floor for "Musical Pumpkins" It's a take on musical chairs, but without the child being eliminated. What happens when the song ends is a pumkin is removed, but the kids are encouraged to share a pumkin if they want becuase at the end, they all have to try and squish onto one pumpkin. This was my son's favorite game - but I think it was because of the dancing, not the game itself. As long as they had fun though!

Another easy peasy activity - Make a Cookie. I like making cookies ahead of time and pre-bagging them with reese's pieces or smarties and then giving them out with a popsicle stick scooped in icing. Eliminates alot of "shared" germs by sticky slobbery fingers.

Here's the goodie bags - a bag of Monster Munch for the ladies and a treat bag for the kiddos (a crazy straw, eyeball bubbles, googly eye ring, pad & pencil and chocolate pumpkin balls)

Here's my lil guy making his pumpkin cookie.

Thanks for stopping by!

Zombie Walk

2011-10-16T20:49:00.001-07:00

NNNGGAAAAUUGGGHH....BRAINS....That's right, this weeked was the Zombie Walk and it was soooo much fun! I thought I'd share a few pics of our zombie crawl.
I did all the costumes and make-up. If you browsed through past halloween posts, you might find that you recognize me and hubby's zombie costumes...we re-used them, although had to re-add the blood and add a few more tears.
So hubby was a zombie business man with a pencil through the neck and I was a zombie vet.

We couldn't find our rubber pencil we used in the previous year, so we had to use a real pencil. I cut it in half and then shortened the pieces, then added our skin putty and stuck the pencil in and covered with liquid latex with pieces of torn toilet paper in between each layer, let it dry and tore pieces back to look like flaps of skin. Then built up our makeup layers and added gooey blood. (don't worry, we adjusted the pencil after this picture so that it was it a proper straight line)

here is a maggot infested flesh wound...aka, uncooked rice in between layers of latex skin and ripped toilet paper.

my head wound - I used a laminated white piece of paper, cut into a circle and spirit gummed to my head to be a piece of skull peek a booing out. Then I built up the edges with skin putty and again layered with liquid latex and ripped toilet paper, and again poked a hole in the latex and pulled back for flaps of skin.

cheek wound - infected zombie bite perhaps? This one is built up with an oval shape skin putty and covered with liquid latex. I will mention that by the time I took these pics, it was the end of the night, so it was starting to peel up a bit.

For my son's costume - here is his inspiration - the dancing disco zombie from the game Plants vs Zombies.

Here's the crazy platform shoes with the goldfish that I made. I just taped together 2 sheets of laminated paper with the drawings one them. I figure not bad for 20 minutes. I didn't want to spend a ton of time on them because I knew he'd only be wearing them for the length of the walk and never again. Not too shabby I think.

I even printed off one of the notes the Zombies send in the game, for him to carry. It says "Hello. We would like to visit for a midnight znack How does ice cream and brains zound? Sincerely the Zombies. The shirt and pants we got from Value Village, and the vest he already had.

Family of Zombies

AAhhhhh! The giant rat is chewing my wrist off!!!

And the walk begins! My son totally had a better zombie shuffle than me! haha! He even did the disco zombie hustle the whole walk. Too cute!

Getting interviewed by the local reporter. Apparently a pencil through the neck was a new one for him - cool!

uuuunnnghhhh - nnnnnhhhhhgggg - bbbrrraaaaiiinnnsssss

Here's a small part of our Zombie Walk group! So fun and we will totally do it again next year. It was great to see everyone dress up and just have fun and all the great costume ideas.

Halloooweeeennnnn!

2011-10-04T08:50:00.000-07:00

Sigh - Oh my favorite holiday {well, okay, I call it a holiday cuz it's just toooo much fun!}. Its coming up (too) fast and I find I'm boo-bugging it a little. Me and the hubs have decided that money is just too tight this year to hold out annual Halloween Party! Ack! I'm sooo in withdrawl!!!

By now, most of our walls would be covered in some sort of fake brick, scary haunted house wallpaper. I would already have my checklist of nummy halloween nibblies all planned out and each ghoul set-up tenatively planned out. And to top it off, they opened up the coolest Halloween store this year - Halloween Alley - lots of fun props and ideas there. I go in almost weekly (I know, so sad, right?!) to get my Halloween Fix and keep me excited about what we can do.

We've decided that we would just focus on the outside Halloween setup in the yard - maybe even into the garage, since we didn't need any props throughout the house. I'm just feeling a time crunch - ack!!! And we want to try and fit in every Halloween-ish activity we can. And luckily for us, our town is holding yet another Zombie Walk - aarrrrghhh ummmm drrooolll brains....

So even though I'm not a gore-a-thon lover, there still is something about a bunch of people getting together to create a fun Halloween-ish experience...and I do love me some Zombies - those campy hilarious Zombies! Even my oldest son, who is addicted to the Iphone game - Plants vs Zombies - wants to jump on board for this fun free event (did I mention FREE- yay!) He would really like to dress as the disco dancing zombie with the big orange afro...right down to the goldfish in the platform shoes. hahah! Don't know if that will happen, you'll have to stay tuned to see what kind of zombies make it out for the walk.

I'm going to get a mini party fix by throwing together a little Halloween get-together for my youngest sons playgroup friends. I don't need to throw up all the creepy decor and cover the walls and all the elaborate set ups (sniff sniff - I'll miss you Halloween house) , but I can get away with the orange/black and purple/green theme of things, which means inexpensive balloons, streamers, banners, etc. I get to keep the food simple cuz they wouldn't eat alot of it anyways (may even do a potluck type - who knows) So hopefully you'll stop in and see what I did for that.

And there's a Halloween Train in the next town over, we thought we might try to go on this year. It's something we've talked about doing in past years, but just never had the time to go, so hopefully this is the year :) I have a feeling by the end of all the "little" activities we want to do, we should've just done our usual party - haha!

So what are your favorite Halloween activites/traditions?

Candyland 4th Birthday

2011-09-24T20:02:00.000-07:00

Candyland, Candyland, Candyland...it's one of my son's favorite boardgames. I thought since he liked it so much that we would play a life size version of it for his birthday. My guy was super stoked to do it! So the planning began. I wanted it to have alot of elements of the game, but not alot of the sugary candy. I mean, who wants a house full of hopped up, sugar crazy 3 & 4 year olds running around? Not me! It was definately a challenge to NOT do candy everything, but I think in the end I did well...and the kids didn't notice. They just liked running through the game, we even had some kids who had never played the boardgame before.

So with alot of help from the parents, we started the game. We paired the kids up into teams of 2 to speed the game a little and away we went. I was the card holder and for each pair, I would pick the top card and tell the team which square to go to. At each of the "lands" there was a game/activity to do. The kids had the choice of doing it when they passed the square right away or continuing on and coming back after the game was over. (this was a crucial part of needing parents help - keeping the kids organized and moving along) There were alot of times one partner stayed to do an activity while the other carried on. This worked quite well, kept the game moving (which I think was very important for a bunch of 3 & 4 yr olds) and then when the partner finished his/her activity they just ran and caught up to the spot where their other half was.

Here's the pics:

I started planning the party a bit late, so I needed a quick invite idea and came up with these lollipop invites. Luckily, I found these great round cards a Michaels, that just happened to fit into the lollipop bags perfectly (also from Michaels).

A few balloon lollipops line the walkway. I also placed colored squares up the walkway leading to the front door.

At the starting point, here's gingey to guide the way to the Gingerbread Tree.

Once they reached the Gingerbread Tree square, they got to decorate pre-cut gingerbread men with foamy shapes.

Then they continued along the path towards Peppermint Forest and Gumdrop Pass.

Peppermint Forest where the kids got to throw rings onto "peppermint sticks"

I used some "Christmas Snow" fabric draped on the stairs to fit in with the wintery peppermint forest theme.

Now into Gumdrop Pass - which I know is supposed to be a mountain range, but I couldn't work that in, so I went with a kind of valley pass through thing.

At this activity, the kids had to dive into the "gumdrop" pool and retrieve one of the Candyland Character cards.

This was the only point where the kids HAD to stop. They had to shoot down Lord Licorice with Silly String. All the kids LOVED the silly string. After the game, a few went back to play again and again...and to make giant silly string balls.

I poster printed Lord Licorice off the computer and pasted together.

On the way to Peanut Acres to Gramma Nutts house.

Here, they played peanut toss. I just covered one of the beanbag tosses we already owned.

Lollipop Woods - they finally got to have some Candy!!! I found some sandart necklaces and bracelets at Michaels and used them to fill with powdered candy instead of sand. You know those Lik-m-stiks things? They come with the candy stick and 2 or 3 packets of powdered sugar candy? Thats what I used. All the kids wanted to do this one. The only thing I would have changed was to get bigger funnels than what came with the sandart kits. When I tested it, I was filling it slowly, so I had no troubles. But when the kids did it - it was a candy free for all and the funnels kept getting clogged.

Here's my sad Lollipop Tree that I ran out of time to make, so I just stuck in the lollis quickly into the styrofoam cone and slapped it on a plate. Voila - haha!

Continuing down the path outside to Snowflake Lake.

Which was our trampoline that I sprinkled glitter snow on. The kids had to jump up and grab a paper ice cream cone before carrying on towards Candy Castle.

And here it is - the finsh line - King Kandy's Castle - goodies await inside!!! Unfortunately I also ran out of time for this - I wanted to have streamers go all the way around the gazebo, but had to settle for just the open parts. Still had the effect I wanted, so it was all good in the end.

Inside Candy Castle - the grub. Cupcakes, a FEW asst candies, friendship bread, chips & cheezies, fruit kabobs, some veggies and there sandwiches for lunch. I actually premade a bunch of bento box lunches ahead of time, and them labelled them all so that the kids could just pick out what kind of sandwich they would like. I had fruit kabobs already in there too, and then all the kids had to do was grab a juice box and any other little goodies they wanted. Nice Fast Easy Lunch!!! Love it!

Cupcakes, cotton candy and candies. I actually boo-booed the number of cupcakes I ordered and we ended up being short a few, so thank goodness I had the cotton candy to fill in the empty spots!

Back inside at the gift table - My hanging beachball "Gumdrops" One of my fav decorations!

Again, I didn't want to load the kids down with a bunch of candy in the goodie bags, so I did light up rings instead of those candy ring pops, big punching balloons, those lil grow your own animals (the ones you put in water and like 2 days later they are 600% bigger) and then I found this sweet (haha) set up stickers at Michaels (again) So the kids got 3 different sheets of Candy stickers.

Being silly in the gumdrop pool (that made its way outside to play in after the game)

The snowcone & drink station. The other sweet goodie we did for the kids - snow cones - yum - just right for a hot summer day!

Birthday boy finishing up lunch - Cheese!!!!

Time to blow out the candles!

And yum - time to eat the cupcakes! I think he's enjoying it-what do you think?

Another year older - sigh - goes by so fast. But we had lots of fun. Thanks for checkin it out!

Star Wars Laser Tag 7th Birthday Party

2011-08-20T18:01:00.000-07:00

Where has all the time gone - my baby is now 7!!! and in complete obsessed-ment (yes, that is my made up word of the day) with Star Wars!

Naturally, we had to have a Star Wars party, even though this year I wanted to try and not have the party at home. Just not enough time to plan it all this year. So we came up with trying this outdoor laser tag & just incorporated the theme into it. (It's kinda Star Wars-ish, no?)

I don't have a ton of pics, but here's the basics of what we did:

The Food Table.

Since I wanted to be able to transport the goodies easily, I opted for more basic snacks - Juice boxes, Cheesy Puffs, Trail Mix, Cookies, and Fruit Kabobs, and then we brought Pizza Hut pizza with us. But to theme them up in a more Star Wars way, I gave them cutesy names - Like Jedi Juice & Darth Aider, Ewok Food (trail mix), C3P0 Cheesy Puffs, Wookie Cookies, and Jango Fetts Fruity Nibblers.
These Wookie Cookies I found on-line - a recipe from one of the Star Wars Cookbooks. They basically are a double chocolate chip cookie with a dash of cinnamon - pretty darn tasty!

I really wanted to make the "Yoda Soda" that I kept reading about in blogland, but I needed easy, not fancy. But I'm pretty happy with my labeled juice boxes instead. I told the kids - Pick a side - the dark side with Darth Aid-er OR the light with Jedi Juice. The kids loved it!

And our Pizza Hut pizza - well, just had to be Pizza the Hutt (opps, forgot the extra "t" on the label, but the kids never noticed anyways!)

I rented one of the tents at the laser tag place and decorated by putting up a couple of poster size pics that I printed out on the computer.

Our main decoration - Darth Vadar himself! Total hit with the kids...and everyone who walked by! (He's actually our halloween butler dressed up with a lightsaber taped to his arm - worked great!)

The Padawans ready for their laser tag training!

Gotcha!

Sniper shot?

It was very awesome and the kids had a blast...even got a little tired - yay!

We did 2 seperate 15 minute games so that the kids could take a little rest, so here's what I planned for those moments and for when we were finished laser tag and waiting for lunch. First, I bought these Easter Fling shot disc things (have no idea what they are actually called) and pasted star wars faces on them. Then we set up my sons Star Wars action figures - bad guys only of course and the kids all tried to knock them down.

This was the big one we planned for. My hubby made PVC pipe Marshmallow Shooters for the kids to play a game with and take home as part of their goodie bag. I taped laminated pics of the good guys and bad guys and had the kids split into teams - Team Jedi and Team Sith and each team had a bowl of marshmallows to go nuts with and shoot like crazy to get into the pails. When each team ran out, I did a count of which team had the most marshmallows in their pails - the one with the most won. In this case, it was Team Sith by 2 marshmallows.

Here is the gang giving the Marshmallow Shooters a go!

And then after lunch, to get the kids calmed down, we played a game of Star Wars Bingo.

And we finished off our Jedi Training by having the kids search through the Asteroids to find clues for a secret message. Once they found all the letters, they had to work together to decode it - which was "May The Force Be With You" This decoding message was found on the Star Wars website under activites. I just changed it to a group activity by cutting up the letters and hiding them in the tinfoil (asteroids).

Once they decoded the Asteroid Hunt message, they became Jedi and got to pick their lightsaber - yes, I had a few choose the "dark side" red lightsabers. I made these out of a ice cube tray mold. Worked awesome! Then I just added the tinfoil at the bottom to make it look like a lightsaber.

Happy 7th Birthday my lil Jedi

(and I have no idea why, but he threw on this piece of tinfoil on his head right as we were bringing the cake over -silly boy!)

The goodie bags ready to go.

Here's what I packed in there - Aside from their Marshmallow shooters & and extra pack of mini marshmallows, there were Star Wars coloring books at Michaels for $1.50 each, a sour skittles light up spray candy (a total hit!) and some star wars hard candy, and a jedi fighter plane(not really, just a plane from the dollar store) and a laser writer (well, a cheapie dollar store write and erase pad) and they each got 2 star wars puffy stickers (walmart - 2 sheets for appox $3) and of course, their Jedi Certificate.

You can find the original idea and link in my previous post - Jedi Certificates.

Then as thank you cards, I printed out a group shot as the card and inserted an individual pic of each child it was going to and a thanks for the gift.

Thanks for stopping in and checking out my Star Wars Laser Tag Birthday Party.

May The Force Be With You!

Star Wars Party - DIY "Jedi" Marshmallow Shooters

2011-08-14T19:10:00.000-07:00

I can't decide who these are more fun for, the kids or us! They really work, and they can really fling out those mini marshmallows!

I decided on making some of these because they were cost efficient and it doubled as a game and as a take home for the goodie bag. Because I'm having my son's Star Wars Party at the LaserTag field, I thought it would be nice to have a couple of Star Wars themed games that were easy to bring and set up without alot of fuss. This fit the bill.

- Marshmallow "Jedi" Shooters" - Shoot Darth Maul, Darth Vadar & The Storm Troopers.

We are going to set up some buckets on their side at varying distances and get the kids to shoot their "mallows" at the bad guys.

Here's the link of a you tube video that I checked out to make these marshmallow shooters:
you tube marshmallow shooter video
Making ours, we got our length of PVC pipe, and cut them down into the sizes we needed - 4-3inch, 1-4inch, and 1-5inch for one gun.

Then you need your connectors - T's, elbow and end caps (the smooth kind) and all your sizes of pipe. We needed enough to make 9 big guns and 2 smaller shooters for the lil ones. Just push together (don't glue them - you'll need to be able to open them up if you get a soggy marshmallow stuck in the pipe)

Here's out diagram of the big shooter we made.

The boys on a rainy day practising with the small shooters. They love them!!!

Have fun and thanks for checking in. Have a great day!

Jedi Training Academy Certificate

2011-08-06T22:13:00.000-07:00

Ok, so a HUGE shout-out to Jessica G for posting this awesome Jedi Academy Certificate!!! I was able to copy her link and paste out her son's name and insert mine in the corner. It now says : "Thank you for attending Caleb's 7th Birthday Party." Oh, and I adjusted the year from 2009 to 2011 too, I included the blank one here, if anyone wants it...but if for some reason, my link doesn't work, here is Jessica G's : Jedi Certificate

This is so great! Ready to use, free, and the symbol almost totally matches my "Official Jedi Seal" that I used on my invitation letter. I printed up a bunch of these to give all the kiddos at the end of the party with their goodie bags.

May the Force Be With You!...and thanks for stopping by. Up next... DIY Marshmallow Shooters - OH YAH!!!!

Jedi Birthday Invitation Ticket

2011-08-05T16:05:00.000-07:00

Hey All!

Here comes another round of August birthdays!

My son is turning 7 and he LOVES Star Wars right now! And as much as I'd love to have an at home party with lots of Star Wars themed games and movies and other fun stuff...I am exhausted! We've had such a busy summer so far and I've had little to none planning time - so we've decided to go for a Laser Tag Birthday (in a round-about way, it's kinda Star Wars-y) We are fortunate to have a place that does outside laser tag parties, so we are giving that a shot, something a little different that the usual inside laser tag - its an Alien Invasion!

That all said, I'm thankful I took the time before school let out and worked on his invitations. I knew he wanted Star Wars and I loved the ticket invitations that I was seeing all over the net, so I sat down with my Microsoft Word Program and designed his "tickets" and a little letter to go with it. Here's what I came up with:
.The ticket was alot easier than I thought it would be - it was just figuring out how to put it all together. Alot of adding text boxes, with and without colors/fills and then adding the picture. The "stub" part of the ticket doesn't tear off or anything, I just added a dotted line, but I thought it looked pretty good. The barcode came from my clipboard, punching in "barcodes" and then I just added another text box on top with "Calebs Seventh Birthday" at the bottom of it.

For the letter, I googled Star Wars Seals and found a bunch done by someone on the Star Wars Official Website, so I copied it, altered it slightly and turned it into the background for an official looking letter.

Then I placed both in a simple letter sized envelope, sealed with the official Jedi Council Seal again, and on the front, this picture of Yoda - saying "Master Yoda has an important message for you..."

Thanks for checking in - Stay Tuned for more Jedi/Laser Tag Birthday ideas and crafts...

Busy Busy Summer and Birthdays to Come!

2011-08-02T14:59:00.000-07:00

Hello All!
Hope the summer has been good to you so far! Ours has been great, but I've neglected my poor lil' blog. We've been camping, visiting friends and even hit up Disneyland! Whooo-hooo! We had a great time, but now it's time to stay around home and plan for the many birthdays that are in August. Not just mine & my 2 boys, but a few friends too.

So the previews to come will be my son's 7th Star Wars Laser Tag Birthday Party and my other son's 4th Candyland Party. I'm keeping it pretty simple this year because it's just been so busy...and I want to do a little backyard bbq for my own birthday, which I haven't really celebrated in about - hmmmm...maybe 7 or 8 years. So simple stuff to throw together to still make a fun theme party - yay!

Stay Tuned for Jedi Ticket Invitations up next!

Rainy Day Printable Fun & Tutorial

2011-05-09T08:52:00.000-07:00

Hey Everyone!
Have I mentioned that I love free printable crafts? If you haven't figured it out ~ I totally do! And with a little help from my laminator, which I also LOVE, I get great, fun, interesting crafts that will actually last awhile.

While surfing around looking for ideas for the Strawberry Shortcake party, I came across this website -HP.com Create. It has sooo many cool printables (and of course they do - they want you to use up your ink so that you will spend more money on more ink -haha!).

But I spent the weekend playing around & printed out a ton anyway (while reminding myself that I really don't use my printer for much else & it's saving me from buying more craft paper) just to check out how easy some of the crafts were. I thought I would share a few of my favs that would be great to pass the time on a rainy day or you're in need for some quick and cute party decorations.

There's a cool Kung Fu Panda 2 board game (and Shrek & Monsters vs Aliens)

and remember these? I called them fortune tellers, but apparently they are cootie catchers.

and Lunch Box Notes ~ which is great for me since I send jokes in my son's lunch everyday. Now I have special note paper for the days when maybe he's feeling a bit down or something.

And these are so cute! I wish I had a girl. These were part of the Fairy Party Package. They are fairy wands, but I thought they made a really neat paper flower bouquet.

And there's even some great educational worksheets and flashcards!

And now my most favorite find! These super awesome Origami Flowers. If you don't feel like checking on the HP website, I thought I'd include my own photo tutorial.

Get any 5X5 piece of paper. Fold in half, printed side down, into a triangle. Then fold both sides up into a diamond shape. Fold right side down, making sure to line it up with the edge beneath. Repeat other side. Flip the left side up to align with the top of the diamond shape. Insert finger into pocket and fold down. Remove finger and press section flat. Repeat other side. Fold back the top portion of the left side so that its level with the edge of the paper. Next, unfold that portion and tuck it behind the pocket. Repeat other side.

Take one triangle shape and fold upward, folding the shape in half. Repeat on other side. Apply glue (or double sided tape) to one side edge and adhere to the opposite side to form a cone.

Repeat steps to make a total of 5 petals. Now you can create your flower. Glue the inside edge of petal and adhere to another. Continue until all petals are glued/taped together...and Voila! You have your cool origami flower!!!

There are also instructions to make a stem, but I kinda liked them sitting around for decoration, or putting a bunch of them into a bowl for a nice splash of color.

Hope you have as much fun as I did playing with these crafts! Have a spectacular day!

Strawberry Shortcake 1st Birthday

2011-05-07T21:09:00.001-07:00

Its a First Birthday Celebration!

Friends of mine have a sweet lil girl turning ONE year old and since they are in the process of moving into a new home (meaning they are between houses while they wait for the possession date of their new house), we held the party here at Casa de la MommaBee!

Another good friend, and super CRAZY creative party girl, Heather over at twindragonflydesigns co-hosted the party with me & joined in the food & party decorating fun. She designed a beautiful tablescape & made some SUPER yummy snacks! Stay tuned and check out her blog for more pics of this party soon!

So the theme we were going with was Strawberry Shortcake - it's cute, it's girly, it's pink and it was FUN! What a great change of pace from all the boy birthday parties I usually get to throw! Door GreeterSome really quick and easy decorations. I found the frame at strawberryshortcake.com and then printed out a pic of the b-day girl and laminated the 2 together. Then I printed out some coloring pages of Strawberry & friends and colored them in and laminated as well. Another great find at strawberryshortcake.com - it's a super cute free printable game - Put the Strawberry in the Basket. I laminated them and we can write the kids names on the berries. Happy Birthday Banner

I made these out of the above game and then circle punched the letters out and pasted on the berries (and laminated...hmmmm, I think I love my laminator too much?!) Ok, I LOVE these origami flowers that I found while researching decor ideas. Stay tuned for more about these! They didn't really go with the color theme, but they were too cute, I HAD to find a place for them!*PS - see all those Strawberry Shortcake books? They are actually mine from when I was a girl! I guess I always figured I would have lil girls of my own, but nope - all boys! And even though my guys will let me read these to them, they aren't a favorite, so it was nice to give these books a little extra use.

Party Hat (found again at the Strawberry Shortcake website - they just have everything!!)

Part of the awesome tablescape - I got busy and didn't get pics of the whole thing, but head over to Heathers blog for more & better pics! You must check out her sweet "thank you" goodie bags and cupcakes - great job & I missed getting individual pics of them :(

Heres my favorite lemon scones found here making another appearance, just with a thicker icing this time around. And a Strawberry Lemonade Punch in the background.

Recipe for Strawberry Lemonade Punch:
2 cans pink lemonade, frozen concentrate
1/2 can orange juice, frozen concentrate
1 Litre ginger ale
1 package sliced frozen strawberries, slightly thawed
mix the pink lemonade and orange juice with 3 cans of water and add the slightly thawed strawberries; add gingerale right before serving. Can also add some fresh strawberries to garnish (they will float at the top,while the frozen kind of sink to the bottom)

Strawberry Shortcake cookies, mini fruit kabobs, and Heather's yummy Strawberry Tarts

Recipe for Strawberry Shortcake Cookies:
original found Martha Stewart *i halved my batch to make about 18 cookies

1 cup diced strawberries
1/2 tsp fresh lemon juice
1/4 cup + 1 Tbsp sugar
1 cup flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3 Tbsp cold, unsalted butter, cut into small pieces
1/3 cup heavy or whipping cream
sanding sugar for sprinkling *I didn't have any, so you can see there is none on mine. They turned out fine, they just weren't as sparkly and pretty as the original.

Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees F
Line baking sheets with parchment paper and set aside
In a small bowl, combine strawberries, lemon juice and 1 Tbsp sugar & set aside.
In a large bowl, whisk together flour, b.powder, salt and remaining 1/4 cup of granulated sugar.
Cut in the butter into dry ingredients until it resembles coarse crumbs.
Stir in the cream until the dough starts to come together, then stir in the strawberry mixture just until combined. (if you mix too much, your dough will get a bit pink) *you may want to add the strawberry mixture slowly - i found the dough got to be too wet, so i had to add in a bit more flour. you could leave out a bit of the juice mix.
Drop the dough onto the parchment about 2 Tbsp's full. Sprinkle with sanding sugar, if desired.
Bake until golden about 20-25 minutes.

The Birthday girl, full of cake and having a great time!

Hope you had a good time checking out our collabrated party & get inspired for your own!

Thanks for stopping by!

Jedi Fun

2011-04-26T08:15:00.000-07:00

Ok, If you have boys, you'll need to check these out at Starwars.com, if you haven't already!

-Star Wars Printable Masks!-

My boys are way into Star Wars right now and they LOVE to dress up and play. This was an expensive way to get them into "costume." I just printed out the masks I wanted and then laminated (if you don't have one, its still totally worth taking them to a print shop to get them done!)

These masks keep them busy for hours and they have a ton of imaginative play time fun! (Even I get in on the Star Wars action now and again!)

The top masks are the super good ones - they fit great and are ready to print - check them out here here . The bottom ones are ok, some are just too small/big. You'll have to play around with your printer settings to make them fit better, but still...free and fun. Check them here and here
*Update - I had some linking issues, but it looks like I've got the right links now

So have fun ... and May the Force Be With You!!!

Lollipop Garden Revealed

2011-04-25T20:53:00.000-07:00

From Jellybeans to Lollipops!
The Easter Bunny delivered. Those "magic" jellybeans we planted a couple weeks ago grew into an array of Lollipops for the kids Easter morning...and the kids LOVED it!!! They are already planning to do it again next year.

(Forgive the quality of pics - it was quite sunny out and I had to snap the pics quickly as the kids were really picking them fast!)

But here are the kids picking their Lollis (and thank goodness they never even questioned why they were all wrapped up *phew*)

Here's the fruit of their labours - haha!

The great Easter Magic transformation - jellybeans to lollipops!

Hope you all had a great weekend!

Easter Game

2011-04-24T06:51:00.000-07:00

I found this super cute Peter Cottontail game at the Kaboose website and thought it might be a fast and easy new game/craft to do with the kids.
We often will make up little gameboards and play and the kids love our homemade ones as much as some store bought ones. But this one was great ...cute, pre-made & ready to go - instructions and all!
All I had to do was print the game board and game pieces out. Then I mounted the game board on a heavier piece of cardstock and laminated it with the instructions printed out on the back. And then I just cut out some cardstock/foam egg pieces and wrote numbers on them, front and back.

We play a couple of different ways. Sometimes we will play colors, like Candy Land, but mostly we use it to practice adding & counting. With my 3 year old, we use the smaller numbers on 2 eggs: 0,1,2,3 and he practices adding them and moving his piece that many spaces. With my 6 year old, we use higher numbers and with 3 eggs.

And sometimes when the boys play by themselves, they think its hilarious to play with all the eggs and move 15 spaces at a time. Big bro helps little bro - what a great simple game for teamwork, sharing and learning together - who knew?! And Easter/Spring themed to boot - whoo-hoo!

Hippity-Hop, Almost there to Peter Cottontail!

Thanks for stopping by & hope you have fun hippity-hopping your way down the Easter trail!

Easter Cupcakes

2011-04-23T16:18:00.000-07:00

Cupcakes, cupcakes,cupcakes...and one more Easter goodie.
There's so many choices of really cool Easter cupcake ideas out there that its so hard to choose just one to use, so I figured instead, I would just try out 3 different ones (all images from the "Taste of Home Cupcakes for every season" booklet). I went with a carrot cake cupcake (my choice), and a confetti cake (my 3 year olds pick). I decided to make some of the designs into mini cupcakes instead of full sized ones so my lil ones don't get sugar overload. It seemed to work just fine. I went with a cute bunny face, an Easter basket, and cute carrot design.

One tip I found really helpful, especially when filling mini cupcake pans, is to put a ziplock bag in a cup, fill, then seal the bag (squeezing out excess air) and then snip a corner of your ziplock bag and fill away. A lot less mess and easier (at least for me) to measure out the proper amount of batter into each cup. So I did this as I started my first round of cupcakes - the Easter Baskets.

Then I got my trusted handy dandy helper to make the coconut green (I love cooking with my kiddos!) I felt a little sorry for him though, because I only use the gel food coloring, and with this, he had to do A LOT of mushing & mixing. And then, once he tasted it, he decided he didn't like any coconut on his cupcakes. *sigh* oh well, too late now!

Then put a layer of icing on your cupcake and dip into the green coconut.

To finish, you can either use jellybeans, which totally look so cute, or if you are choco-holic like me, use mini-eggs (I used poppin candy mini-eggs)
Then put a string of red licorice for the basket handle, or leave off - both are cute.

This bunny face cupcake was a much bigger hit for both my kids. No coconut for my 3 year old and gum ears for my 6 year old - cupcake and gum, Yay!

For doing the "fur" just pipe around the outside, going around and around toward the centre, like this

Then add whatever kind of candy you'd like for eyes, nose & mouth. (i couldve done brown icing piped for the mouth, but I was feeling a little lazy, so I just took some chocolate sprinkles instead)
*Tip - using gum for ears was super cute, but unfortunatly they are only good if you are serving them the same day you make them. Mine sat out overnight and soaked up the moisture from the icing and then the pink in the gum started to run into the white icing - ACK! I shouldve known better! Next time I will use melting chocolate and make white chocolate ears instead!

Here's a few of the finished baskets and bunnies:

For the carrot muffin, I pretty much followed the recipe as per the "Taste of Home Cupcake For Every Season" book. It was a spice cake that you add shredded carrots, chopped walnuts & a bit of cinnamon to. Y-U-double M-Y! Then I piped a carrot on the front, and made use of my green coconut for the top of the carrot.
Funny enough, without the kids knowing what kind of cake each cupcake was, they both choose this carrot one. I guess there's something to be said for simple and cute! The bunnies, which were wayyyy more labour intensive were never a first choice. Huh?! Good to know!

And the one more...
this way just going to be a post on some cupcakes, but I made these Lemon-to-die-for-Scones...and O.M.Gosh I had to share. You will find the recipe here at Family Fun , and seriously check it out! I rarely find a recipe I love that I want to alter into many more beloved recipes. Usually I just stayed tried and true, but this one...well this one has got me thinking of lemon blueberry scones, white chocolate raspberry or cranberry, orange....oh YUM...

Thanks for stopping by!

Stickered Easter Eggs

2011-04-22T08:24:00.000-07:00

These blown-out eggs are so cool, I can't believe I never tried them before! A really easy fast way to dress up your eggs for a simple table decoration. Put the sticker of choice on, quick dip in the egg dye, set out to dry, remove sticker and done! You're left with a cool design with minimal effort. I even 2-toned a couple of mine. I first dyed them a light green, dried them, put the sticker on and put in yellow dye until it looked like the green was gone. So Fab!

Get your stickers of choice. I found these scrapbook border stickers (pretty design, but they didn't stick well

These other scrapbooking stickers I had hiding away worked MUCH better! They were kinda plastic-y, so I think it stopped the water from soaking through.

After you sticker 'em, give them a dunk in the dye (I used 1 cup warm/hot water, 1 tsp vinegar, and a bit of gel coloring. I found I didn't need to have them dunked for very long with the gels - maybe a minute or two only.

Easy-Peasy! Here's my finished basket of Stickered Easter Eggs!

Happy Egg Decorating!

Pinecones for Spring

2011-04-21T06:27:00.000-07:00

Another great Spring Activity to do with the kids...

Making Pinecone Birdfeeders!

Head out for a walk & find some nice big pinecones, get some shortening & some birdseed

Coat in the lard/shortening/suet

And roll really well in the birdseed!

Let the lil one get their hands nice and messy!

All covered...well, maybe one more handful just to make sure...

All Done!

There it is! Proud Boy!

Here's my attempt at an "Easter Egg" Bird Seed Pinecone...

Have fun & enjoy your Spring Day! The birds will thank you for it :)

Meatball Poppers Re-visited...

2011-04-20T17:53:00.000-07:00

These are so yummy that I made them again this week...and this time I took pictures, so I figured I would post again. Enjoy!

First, you need a can of Pilsbury Crescent Rolls, some Meatballs, and some Grated Cheese.

When you unroll the crescent rolls, don't seperate into triangles. Keep in the rectangles and cut into strips. One can will give you 12 strips. Spray mini muffin pan with cooking spray and line with crescent dough. Put in one meatball...

Sprinkle with cheeses...or not...but I recommend it - Yummy!

Then fold, kind of wonton like, so that there are vent holes for the steam

And cook in a 350 degree oven for 12-18 minutes until golden brown....and done!

Kid tested...

Kid Approved!

Especially when your kids love to take their food apart a layer at a time to eat it - haha!

Thanks for looking!

Easter? Kid Crafts

2011-04-14T08:21:00.000-07:00

Continuing with the week of Easter crafts - I decided to try out the art of puffy painting! I've had the kids bring home this kind of craft from their preschools, but sadly, have never attempted to do it with them, so here goes...1/2 cup of glue + a cup of shaving cream = nice slathery foamy paint

Next, choose what kind of picture to paint. My youngest wanted a bunny rabbit for his Easter pictureAll Done!!!

My oldest said he didn't want to make a picture, he just wanted to play Star Wars (he's going thru a Star Wars obsession right now!) but when he sawthe fun his brother was having, he changed his mind. But he REALLY didn't want to make a bunny, so I suggested something from Star Wars. And knowing that I was going to be the one who would have to trace it out, I took the easy option and suggested Jabba the Hut. Well...he was all over that idea! ...but he needed me to make sure I added food coloring to make it as close as possible! Sheesh! but ok, I did it (good enough - phew!) and here he goes... K, I don't know if that looks too much like Jabba - but c'mon, he's a big slug like thing. But as long as C thinks he does, it's all good :)

So much fun doing one, why not make it 2 pictures??!!

Can you venture a guess at what this is supossed to be? It's...YODA!

I thought I did alright, but then C says to me, "Yah, yah, That's ok. I don't think I couldve done better than that." I'm still not sure if that's a compliment or not...he's 6 - haha!

He couldn't have Yoda be the same color as Jabba, so we needed to add in more green ;) And then we added googly eyes to them all and put them out in the sun to dry and puff up!

Fun, fun, fun! Till next time...

Home Shopping Party

2011-04-13T07:41:00.000-07:00

A Shop at Home Party!

I love these for so many reasons - the ease of shopping at my house (or friend's house), a nice reason to get-together with the girls, its a reason to have a party, seeing/learning about something new, and did I mention shopping yet?

I just threw one on the weekend for Scentsy - a candle-less burner. Love it! My gal-pal just started out selling them, so I jumped on the bandwagon to be her first party. I couldn't really theme it up, afterall, the emphasis should be on the product, but I still got a chance to make some yummy nibblies. So for anyone who's hosting a home party - these were some easy, no fuss things to make that were a hit! I made a nice blueberry punch (again found on my handy "Pocket Cocktails" app. - love it!)
* its originally called October Blood Punch, but i see it more versatile than that. Its kinda spa-like
9 oz red grape juice
18 oz pomegranate juice ( i used pomegranate - blueberry)
9 oz gingerale (i used a tad bit more, and made it diet gingerale)
1/2 cup fresh blueberries Then I just made up an easy 3-tiered tray of goodies - tiny fruit kabobs, cherry cupcakes, ham & cheese tortilla rolls & meatball poppers (not shown) I love fruit ka-bobs anyway, but I love these mini ones even more. So easy to grab and nibble! Ok, kinda cheated on my cupcakes. But I needed simple and fast! Don't judge me please :)
So I used a plain ol store bought french vanilla cake and vanilla frosting to go with it, but I punched it up a bit by filling the cupcakes with cherry pie filling and topping with a cute lil maraschino cherry. I have to admit - they were YUM, and were kinda better than some of my homemade cupcakes.

I didn't get a good pic of the ham & cheese tortilla wraps, but they were pretty basic. Just slapped on some mayo and dijon mustard, 3 slices of ham and a nice shredded cheese mix, rolled them up, secured with small skewers and ta-da! And I have to mention, my kids loved them sooo much, I had to make them again for my eldest son's lunch the next day!

And I didn't even get a chance to get a pic of the meatball poppers - they went sooo fast! I just used thawed, pre-cooked mini meatballs, pilsbury crescent rolls, and some shredded cheese mix. Here's how I made them: I rolled out the crescent rolls, pressed together the seams and cut into small rectangles, layed each piece in a mini muffin pan, with sides laying over the edge (so that you can wrap up the meatball). I put a meatball in the centre and sprinkled with cheeses and wrapped up, almost like a won ton on top (I wanted to make sure the hot steam could vent out) I only got 3 of them out of 24, but I would totally make them again too! And so easy! I premade them and then just popped them in the oven 15 min before people came over.

Here's my Scentsy Warmer, which I am sooo in Love with!

I put it on all day - good smells and by night, its just a beautiful candle lit lantern (except without the candle) I Love it! Here's a few of my Scentsy goodies, bought before my party - Room Spray, Scent Bars & Foaming Hand Sanatizer. Wait till ya see all that I ended up buying! Can't wait to get them and try out all the wonderful smells!!!! MMMMMMmmmmm! Thanks for stopping in - have a relaxing day!!!

Hoppin' Down the Bunny Trail...

2011-04-12T13:18:00.000-07:00

Guess Who's On Its Way??? ... Why it's Mr. Peter Cottontail!

Ahhhh Easter! Another holiday I love to craft by.

Egg hunts, Spring, Chocolate - whats not to love?

I've been trying to think of some fun Spring/Easter activities to do with the kids, other than the typical dying the easter eggs & egg hunt. I happened across this fabulously cute idea - A Lollipop Garden! A week before Easter (so pretty soon - now, in our case), I will take my kids outside to our little fenced off garden and get them to plant these "special" jellybeans.

They are to keep them watered, and if they've done their job right, when Easter morning comes, lollipops will grow. (meaning I run outside early in the morning and "transplant" the lollis in the garden.) Of course, I will have to tell them that they need the final touch of the Easter Bunny magic to make them grow in to lollipops. I don't want a garden full of jellybeans all year long! So here they are planting their magic jellybeans in hopes to grow a lollipop garden:

On his way to plant in the garden

Spooning one up...

And about to get buried...

Planting some more...

My oldest really got into it. He made sure that he didn't clump them all together and gave them a good watering. My youngest decided that he only wanted to plant them, not water them. Hmmm, I wonder who's going to get the bigger lollipops??!!

Stay Tuned on their progress! Thanks for stopping by!

Girl's Bunco Night Recipes

2011-04-06T09:12:00.000-07:00

Food & Drink in Black, White & Red...

I had a specific color theme in mind for my girls party, so I tried really hard to keep the food within the theme colors. Often the tablescape really sets the scene for your party, especially if you are lacking in alot of other decor. While great in theory...it can be kind of hard when you are also looking for a specific type of food - like finger foods and are a little bit of a picky eater, which I am.

Candy was easy, but also forgiving because the majority of it was on the card tables where we were playing and not on the main food table. I put out Red Swedish Berries (a favorite of mine), Red Nibs (also could've done black licorice - but I don't care for it & didn't want to have wasted candy lying around after the party) & just had to have different kinds of M&M's (I suppose I could've picked out the colors, but really...they're M&Ms! They were going staight into our mouths anyway - yum yum!) Other than those, I also put out some chips - a munchie mix, and a trail mix with cranberries (for the red color) But candy is always a nice filler for your decor - an array of colors to add to your theme, no shortage of it, its easy-peasy, and they are yummy too. Just find vases, decorative bowls, or even just sprinkle on the table for a quick and simple (did I mention Yummy?!)decoration.

Next was a couple of signature drinks (this was fun to taste test! whoop whoop!) I really, really wanted a red drink of some kind. I thought about going staight for a favorite - a strawberry daiquiri or magarita, but I decided I didn't want to be running around blending drinks all night. I wanted something that I could make ahead. Solution?....Martinis. I just found a recipe I like, tweaked it a bit, a make a giant pitcher that I threw into the fridge - Voila! Made & Chilled! No need for the shaker either. Here's what I came up with:

French Martini
1 3/4 oz raspberry vodka
3/4 oz chambord *
3 oz pineapple juice
3 raspberries to garnish
*tip - go with the much more expensive, real Chambord! A guy in the liquor store once told me that the Marie Brizard Framboise Raspberry was the same...it is so so sooooo NOT the same. Shame on me for not doing a little research, but lesson learned. Want the good drink? Sometimes ya gotta splurge. (however...if anyone knows differently, please share, I'd love to find a cheaper alternative )

Then I needed a second option, something alot different tasting than the French Martini. It was a little more difficult this time around because the colors I was left with (Black or White) didn't offer much for choices. A girlfriend talked about a Chocolate Martini, and although yummy sounding, I had already spent a bit on good liquor for the other drink, so I was also looking for cheap. Then I came across a Bellini-tini on my handy dandy "Pocket Cocktails" for my Iphone. So ok, it wasn't black or white, but it was clear...neutral...and I already had the ingredients in my liquor cabinet from our Halloween Party - YAY!!! This was my total fav of the night too!! YUM!

Bellini-tini
1 3/4 oz Vodka
3/4 oz peach schnapps
3 oz white cranberry juice peach slice or maraschino cherry for garnish.
*( I used the cherry, of course & just dropped it in down to the bottom of the martini)

Then Cupcakes. Easy, I didn't do alot with these - just store bought cake mixes and then made my own filling for the centres, and one store bought frosting and one homemade. I went with a regular devils food cake recipe and spiced it up a big with a white chocolate filling. YUM!

White Chocolate Filling (original from Emeril Lagasse recipe found here ) *so this is a halved recipe - I found it was just enough filling for one cake mix worth of mini cupcakes)
2 oz white chocolate, chopped
1/8 cup milk (I used skim cuz thats all I drink & it turned out fine)
2 oz cream cheese
1/8 tsp pure vanilla extract
In the top of a double boiler, combine the white chocolate & milk. Bring to a simmer and cook, stirring, until the chocolate is melted. Let cool to room temp.
In a bowl, beat the cream cheese & vanilla. Gradually add the cooled chocolate and beat until smooth. Chill in the refrigerator for 2 hours before filling cupcakes.

Then a vanilla cake with a lemon filling. I tried a lemon icing recipe as well, but the texture was all wrong & and it was a bit too tart, but it would make a wonderful filling. So for the rest of the lemon-filled vanilla cupcakes, I just used a basic store bought vanilla frosting. Those were yum!

Lemon Curd Filling (found here ) I would suggest that if you are just using this for filling for mini cupcakes, to split the recipe in half, otherwise you are left with a bunch. But it won't go to waste if you don't, its great on toast, spooned on top of fresh berries, or another dessert topping.

I didn't want everything to be sweet and unhealthy, so I knew I needed to add veggies (here's where the color scheme fell apart a little) I'm not a tomato-by-itself fan, so I went with old standbys that I love - carrots (cut into smaller stick carrots) cucumbers (which i seriously almost carved into little spade/heart shapes) celery (also cut into little sticks) and pea pods. But to make up for the unmatched colors, I made a Sun Dried Tomato Dip recipe. And on the same platter, I threw out a few cubed cheese and pepperonis, just for something fast and easy to grab. Sun Dried Tomato Dip
1/4 (or a little less if you prefer) sundried tomato
4 oz cream cheese
1/4 cup sour cream
1/8 cup real mayonnaise
1 clove garlic, minced
salt and pepper to taste (I use about 1/2 tsp)
1 tbsp fresh basil, chopped finely
Beat all ingredients, except basil, together until well-blended. Add basil, and mix until smooth. Chill about 2 hrs before serving

Bruschetta was my next choice - yum! I know, weird I'm not a tomato fan, but I love the dip and I love bruschetta. I just toasted up the baguettes about an hour before the party and set them out on a platter with the bruschetta mix in a bowl with a spoon. I never did it that way before, but it was still really good!

Bruschetta
1 thin baguette, cut into slices. -lightly brush olive oil on slices and if desired, sprinkle a little garlic powder and parmesean cheese on top. Toast in a 350 degree oven for about 5-10 minutes (mine took about 15) until tops are slightly browned.
4 tomatoes, cut into small pieces ( used 2 roma & 2 hot house)
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp chopped fresh basil (or could use parsley)
salt & pepper to taste

I added some chocolate dipped strawberries, drizzled with some white chocolate and there you go. Some nice, simple, yet decorative & yummy girls nite goodies.

Hope you enjoy! Thanks for checking in.

Girls Game Night

2011-03-13T19:54:00.000-07:00

Bunco, Bunko - whichever way you spell it - its FUN FUN FUN!!! I was in need of a good get together with the girls, and I thought what was better than getting together and playing a new game? So Bunco was decided, and I threw together a Bunco Bling Party on Friday. None of the girls had played before, so it was great learning together and having a blast! We all had some seriously sore cheeks from all the laughs!

Good Times for sure!

Check out some party decor:

the invites

Head Table setup

and the low table

The Food Table some drink tags I made

Garnish Raspberries - yum!

French Martinis

Bellini-tini

Bruschetta

Water Bottle Tags holding some Crystal Light Singles packs

Bottles of Water

Pepperoni/Cheese and Veggie & Sundried Tomato Dip Platter

Chocolate Dipped Strawberries

3 types of Cupcakes: Chocolate with White Chocolate Filling & Chocolate Frosting, Vanilla with Lemon Filling & Frosting & Vanilla with Lemon Filling and Vanilla Frosting

So hope you enjoyed - I highly recommend giving Bunco Night a try if you haven't already - what a blast! I would totally do it again!

Recipes from this party to come soon...

LOVE is in the AIR...

2011-02-14T08:20:00.000-08:00

Happy Love Day Everyone!

Here I thought I was so prepared yesterday and whipped up some Valentine Treaties, and then my hubby gets up a little early and made some heart pancakes with strawberries (shaped like hearts - I know, right?!) and whipped cream.

I'm pretty sure these blow out my scones and homemade poptarts out of the water. The boys smelled the bacon (which we dont have often in our house) all the way upstairs and knew they were gettin something yummy for breakie. Look how the boys devoured them! They even managed to have enough time for seconds before heading off for school.

And...I have to mention cuz I think its funny, he broke out the good dinnerware, and they crystal glasses for the kids(filled with their raspberry orange juice, of course). Ha ha! Nothing like a "formal" pancake breakfast! Ithink he's trying to make up for having to work tonite -my sweet hubby ;)

Have a LOVE-ly day everyone!

Valentine Treats

2011-02-13T21:56:00.000-08:00

For my main man and my little men, I wanted to whip up a few V-day treaties (all festively heart shaped, of course). Unfortunately it's busy mornings around here with getting the kids off to school and play school, but I wanted to have a little morning surprise tomorrow anyways, so I whipped off these YUMMY cranberry orange scones - thanks to Heather over at Dragonfly Designs for her recipe from her awesome Mad Hatter Party. They'll be great for a morning treat for my hubby with a nice cup of java (and myself too, of course)

But if they are craving something a little sweeter, then what could be better than a homemade pop tart - with thanks to Our Best Bites for this inspiration(recipe here) . Sooooo yummy, its hard not to eat them all up myself! And then to top it off, an afterschool treat of iced sugar cookies, a staple in my house for EVERY holiday.

Hope you all enjoy your day of LOVE tomorrow!

Love Is In The Air...

2011-02-09T09:53:00.000-08:00

Valentine's Cards...
Ok, so I've been feeling creatively stifled pre-February, but with V-Day coming, I found a renewed focus. What inspires more than the love of family? Love, love, love...Craft, craft, craft! My galpal, Heather over at Dragonfly Designs gave me a little extra inspiration with her Valentine's Gifts that she did with her boys - a very cool photo shoot! I love doing anything that I can get my boys involved with and since they always make cards for their daddy and my parents, I thought I would combine fun pictures into a card that could be displayed as well.

I made my card layouts - one for daddy and the other for the grandparents...

Then had to choose the poses from the boys (this was hard to pick but here they are!) ...

Layed them out onto the cardstock ...

And then folded and attached shut with paper hearts.

And gifts are done! A bonus for me is that after my husband is ready to pack away his card, I can easily take it apart and use the pictures in their scrapbook.

Happy Valentine Crafting!

Nifty Valentine's Craft

2011-02-08T15:20:00.000-08:00

Lucky Lotto - A Homemade Scratch Ticket...

So I know you can find these imitation scratch tickets at the dollar store now, or anywhere that sells "gag gifts" but seriously, to personalize your own? How cute is this?

A friend was telling me about these, that she was planning on making these for her son. She was going to make it like a treasure hunt for Valentine's Day, scratch, get the clue, etc. Such a great idea! She found them here: Family Fun - Scratch Tickets

And as soon as I took a look, I said OMG, I have to make these - sooo adorable. I had all these ideas of what I could do with them, but I figured for my trial run, I would just make them like the instructions said. (only I didn't use contact paper because I couldn't find it, but I used a roll of adhesive backed film, which was pretty much the same thing)

Here's what my batch looked like:

I painted my film with the metallic paint/dishwashing liquid mixture & let it dry. Then I traced out the heart shapes and cut them out. Then it was just peel & stick.

I embellished the tickets a little by coloring in the letters in the same metallic ink, added some cute little heart stickers, wrote my message and then covered it with the adhesive heart.

And here's my little tester trying it out to see if it works! Neato!

Now that I've done them, I would totally do them again, but more personalized. Get on the computer and print out everything on the ticket, rather than handwrite the messages, and throw in some clip art to jazz it up - Cuteness!

Thanks for stopping in!

Buggy Valentines

2011-02-07T15:21:00.000-08:00

Preschool Gifties...
Found these adorable Valentine's at Skip To My Lou. I'm going to make these for my son's preschool class. I wanted something simple, fast and cute - and these totally fit the bill! At Skip to My Lou, she already has the template for you to print out (what's easier than that..and did I mention cute?) So I printed them out & then doubled them up so that there was 4 to a page and printed out on my shiney red paper & cut out.

The Sentiment all around the wings...How great when you don't know all the kid's names in the preschool class (in ours, there's drop in spaces, so who knows who will be there)
Adding the red lollipop...
With mine, instead of a round ball lolli, I used a flat one and I made little heart "heads" and then added the googly eyes...
Next, some stickers and a few more embellishments, and Voila!

Here's the basket of Valentine Buggy Butterflies

It took a little bit of time cutting out each butterfly, but I saved a ton of time on the heart heads with my girlfriend's cricut machine (cricut. cricut, how I love thee...!!!! I really need to get me one of those - ooohh the things I could do!)

thanks for checking in...happy heart month!

Cool Craft for the Week

2011-02-07T14:00:00.001-08:00

Homemade Magic 8-Ball...

A girlfriend of mine sent this idea to me from the website Family Fun - they called it Oracle of Love (for Valentine's Day) She said that her son LOVED it and used it everyday, so I thought that I would give it a go. And I am totally not disappointed! It was so easy and fun to do with both my boys. The only change I made was in not making it into a Valentine Craft. Instead of making the hearts to write the answers on, I left it as a dice.

My youngest can't get enough of it! He asks it question after question, and he waits patiently for me to tell him what the "Magic Dice" says and then roars with laughter and then does it all over again.

Ask a Question...

Shake, shake, shake....

Get Your Answer & LAUGH LAUGH LAUGH!!!

If you love this, you might also like "A Homemade Valentine Scratch Ticket" from the same website, also a suggestion from the same friend. We're just finishing it up, so watch out for deets later this week. You won't be disappointed - very easy and super cute!

December Catchup

2011-01-24T12:10:00.000-08:00

I figured for this entry, I would just bunch all the little crafty things me and the kids did this December since I'm so behind. It's mostly an array of baking, icing and decorating, but a few crafty ideas thrown in as well. Enjoy!

Christmas Craziness!

Present Idea:

I always have a little trouble thinking of something to get my Dad for Christmas, and an even harder time for the kids to get him, so this year we decided to do something crafty. My 6 year old son and I bought one of those calendar kits from Michaels and got to work over several weeks. I would pick out the paper, and he would help me decide how to lay it out, then he would take a seperate piece of paper to either craft of draw a picture on it, then we would pick out embellishments together and Ta-Da! My dad loved it! (I did too - I almost didn't want to give it up!)

It was definately worth the time and effort to do this with my son. There was sooo much his personality in there, so of course I had to take a picture of all 12 months for myself. These were a few of my Favorites!

January's Snowflakes

He does better paper snowflakes than I do - he's got all this neat designs - definately not your regular triangle cutouts

I can't remember what month this was, June maybe, but I just thought it was so cute.

July's Fireworks

September's Apple Harvest
Our family and my parents go every year and pick apples. The kids love it!

December's Santa

Breaking up the Christmas Break Dulldrums:

Game time! I found this cool idea for making your own boardgame in the Chickadee (or Chirp) Magazine (can't remember exactly which one, we suscribe to both) So I brought out my craft stuff and sat down with the boys, and made this game board. We used Bendaroos to make the rings (so no big deal if they got lost) We got the dice free with some game tokens from an arcade place, and put some of my son's "pirate coins" in the set - voila! A new game.

When they've been extra good, we play with the gold CHOCOLATE COINS. The winner gets one chocolate - and of course we have to play multiple times so that everyone gets one. :) And for regular play, we just have fun with the fake coins. It's a great way to get my 3 year old practicing his counting. He can finally count out his spaces all by himself, so even just him and his brother can play by themselves. The Key - when you move onto one of these stickered spaces - follow these directions:

Party Food:
For a friend's Christmas party this year, we brought a cheese log for our contribution - My First Ever - and I have to say I was pleasantly surprised with the recipe we tried. I would definately make it again. It's so festive, no wonder its called "A Festive Apple-Cheese Log"
I found the recipe in the 2001 Taste of Home Annual Recipes cookbook. See recipe below.

1 pkg (8oz) cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup finely chopped tart apple
1/4 cup chopped pecans
1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
Additional chopped pecans, toasted
Vanilla wafers, sugar cookies, or asst crackers.

In a bowl, combine the cream cheese, apple, pecans, and cinnamon. Shape into a log; roll in toasted pecans. Cover and refrigerate. Remove from the fridge 20 minutes before serving. Serve with vanilla wafers, cookies or crackers.

Reindeer Food:

Christmas Eve, it's been tradition to sprinkle "Reindeer Food" on the ground for Santa's Reindeers. This was the first year my youngest son particpated, so I made them each their own bags filled with Oatmeal, Vanilla Rice Krispies, and colored sugars. I've made it in the past with glitter, but it sticks around forever, and I didn't want any animals to ingest the glitter, so this year, it's a little bit better.

The tags say "Magic Reindeer Food
Sprinkle on the lawn at night
The moon will make it sparkle bright
Santa's reindeer fly and roam
This will guide them to your home. "

"Run, run as Fast as You Can!"

Another first for me this year was making Gingerbread Men. I've bought the gingerbread house kits from Michaels, but this was the first attempt at homemade gingerbread. I used a friend's soft gingerbread recipe I got from a cookie exchange, so at least I would know it would be yummy! The kids had a blast decorating these. I filled a ziplock bag each for them, and they went to town. My oldest would've kept going and going, but we ran out of gingerbread men. My youngest, although he was loving it, only had enough attention span for one. He just wanted to get it out of the way so that he could start eating the icing straight out of the bag - haha!

I thought the boys did a pretty good job - the ziplock bags worked great for them! Not too messy at all - love it!
Our finished group - can you pick out the ones the kids did?

New Years Festive Dessert:
We were supposed to head out for New Years, but our oldest son had been sick on and off, fighting the flu, so we decided to forgo the babysitters and threw together an impromtu New Years Dinner. My hubby make Jerk Chicken Wings (Can you say YUM!!!) and I made cornbread, and my hubs whipped up a totally yummy bourbon butter, we had bacon wrapped sausages and other little nibblies. We got so busy with dinner, I almost forgot to make a little dessert. Luckily I had a cake mix in the cupboard, but I thought, how boring. So I hopped on the computer and flipped to one of my favorite recipe blogs - Our Best Bites and found these adorable cupcakes - Check them out here

I don't know what the kids liked better - the cupcakes or playing with the cool wrappers after - lol!

Thanks for checking out my late late catch up blog! Happy 2011 everyone!!!

Poor Neglected Blog...

2011-01-14T13:33:00.000-08:00

Wow - does time ever fly!!! I just realized I haven't checked in since Halloween - YIKES!!!

It has been a crazy couple of months for sure! By the time we got our Halloween stuff put away, it was time to get ready for Christmas, then New Years and the kids back to school from winter break. Add some computer crashes into the mix, and I guess I go almost 3 months without blogging :( I have some major catch up to do!

On my to do list, after re-installing all lost programs from said computer crash, bring out the camera and download ALL the Christmas, etc pictures I have been hoarding and dreading to finally download. Hey, I may even find a late blog subject there in some of those pics (its been so long, I can't remember what I have taken pics of)

So until the next blog, soon I hope, Happy Belated Christmas and New Years!!!

(Mmmm - New Year's Eggnog and Rum!!!)

Wishing you all the best in 2011 - thanks for checking out my blog!!!

Halloween Part 2

2010-11-15T19:20:00.000-08:00

The Outside Halloween Haunt!!!
Ok, finally got my pictures unloaded to my computer for you to check out our Outside Halloween Haunt! This is my husband's favorite. He loves setting up the cemetary and all the fun tricks that go off to scare the kids (and parents)...the talking animatronics, the screaming signs and such, the fog machines, the lights, so dramatic - so fun!

My 2 Dragons ready to go and do some Trick or Treating!!!

Front Entrance

The Witch's Display in the Daytime
(ok, this is where I got to do what I like - the little detailed stuff...we put this out last minute - it was a smaller version of what we had set up for the kids party)

My Lil Dragon

The Undertaker

I caught alot of people posing for pics with this guy, and and of course he chatted away at them while taking the pics....the flash kept setting him off - other wise it was too dark for him to be set off by motion sensor - we'll know to put a light or something on him next year.

The Spider Infestation Garage

A better look at the front of the house in the daytime.

Front of House - Daytime again

The Posters

I made these up last year, and we forgot to put them up, so yay this year! We Remembered! Gave the parents something to read while the kiddos were running up to the house. I can't remember where exactly I saw these orginally, but I think it might have been a Martha Stewart Website. I just re-created the sayings with pics I found on the internet.

Side of the House - Daytime

Side of the house - Daytime

Mausoleum in the daytime

The House at Dusk...Spooky!

The Entry Way

Front of House

(you can kinda make out the sillouette lampost we made this year)

Our Trick or Treaters

they almost didn't get made because we were running out of time, so I really quickly sketched them up and my hubby quickly cut them out - yay!!!! I'm glad we ended up getting them done..we just forgot to put a lantern in the witch's hand & a trick or treat basket in the ghost's hand - OOPS!!! well, there's always next year!

Scaredy Cat on the fence

(One of my favorites of this year's projects)

The giant rat with the glowing eye

(another sillouette project from this year)

Cryptkeeper

My Skeleton Project for this year...

too bad the green light shining on the tombstone made the pic turn out funny :( But you get the idea

Mausoleum at night

(the camera just couldn't do it justice)

The Witch's Display

The Mad Scientist window display

All Done Trick or Treating...Time to pose with the Witch!

Hope you had as much fun checking out this post as we did setting it all up! Until next year.....

Halloween 2010 Part 1

2010-11-07T15:38:00.000-08:00

Happy (belated) Halloween to all you Halloween Lovers out there!

Sorry that I'm so behind in my blog, but there seemed to be a whirlwind of halloween activity this year! We had a Family Halloween Scare at our place on the Friday, a Headbanger's Bash at a friend's house on the Saturday, and then Halloween itself on Sunday with much Trick or Treating! FUN FUN FUN!

So given all the pics I have to share, I'm going to breakdown all the fun into 2 parts - the 1st being our Family Scare and the 2nd being Halloween night with all our outside decor. I hope you all enjoy...and are ready for another picture heavy blog!

Here's what went into our Family Scare:

First - must have a Spooky Atmosphere to get everyone into the Halloween mood! I guess I did a pretty good job of keeping it tame, because most of the kids were right into it all...even our animatronics were a big hit. The kids all took turns talking into the mics to make the Mad Scientist and the Witch talk. So Funny to watch. There were a couple of younger kids who opted to stay out of the front room where most of the decor was, not liking the talking "people" so much, but at least they had alot of other areas to play that weren't as decorated.

Here's our "Butler" before the party - hee hee - we ended up using him for just that, a butler - a purse holder, a hat rack, and a key holder. We'll be sad to see him go!
Door Greeter

Wall Decor

the Witch's Table with all her lil goodies :

The Mad Scientist's Lab

The Food Table

The Eyeball Plants

Second, enough Games & Actvities to keep the kiddos entertained, but not too much that the adults couldn't visit.

We had 3 activites (which the kids had the choice of doing..or not doing...at any point during the party - mine opted for doing most once all their friends were gone - figures, it had all been up for weeks before the party - they had their fill- haha!)

1. We had Pumpkin Decorating - We got those Push-in Pumpkin kits at Walmart, and pumpkins at our local pumpkin patch for a dollar each, so basically, for under $3, each kid got to take home a decorated pumpkin.

A Finished Pumpkin

2. We had Cookie Decorating

I pre-bagged all the cookies with 10 smarties each, and boy did it work well. When the kids were ready, I just grabbed a popsicle stick, smeared it with some icing, put it on a plate and gave them a bagged cookie and wrote their name on the bag (just in case they wanted to save it and not eat it right away) For anyone who wanted a little extra, I had containers of sprinkles set out on the table. So fast and easy and no mess and no double licking speading germs in the icing :)

Here's a couple of Cookie Decorators busy at work

3. We had make a Pumpkin and/or Frankenstein Mask

Again, I had everything precut and set out so the kids (and/or parents) could just sit down and get busy - I even made some example masks so the kids could see what to do. Most of the pieces were sticky back foam, but there were the googly eyes and some pieces for the pumpkin that had to be glued. Overall, it was pretty good. Not many kids made these, but the ones that did were able to do so easily and without a big mess. (The pumpkin kit, I got from Michaels, but the Frank mask idea, I found online...I believe it was at Family Fun again)
ROOAARGH! my lil' Frankenstein

Then we had 4 games, 3 of which the kids could play at any time, over and over if they wished.

1. Can Toss - toss the ping pong eyeballs into the can

2. Pumpkin Toss - pick out 6 pieces of candy and try to toss the most candies into the pumpkin bucket.

3. Pumpkin Bowling (actually Gourds, but meh - all works the same) I can't believe it, but I have NO pictures of this :(

I painted water bottles white and made "ghostie" faces on them. I filled them with a little bit of water to make them a little more sturdy. The kids had 3 chances to knock down all 5 of the "ghosts" It was funny to see them all hesitate. They weren't sure about sending the gourds flying down the "lane". We had it set up in our hallway, and at the end was our laundry room door that we closed off. They couldn't really do any damage, but they all took a long timefor them to warm up to the idea, but once they did - WHAM! WHAM! WHAM! So funny to watch!

4. Treaure Hunt - the one the kids were waiting for!

attacking my hubby for the "Challenge" scroll and another clue!

Our Beginner Readers Reading the Clue!

I wrote the clues, which I found wording for at a great site called Peppers and Pollywogs , on little sheets of black paper and rolled them into scrolls. I just tweaked it a bit to fit my treasure hunt. Then I hid them over the house and the kids to find them. In the middle of the game, there was a challenge which they had to complete before they would get their next clue. I incorporated the Pumpkin Hunt ( found here ) game into it. I changed it up a little by making them all work together find pumpkins to add to 13 times 2 (26 for all you who don't want the rhyme - hee hee) And instead of numbering the back of the pumpkins from 1 - 10, I had the orange pumpkins worth 1, the yellow pumpkins worth 2 and the white pumpkins worthe 3.

Lastly, I had a quick Spooky Sounds Story (found here )to do with the kids to slow things down a bit. The kids were great participants and really got into it. Even some of the parents sat down to enjoy.

And of course we needed a game or 2 for us adults to let loose with. I had a girlfriend, Heather (check out her awesome blog here ) who did this game at her xmas party last year. So I stole it and made it Halloweeny and called it MONSTER HANDS! I found these great rubber Monster Hands at the store. You roll the dice to get a 1 or a 6, and when you do, you put on the monster hands as fast as you can and start unwrapping the gift (which has layers upon layers of wrapping paper) and you do so until the next person rolls a 1 or a 6. We ended up just going for sixes, as working with those monster hands proved to be pretty challenging. It gave the person a little bit more time to try to unwrap the present. In between layers, I put a couple of little PRIZE envelopes with a scratch ticket in it, just to encourage everyone to keep at it. And the winner ended up with a little battery operated pumpkin and a scratch ticket.
The kids thought this game was hilarious - they were cheering on their parents - so cute!

go go go!!!
The Winner!

I had also planned on playing Halloween Pictionary too, but we ran out of time. But I see for next year, if we do it again, we will plan for more time and I know the kids will love to play with all the adults too.

We also put on 2 different movies for the kids to watch, if they needed a bit of down time, in between all the games.

And then of course, we had Yummy Finger Foods:
Spinach Dip, Sugar Cookies, Halloweenies, Caramel Apple Bites, 7 Layer Dip, Chips, Cheese, Meats and Crackers, Veggies, and Fruit Skewers, and an Orange Halloween Punch! Yum Yum Yum! See pics above!

Everyone seemed to have a great time, the kids were awesome and I even had some grownup fun too! I'm pretty sure we will do it again next year! At least I will have a better idea of what to expect :)

Hoped you enjoy checking out our Family Halloween Scare!

Stay Tuned for our outdoor Halloween Decor...

Finished Dragon Costume

2010-11-06T22:47:00.000-07:00

Finally, I finished the costume...and just in time for all of Halloween Activities!

Here are my 2 lil dragons, dressed up for some Halloween Fun the weekend before Halloween. It was our trial run, and in the rain to boot. Glad to see everything (except the footlets - they didn't make it long) held up in the rainy weather, even the facepaint, and he was plenty warm with just a long sleeve tshirt underneath.
Here's a pic from the back. I couldn't find bubble wrap the same length as they used in the Family Fun pattern, so this had to do. I think it worked just fine. He didn't really lift his arms much higher than this, so the wings just looked flowy, rather than too little. (I think, anyways)

This is the kiddos all dressed up to go trick or treating. You'll notice that the footlets didn't make it. I planned on making another set out of the extra fabric, but I just ran out of time. But now he's got on his Dragon Fire, which I pretty much stuck with the design from Family Fun, only I made mine into a necklace. I took my floral wire, wrapped it so it was smooth and wound it around the flashlight, and curved both ends so it attached like little hooks. Really easy to take on and off. For the "fire", I just wrapped shredded cellophane around a mini flashlight. Worked great, and he was really easy to keep an eye on while he was T-o-Ting with all his friends.

RoaR!!!!

so there we are - costume done and all pretty much made with a glue gun and a tiny bit of hand sewing! thanks for checkin it out! have a great day!

Attemping the Dragon Costume...Sneak Peek

2010-10-17T10:11:00.000-07:00

Ok, here goes! I'm sure someone with some talent could make this look soooo much easier, but I figure if I can manage something half decent, anyone can! If you like what you see and what to attempt yourself, refer back to the previous post where the orginal instructions are listed. Good Luck!

So first - materials:

1. the sweat suit. I bought a hoodie and 2 pairs of pants. The extra pants will make up the tail and footlets.

2. gloves and nails (hot glued the nails on, and I still have to trim down a bit)

3. the gold candy cups - cut into quarters

4. the bubble wrap

5. the sponges - cut into wave type shapes
6. floral wire - to give the tail some shape
7. some type of stuffing to stuff the tail with

8. hot glue gun!

I started the scales at the top of the head, overlapping slightly. I hot glue gunned them down, althought the orginal instructions said to use craft glue. I say to use whatever works. I didn't want to chance them coming off and doing it again.
I switched the direction of the scales after the hoodie part, going down the back. I wanted the scales to lay smooth, so here's where I switched it up and started at the bottom...but first had to figure out the tail, so I will come back to the scales later...

I made my tail with a pant leg of the spare pair of pants. I used my floral wire - a big bunch of it twisted together, so hold some shape in the tail. I threaded it in with the stuffing (I used what I had laying around the house - toilet paper and paper towel - haha) I marked off where I would be "attempting" to sew it on, and left that space bare of any foil "scales"

here it is sewn on:

So now with the tail on, i went back to the scales. I started at the bottom and worked my way back up to the top where the hoodie starts.

here's my lil man modeling it. I was worried that I put the tail too low...it is a little bit, but good enough :)

Next, I glued on the sponge spikes
Next will be finishing up the tail. We are debating the gold "scales" down the tail as well, and whether or not we carry on with the spikes.
Then onto horns and ears on the hoodie. He would like both, so I'm deciding what to do there. I think I will use the foamy paper to make some ears. But the horns...hmmm...get some small plastic ones and glue on or make em?
Then I just need to figure out a little something for the legs, to jazz it up a bit, and hopefully I will have time to make some "footlets" to cover his shoes.

Stay Tuned
14 days til Halloween!!!

Dragon Costume Idea

2010-10-16T09:09:00.000-07:00

Costumes...love em, not so good at making them. But here I go again, attempting another homemade costume - A Dragon! My oldest really wants to be one, so armed with only my glue gun and a needle & thread (I don't own a sewing machine - can you believe it?) here I go!

First, the research. I found a really neat idea for a dragon at Family Fun .

That was my original idea, I was just going to copy it completely, but then the more I thought about it, I decided I wasn't crazy about the limited vision he would have with it. I liked the rest of the body idea - a simple sweat suit, and the wings (out of bubble wrap - cool!) attached to the arms.

But back to the idea board, I came across Martha's Raven idea here.
I thought - oooh, yeah, I could just make a mouthpiece out of foamy paper, like the raven's beak, and attach to the top of the hoodie with some teeth. Then... I changed my mind again when I thought back to the fair this summer when my son got his face painted...like a Dragon! So instead, I'm just going to paint his face the same way they did.
Then, I saw this dragon costume for a little wee one here at Martha Stewart as well.

And although it was too small, I loved the idea of the golden scales down the back with the spikes. Why not on his hoodie?! So that's what I went with.

A simple sweatsuit, bubble wrap for wings, gold candy wrappers for scales, sponges for spikes, a pair of gloves with press on nails glued on for his "claws" and a face painted! And the only sewing I have to do it to make the tail and attach to the hoodie - yeehaw! The rest I can manage with my handy glue gun!

Tutorial to come - or at least my step-by-step trial and errors :)

Wish me luck!

Spooky Silhouettes

2010-10-15T09:49:00.000-07:00

Halloween Craft #5

Finally, I've started on a big project...Spooky Silhouettes found here at BHG.com

First my hubby went down to Home Depot and got a large sheet of plywood
Then I traced out the image I wanted (I tackled the hardest looking one first - Mr.Bones)

Got hubby to cut it out

Next - Spraypaint black

Add Glow in the dark/Neon Green Paint to highlight... (to come later)

Attach some PVC pipe to the back to make in nice and sturdy in the ground... (to come later)

Finished!

15 days til Halloween!!!! ...and 13 days til party day!

Halloween Party Food

2010-10-11T22:08:00.000-07:00

Yum Yum! Recipes Part 1

Time to decide on the Halloween goodies for the party.
These are what I'm thinking of making this year:

1. Spinach Dip (not sure where the original recipe was found - I got it from my sister)
10 oz chopped frozen spinach (thawed)
8 oz spreadable cream cheese
1 cup grated cheddar cheese
1 Tbsp fresh chopped dill *can add more to taste
1 cup Mayo (not miracle whip)
1 cup sour cream
1/2 cup chopped green onion
10 oz can water chestnuts, finely chopped
Mix together cream cheese & cheddar cheese, add the rest, chill overnight. Serve with cut up pieces of sourdough bread.

2. Sugar Cookies from the cookbook Company's Coming (I get sooo many compliments on this recipe that I've never tried anything else - so yummy!)
* this is doubling as one of the crafts for the kids - they will each be able to decorate a cookie or two to take home.

3. Caramel Apple Bites This is a recipe from the cookbook "2001 Taste of Home Annual Recipes, submitted by Darlene Markel from Sublimity, Oregon. I haven't tried them yet, but what a neat twist on a caramel apple treat - make it a cookie! I can't wait to cook up a batch of these!!!

Don't they look YUM!?

4. Fruit Skewers in a Pumpkin
Source
with Caramel Dip (great recipe found here at Our Best Bites)

*a girlfriend of mine first introduced me to this VERY yummy idea with her recipe made with
marshmallow whip, cream cheese, and skor toffee bits. Mmmm, I'm torn as to which one is better - they are both so good!

5. Halloweenies (adapted from a Pillsbury Halloween Book edition)
*they have a similar recipe on-line at Pillsbury.com, but it calls for hot dogs instead of mini cocktail sausages

1 can (8oz) Pillsbury Crescent Rolls dough

44 cocktail size smoked link sausages

1/2 cup mustard

Preheat oven to 375 degress

Line a baking sheet with parchment paper (or spray with cooking spray) Roll dough to a 14x11 Rectangle. Cut vertically to make 2 11x7 rectangles. Cut crosswise to make 44 7 x 1/2 inch strips. Wrap 1 strip of dough around each sausage so that it looks like a little mummy. Press the ends of the dough together firmly at the ends to seal. Place wrapped sausages 2 inches apart for even browning. Bake 15-20 minutes or until golden brown. Use a toothpick dipped in mustard (or ketchup) to add tiny eyes.

Sooooo Cute!

6. "Bat Wings" (Chicken Wings)

And I'm still a little undecided on the rest. I absolutely LOVE the Eerie Eyeballs From Britta Blvd. (check the link at the bottom of this post) But the way they look deter alot of people from wanting to try them. I don't think the kids will be brave enough, so still on the fence about that one. I will probable whip up Martha Stewarts "Witch's Finger's" cookies. yummy and creepy :)

I'd like to have a couple more "cold" snackies that will be easy to grab, and will still add to the Halloween feel, so more to come later, after I've had time to mull things over.

Have a great day!

Check out Pillsbury, Kraft Canada & Britta Blvd for more cool Halloween food ideas

Halloween Crafts from Michaels

2010-10-04T20:04:00.000-07:00

Craft #4!

A bit of cheat, this one. Store bought, but I did put it together myself...with my boys.

Since my boys LOVE Halloween as well, I thought it would be a good opportunity to get them to sit down a do a craft with me - something we could put up for decoration. They loved putting together these foam projects! The haunted house is from Michaels and the 2 smaller ones - the pumpkin patch and the skeleton & coffin, were from Walmart.

27 days til Halloween

Halloween Toss Game

2010-10-03T19:40:00.000-07:00

Halloween Craft #3!

Did I mention that I loved this last issue of Better Homes and Gardens? Not usually a magazine that I buy, but I saw the Halloween cover, and I had to get it to peruse through...and so glad I did!

They had great ideas for parties for both kids and adults. We are going to be doing a few crafts from this issue, which you can find online here.

The Can Toss - Here's my take, with the awesome ping pong eyeballs that I found at Walmart.

Just waiting on some more cans to finish it up. I'm aiming to have about 10-15 of the lil pumpkin cans.

And my favorite, check out these Spooky Silhouettes ... to come later. Just made on plywood, cut out, painted black and a few added details, I think it'll spruce up the cemetary scene outside. We hope to do the skeleton, the trick or treaters, the lampost, and some hopefully a cat and some rats. First I have to see how long each project will take.

First up will be this guy: (ooohhhh, I can't wait!!!)

28 days til Halloween!

Halloween Treat Boxes

2010-10-02T19:36:00.000-07:00

Halloween Craft #2

Martha Stewart - how I love thee!
I found this super cute design for little treat boxes over at her website here . But I opted to use my own Halloween patterned paper, rather than her printed design. I just printed off the sheet, like instructed and then took down the measurements for each side, cut and scored accordingly (like instructions said) - Voila! I think it's just the right size to throw in a couple of goodies for the kids, and I love the little ribbon handle for them to grab onto.

Here's mine:

Now I just need to make about 10 more and I will be done. Then come the fun part of filling them!

Thanks for stopping by! Have a great day.

....and 29 days until Halloween!

Halloween Luminaries

2010-10-01T19:10:00.000-07:00

October 1st - 1st DIY Halloween Craft!

I have been looking around for neat DIY ideas for Halloween Decorations to add a few more touches to the more "kid friendly" decor we already have.
I came across --- Crafts by Amanda who did these wonderfully cute luminaries - you can follow her tutorial here And I just happened to have a recycling box full of miscellinous glass jars, so I gave it a go this week. This is what mine look like (my jars no longer had lids, so I did mine upside down and will just put a battery powered tealight underneath.) I would like to do another 3 or 4, but I'm waiting on more jars.

I loved all the faces she put on them, so I had to copy them myself. Love Them!!! Check out her other posts - she's got some amazing ideas there!

Happy October Everyone....Oh and only 30 more days until Halloween!

Mmmmm, The Smell of Fall in the Air

2010-09-26T08:26:00.000-07:00

Ahhhhh! Autumn is my favorite season!

Yes, if you know me, or have been reading my posts, you know instantly what will come to mind - Halloween is in the Fall, but also, time for all the Fall Baking! Plums, Apples, Pumpkins, all the wonderful spices that make the house smell soooo good...and my favorite Starbucks drink: Pumpkin Spice Latte - mmmmm, my mouth is watering already!

So on this very rainy fall Sunday morning, I thought I'd share one of my favorite Fall recipes: PLUM PANCAKES! (I've got them baking in the oven as I write this) My grandma on my dad's side used to make them, then it was passed to my mom, which of course, now I make them for my family. Mmmmm, mmmmm, good! (you could make them with just about any fruit, but we rarely do because we love the plum so much)

Plum Pancakes:

1/4 cup margarine

1/4 cup brown sugar

Plums to taste (sliced in half and pitted)

*I do about 2 cups - enough to make a nice layer on the bottom of the pan - if you are using frozen plums, use more - they tend to shrink up on you.

4 eggs seperated

1/3 cup sugar

1/3 cup flour

1/2 tsp baking powder

1/3 cup milk

In a 400 degree oven, melt the butter in a 8x8 pan (Funnily enough with how often I make this, but I don't actually have this size of pan, so I use a 10x8 pan)

Sprinkle with brown sugar and cinnamon. Slice plums over mixture. Bake 8-10 minutes.

Meanwhile, beat egg whites. Add sugar.
Combine flour, baking powder, egg yolks and milk in another bowl.
Fold egg whites into yolk mixture.
Spread over cooked plums.

Bake 20 minutes.
*Now don't worry about getting the top too brown - you definately want it to get a dark golden brown, otherwise your dough inside will be mushy - the plums have alot of liquid in them.

Loosen and serve

YUM!

Enjoy! And thanks for stopping by!

Halloween Invitations

2010-09-20T12:37:00.000-07:00

Stop By For a Spell...

I found this cute invitation, see here at Better Homes and Gardens. I wanted something crafty, instead of the usual scarier type I like to send out. I had a hard time narrowing it down, so many cute invitation ideas out there! One other one that I really like was a cute fold up bat that I thought the kids would love, but in the end, I went with this one. It didn't turn out exactly like the example, but that's ok. For the life of me, I could not find decent Halloween stamps. I guess I missed the boat (already - sheesh!) But I did get to I put my labeller to use, for the lettering.

But here's my take on that invitation:
(I really liked the idea of using all different patterned papers, instead of all the same)

The wording was from an assortment of different "wordings" on the net - some from Squidboo (for halloween, usually Squidoo - a great place to check out for little crafts and such), and other places, then I mashed them together and came up with this:

Dragons with scales and Witches with hats
It's time to dress up and avoid black cats.
Come to our house, Bring your whole clan
For tonight, we celebrate the Boogeyman.

There will be Pumpkin Decorating,
Games and plenty of Halloween Treats
For Goblins and Ghould whole like to eat sweets.

So join us if you dare
for our Family Halloween Scare

Which will be undertaken from (TIME)
On (DATE)
At the final resting place of
(HOSTS & ADDRESS)

Then I printed it out, ripped up the edges and burned them. I was going for a page ripped out of a spell book, or like a piece of scroll or something. Then pasted it on the insert for the invitation and done - nice and simple.

I've actually gotten started on some of the games. I was in Walmart, yet again, and they have ping pong balls that are eyeballs!!! Yay - so because they are only $2 a bag, and I don't have to do any work, I'm going to get them and do the tin can toss. Now I just have to start saving my cans so I can wrap some paper around them, to make them into jack o lantern faces. And I decided on the Pumpking Hunt. I had a bunch of colored paper left over from my son's Safari Party, so I thought I would put it to use. 3 different colored pumpkins each worth a different point amount. I just enlarged some clip art and compied them onto my paper - easy peasy. Now I just have to cut them all out and number the backs of them.

Thanks for stopping by!

Ideas, Ideas...

2010-09-17T12:05:00.000-07:00

Hmmmm, so I have been going back and forth deciding what to do for Halloween this year (my very most favorite holiday/occasion). As I said in my last blog entry, I thought it might be a nice "fix" to do a later-in-the-evening kids party with the adults welcome too. It can't be too late because we would have 3 years olds as well as 6 year olds attending. And it can't be too scary... and thats a challenge for me. Also, money is a bit tight this year, so we want to keep it as inexpensive as we can, while still throwing in a few new decorations.

Last week I wandered the aisles of Walmart and was enjoying all the new things that are out this year. I saw sooo many cool and gruesome things. Of course, that would be such a waste of money this year. *sigh* There was a totally creepy (plastic?) baby that my husband would love to make into a project to go side by side with out Alien Baby last year, which was placed at our Mad Scientist Table( see here ) But WAAYYYY too inappropriate for a kids party. (I told him he could buy it and store it away...far away...it really creeped even me out - to use in later years - that made him mildly happy) And they had a bunch more animatronics, which I love, and the price is starting to come down for them too - YAY!!!!

But a very cool thing that they have this year, and I have been wanting one for awhile now but could never find, is a Halloween projector. You know, like the ones they have for Xmas? They project the image of Santa on the side of your house? Well, now they have a Halloween one!!!! I am SOOOO buying that this year! I once saw a tutorial on how to use a projector like that, only make it into a swirling vortex, instead of just an image. Alas, I cant remember the exact details, but I know you need a fogger, which we have. So I may just be on the hunt for the details yet again, and maybe actually make it this year. I think the kids would think it was neat too, not too scary.

I've got quite a list of games to play that I need to pare down a bit. I don't want to spend all my time running around playing the games with the kids - I would also like to visit and play some "groan-up" games as well. So this is what I'm thinking so far...

For the 3 year olds: 4 corners - a different halloween shape in each corner of the room (ex. a bat, pumpkin, witch, ghost) and someone (probably me) will sit the in the centre of the room with a bag of said shapes. The kids all run around and pick a corner to stand in, and then I will pick a shape out the bag, ex - Ghost and any kids who are at the Ghost corner will come and join me in the centre. From there, I will let the who are kids in the centre with me, take turns pulling out a shape until there is a winner (or winners, as the case may be)

I like the idea of doing some sort of game toss. I haven't really decided which one though. This would be fun for the 6 year olds as well.

I thought of doing a giant Jack o' Lantern cutout out of cardboard or something, and the kids need to throw bean bags into the eyes, nose and mouth. (and I already have bean bags - so yay! no cost there)
OR.... theres tossing little ping pong balls (with little ghostie faces drawn on them) thrown into tin cans (wrapped in orange paper with jack o' lantern faces drawn on them)
OR.... tossing ghostie lollipops (lollipops covered with a kleenx and an elastic band tied around it) thrown into hollowed out pumpkins, which would be placed at different heights.

And I would love to do some sort of scavenger/treasure hunt.

There's the type where I could split all the kids into teams, with younger kids paired up with older ones, and i could give them picture clues (like my pirate bday treasure hunt) and they end up at the end where treasure is waiting...a pinata or maybe their goodie bags.
OR..... a search for pumpkins. Have 3 different colored paper cutouts of pumpkins, each worth different points ( ex- white = 1, orange = 2, yellow =3 points ) and the teams would set out for a set amount of time to find as many pumpkins as they could before I yell stop. the team with the most points wins.

And to maybe slow the kids down a bit - being that they are ALL boys, I thought I could sit them down for a interactive ghost story.
Heres the info on that: Spooky Sounds Story Game at Party Game Ideas.

Also, being that I was thinking of having the party the friday, after school, before Halloween, I thought it might be fun to decorate pumpkins. But I didn't want any carving involved. I just wanted the kids to have fun and kind of be able to do it themselves or with a little assistance from parents.

Walmart has this great little kit this year - think Mr. Potato Head, but with a pumpkin. I think it was like $4 or $5 and you have 3 sets of eyes, 3 noses, 3 mouths and 1 set of horns. So I could buy a couple of those kits, a few smaller pumpkins (hollowed out ahead of time - I could also use craft pumpkins, but I think it would cost more) and maybe a few pumpkin markers - and away the kids could go. They would be able to take it home and set it out, just in time for Halloween.

I have a whole bunch more game ideas, but I think these are the ones I will do. I don't want it too structured, but I don't want the kids to get bored. I also don't want to be run off my feet and not be able to just sit back and enjoy either, so I think just a simple few is good. Maybe a few back ups that don't really need any preparations, just in case. For example, instead of red light, green light, it's Daylight, Nighttime, with everyone acting like either vampires or zombies.

Then what I was thinking, it might be neat to do movies in the basement for the kids. I'm lucky that I have alot of space in the basement - 2 rooms to put the kids in: a playroom and a rec room, both with tvs in them. I thought I would designate one room (the playroom) to the 3 year olds. I would put in an age friendly halloween movie - winnie the pooh or something, and there would be a ton of toys to play with in there as well. In the other rec room, a movie for the older kids, like Hocus Pocus (my youngest actually loves this movie, maybe even more than his big brother does)

The problem is for us. Most of the games we play on Halloween just won't be as much fun without a few (or more) adult beverages (or perhaps appropriate for little ones to be around), so they are off the list. Then there is the fact we will be there with all our kids, so it would be hard to play something that you need to really concentrate on.

All I have come up with so far is to play some Halloween Picitonary, and maybe have some Rock Band (?) going. I would really like to have one more easy, fast, maybe funny, halloweenish game to play ... and not charades (charades really freaks me out - haha!)

I also am playing with the idea of doing some sort of pumpkin bowling. I'm not sure where to hold that though. It would suit outside much better, but I'm not too sure of the weather. Inside would be much too crowded. But a few inexpensive tiny pumpkins or gourds, and some painted (weighed down) pop bottles makes an inexpensive, and perhaps challenging, game.

There will be a bunch of snacks for both adults and kids, punch, and pop, and yes, a few candies too. Nothing too big this year - just a feeler to see how a kid/adult party would work. I will post more about the food later :)

For all you Ghouls planning your own party - be sure to check out BHG.com (Better Homes and Gardens) there were some cute party and decor ideas there this month, and of course... martha martha martha - Martha Stewart.com. I love to hear about all your ideas, so feel free to leave comments and/or blog addresses to check out - thanks :)

Good luck with all of your Halloween Party Planning ideas! I hope you have fun and its a great success!

Stay Tuned for more planning ideas - maybe even project pictures if I get my butt in gear! :)

Ooh, Ooh, Guess What's on it's Way?!

2010-09-06T19:02:00.000-07:00

Alright!!! We've hit the month of September...know what that means???!!!

Halloween is only 54 days away today!

It is my favorite, favorite holiday (can I call it a holiday?) but this year we have decided to switch it up a bit. Usually we go all out with the Spooky and have an adult Halloween Party, but with the kids getting older and things getting busier and busier, we decided to try incorporating a kids party.

Ugh! It's so much harder than it sounds. We have to tone the decorations WAY down, make it much earlier and ... away go all our wonderful alcoholic drinks and shots! Now, that doesn't sound like a big deal, but we really only let loose one night a year, and that's Halloween. We don't normally drink much, and we NEVER are up and partying all night anymore. So, the need to satisfy my Halloween craving has won out - I will take mellow kid-let party, over doing nothing. But that means scrapping the usual Halloween Booklet we've come to perfect and starting over.

Here's part of the decorating troubles - I don't think I could just do the orange and black balloons and streamers...We have WALL GORE - sooooo fun. I mean, we turn every picture into something Halloweenish, we change every lightbulb, we change every room into a themed halloween room - how in the world do we get the best of both worlds? It's not our kids I worry about because they too LOVE Halloween. They aren't scared because they've seen us set up everything and lived in it for a month before Halloween. I worry about all their little friends. I don't want to scare them so badly they don't want to stay (or even come in, as my poor neighbor's kids - they acknowledge our house at Halloween, but they sure don't come a-knocking for candy!)

So with the cooler weather setting in, I've settled in front of the computer to search and search to find out how to throw my first ever kids Halloween party, while making it fun for us adults, and to incorporate all our Halloween goodies and props, without going overboard. I'm starting to see that it's going to be quite the venture for myself. Glad I'm starting to plan early (as usual)

Stay Tuned, and please...if you have any advice for keeping groups of 3-6 yr olds happy at a halloween party, leave me a comment - Cheers!

Happy 6th Birthday...Safari Style

2010-08-22T21:41:00.000-07:00

What a Crazy Fun Day in the Safari!
My son's 6th Birthday finally arrived!
It was a busy day of kids, games, obstacle courses, food and fun and it seemed to fly by in the blink of an eye!

Be ready for a picture heavy blog, even with all the picture opportunities that I missed.
So I will start off with the Decor:

Vines vines and more vines...

Everywhere!!!

the website - Family Fun - had a great tutorial for them

Jungle Silhouettes.

Looking back at the pictures, I wish I had taken more time and darkened them up - I didn't realize how dark our walls were until I hung them up.

I was originally going to buy them, but then decided I could just make them for cheaper. I saw the silhouettes on-line and thought it was a great timesaver, rather than to do a full picture.

Base Camp Supplies

This is where I had the kids start the party. Something to keep them occupied while everyone was arriving. Here they had toilet tube binoculars that I made ahead of time, to decorate, some backpacks and their pith helmets. I set out little packets of stickers for each child, with a whole bunch more in the middle of the table for those who wanted more.

the backpack

I found these little gems at Michaels - they were orginally white, but I bought some dye at the dollar store to make them green and then puff painted each childs name on them.

the binoculars

(pre-decorated)

Loot Bags

The passports

I apologize for the crappy picture. Unfortunatly its the only one I got.

I found a picture of the front of a Canadian Passport, and made little covers for it. Inside was each child's name, picture, age and residency. On each page was for a different place in the "Serengeti" (each game/activity) when they completed the game/activity, they recieved a stamp in their passport before moving onto the next.
Then they put the passports into their backbacks for safe keeping.

Banner going into "The Serengeti"

(backyard)

Tiki Hut

the food table area

The Menu

Gorilla Grub = Fruit Skewers & Fruit Dip

Monkey Mix = Trail Mix

Critter Crunch = Chip Mix

Jungle Salad = Pasta Dessert Salad

Safari Sandwiches = variety of PB & J sandwiches cut out in animal shapes

Slithery Snake Subs = turkey and ham subs cut into snake shapes with raisins for eyes, and a gummy worm for a tongue

Bug Bites = mini sausages wrapped in pillsbury breadsticks

Banana Pops = banana pieces dipped in chocolate and rolled in chopped up peanuts

Table Centerpiece

The start of the obstacle course:

Monkey's Hangout

with Pin the Tail on the Monkey in the background.

The kids had to jump on the mini trampoline and grab a banana

next to "The Batcave"

Then the kids ran thru the cave and grabbed a bat that was hanging on the walls. See over by the corner of the starting point? I got a bunch of glowsticks so that the kids could "see in the dark" but I forgot about them. :( They did get used when the kids went back in to just play in it.

Target Practice

the kids had to throw "tranquilizer bombs" (water balloons) at the animals, because you never know when you might come face to face with a dangerous animal on the safari (and we are a no kill zone here!!)

I gave the games are areas little names of places on the Serengeti.

And thank goodness for my birthday present a week earlier - a laminator - so I was able to laminate all the animal pics so they weren't soaking and falling apart :)

Alligator Alley

the kids had to cross the river by way of the cement blocks, to rescue the baby elephant from the alligators in the river (it was supposed to be a barrel of monkeys - but that darn dollar store - can't be certain of what you get)

QuickSand Area

We filled the bouncer with balloons - the brown are the "quicksand" and the green balloons held miniature animals that the kids had to rescue. they had to jump in and grab a green balloon, bring it out and pop it any way they could and get their animal free.

This was the end of the obstacle course. Once they finished this last challenge, they raced back to get a stamp on their passports. No winners or losers here, just a fun challenge.

Jumpin Giraffe's Game

I wish I could remember where I saw the idea for this, but I never wrote it down. But I saw it and thought, how cute. We tied marshmallows from strings all over the tree and the kids had to pick one and try to pull the marshmallow off without using their hands.

Then the kids played Pin the Tail on the Monkey. Again no winners, they all got prizes. I found some cool animal fact wheels at Michaels for .75 cents. It had little factoids about different animals - elephants, koalas, goats, etc...

Safari Hunt

What would a safari party be without a safari hunt?! I gave each child a little notebook with pictures of 3 different animals pasted inside. Their goal was to go out and find their 3 animals among the many that were scattered around the yard. and yet again, no winners - this was a good team effort. I encouraged the kids to help eachother find their animals. And again, at the end, they got their stamp in their passports.

The Loot bags :

I was loving my laminator! I found great printouts at Family Fun. There were all these different jungle animal masks, and bookmarks (which of course I ended up laminating)

Then a bendy pencil, jungle eraser, tiger stickers, camera with jungle pics inside, and a finger lite.

then the goodies were animal crackers and gummies.

The bookmarks

The Animal Masks

The Treats

animal cookies, gummy spiders, sharks , worms and a bunch of jungle real fruits

The Food Table:

I'm so thankful that a friend of mine ended up taking a few pics of the food - I only took one of the bug bites & cupcakes and that was it! :( No sugar cookies or anything. I so wasn't on top of it this year!

Gorilla Grub

the fruit kabobs - ooh ooh, you can almost see my jungle animal sugar cookies in the back ground!

Slithery Snake Subs

Gummy Spiders, Worms, and Sharks

Bug Bites

" Old Swampy"
The cupcake Alligator Cake

from the book Hello Cupcake

I had some issues with the icing - it was far too hot out - 36 degrees C out and no air conditioning, so it kept getting a bit melty, and then I couldnt quite figure out the right icing tip to use, but I figured in the end, there would be no mistaking it for anything else but an Alligator, so who cares. The kids loved him!

Party Pics:

getting busy with their decorating

grabbin bananas!
(yes, I also laminated those too - haha! and then hung them off paper clips to make it easier)

Target Practise Time!

Crossing Alligator Alley

Poppin Balloons to "Save" the Animals

Pin the Tail on the Monkey

I ended up fogetting about a blindfold (oops!) so I improvised with my son's batman mask and just blacked out the eyes - worked pretty good!

Jumpin Giraffes

obviously pretty hard not to use your hands :)

a little down time at "Base Camp" for snacks and refreshments

GUMMIES!!!! for my youngest son

a little more down time with a movie

I really wanted to incororate a safari campout, but I ran out of time, so instead the kids just got a movie at base camp.

HAPPY 6th BIRTHDAY

blowing out the candles!

Hope you had a great time checking out this post! It was a fun, but tiring, party, with lots of kids saying it was the best party ever, and the best thing...my son loved it! And he was finally happy to turn a year older!

Cupcakes, Palm Trees, Vines...Oh My!

2010-08-05T19:24:00.000-07:00

Wow! I'm not sure where the time is going, but suddenly I have 12 days until party day (with a wedding to attend somewhere in the middle) and I have soooo much left to do. Maybe I didn't start as early as I did last year, or maybe I'm not as dedicated or maybe it's just this summer...the summer after my son's year of Kindergarten...the need for stimulation, to be constantly doing things - sigh - makes a momma TIRED!

I have now got my pad of paper and pen out and made about 4 different checklists:
1. Things/projects I need to make/finish.
2. Things I need to find and buy
3. Things that I want to do (if I have time)
4. (My most important) Not so much a checklist, but the "planner" of the day. All activites planned out with approx time plan, decor plans, food plans, etc etc etc. I even have the backyard sketched out, so if I fall behind (knock on wood) my poor hubby will have some sort of idea of what to do...instead of me just saying - why didn't you pay attention when I explained it all? ... or It goes over there! ....which could mean soooo many different places.

And yet, here I sit, typing away on my blog, when I should be scrunching and twisting about 50 more vines (which I absolutly love...from FamilyFun...more than what I had originally come up with...plus its less time consuming...what more could I want??) Procrastinate, procrastinate...I'm starting to wonder if I just like to work under pressure. I'm hoping the end result will be a good one, and I won't be left with alot of..."man, if I just started sooner, I could've done this..." cuz then everyone will know why :)

Ok, off I go on another Vine Making Binge - wish me luck (that i actually get alot accomplished tonite!)

Safari Party Birthday Invitations

2010-07-14T19:50:00.000-07:00

As soon as my son said he liked the idea of a Backyard Safari Party for his 6th birthday, I knew I had to make an "Animal Invitation"!

With his love of repiles and all things slimy, slithery, crawly, etc... I figured a nice big Gator Invite was the way to go!

First, I wrote out the invite on the computer and printed it out. Then I drew my Gator around the wording. Then I drew another Gator (traced, I should say) exactly the same, except with eyes & nose details and I photocopied both onto green paper, like this:

The basics of the invitation read :

Expedition News for All Junior Adventurers!

Come and Join the pack and take a trek through the jungle

to party with the animals to celebrate

(Child's Name) 6th Birthday!

The Jungle Tour starts at 3pm, Tuesday, August 17th
at (address, then add Africa)

We will have games and food for all to enjoy, so don't delay

and call (number) by August 1st to join the team.

Then I cut out my Gators from the green paper, and cut out eye & teeth shapes, pasted them and added googly eyes...

And attached the 2 Gator Heads together with a small brad and .... Voila.....

SNAP!!! A snapping Gator Party Invite!

Here's a few Gators, waiting to be mailed out to all the friends! Now if I just keep my boys from playing with them...snap snap...until I get them given out!

Then to finish them off, I put them in brown envelopes, and decorated with some vines, leaves, child's name and safari hat and will hand deliver in the next week or so.

And check out these great links for more safari inspirations...

Family Fun - I think I will following a few things from these party ideas - going to be trying their twisted jungle vines next.

Coolest Kid Parties - check out the super cute "Lion Head" veggie tray

Monkey Party - lots of neat and cute ideas here at Frost Me too! (I got sidetracked looking at all the great party ideas!!)

Safari Party - beautiful decor and invitations here!

Stay tuned for more Safari Fun!

A Gift for Teacher

2010-06-28T10:06:00.000-07:00

School is almost out!
Wow! Tomorrow is my son's last day at Kindergarten.
How time flies!!!
He had a great year thanks to a wonderful teacher!

I want to let her know that all she's done has been greatly appreciated. For being there when I (the nervous mom) had questions, for making my son's first year at school a postive one, for giving him such a great balance between work and play (mine really liked the work part of Kindergarten - go figure) for having a hug for me when I had to let her know that my mom was having to start a vigorous round of chemo for her cancer, and making sure that my son was ok when I wasn't there, and for inspiring new ideas for me to continue teaching my son at home...to let him be the most successful he can be, and giving him the chance to be so excited about grade one.

I wanted to make her a homemade something, a gift of appreciation, so I started searching for homemade paper craft ideas. I headed over to split coast stampers because they have a wonderful array of ideas and postings. I came across one fantasic posting that inspired me! Karli at "crafting with class" made an awesome Teacher's Lunch Box>

- there was gift card holders, and a cute lil lunch box to put them all in.

Although, I couldn't make the lunchbox, I opted for a cross between purse and briefcase. We also made a mini version for the teacher assistant in the class. Then my son made homemade cards for them both telling them things that he liked about them and class. We gave each a small tin of godiva chocolates and to the teacher, a gift card for Chapters.

I think they turned out pretty cute...what do you think?

The acorns are for the chocolates and the booklet is for the Chapters gift card.

Inside the "booklet" - the gift card stuck down with sticky tape.

I also stuck down the tin of chocolates with double-sided sticky tape.

This is the set for the Teacher's Assistant.

I had made this handle more like a briefcase, and then made a "latch" using brads and part of a big paperclip.

Finished! And everything fits nicely inside the cases!

The card my son made for his teacher...
(Other than the matting of the card, I only helped with the flower brads, but he told me where to put them)

He ran out of room for the "but I'm excited for grade one", so I had to slip it in there really small.
I thought he did such a cute job. I made sure I took the pictures I took of his card and put it in his Kindergarten folder for a keepsake.

Such a fun project! Thanks for looking!

Safari Vine Tutorial

2010-06-16T15:32:00.000-07:00

I got the party bug and now I'm off making jungle vines for my son's 6th Safari Birthday Party.

It took me under 5 minutes to roll it, cut it, twist it and braid it, not bad.

Ok, it didn't take me as long as I thought to make this vine, but it did turn out shorter than I hoped. I think I will try to make them much longer for the rest. All and all, I'm pretty happy with the outcome though. Now to make about another 80 - hahaha! Good Luck to me!

Here's how I did it:

First, I pulled out my trusty roll of butcher paper.

(I don't know what I'm gonna do when it runs out!!! Find MORE for sure! )

Then I rolled out a big piece of it...

I cut 3 strips into it, not too precisely either. I figured a jaggedy edge might make it better.

Then I scrunched and twisted each strip...

until I had a tangled bunch of vines like this.

Hey, they don't look too shabby even like this. Maybe I'll do some like this, if I start running out of time, or paper.

Then I braided them together, making a thicker vine.

and... Voila! The Finished Vine!

Although my oldest thought it looked like the hair braid from Avatar. See him "attaching" himself to the "dragon" aka our ottoman...Hmmm, does it only look like a vine in my head?

Oh, and he made sure he had his "tail" too. Notice the threading of the braid down his shirt so he has both tail and hair? cuz Avatar's have tails too..in case you didn't know. lol! so I've been told by my 5 year old *sigh* How fast they think they know so much more than us.

Well, there you are... Vine Tutorial or Avatar Braid Tutorial...your pick! ya never know, Halloween is around the corner, maybe your little one will want a DIY Avatar costume!

Have a great day and thanks for stopping in!

Birthday Party Planning Begins...

2010-06-15T09:27:00.001-07:00

Birthday Chaos!
Both of my boys have their birthdays in August, as well as my own, so it tends to be a pretty hectic month. I ususally like to start planning about a month before, but I see that with throwing parties for both boys is going to take a little more time. So this year, I'm starting a bit earlier.

I do like to make as much of the decorations and party favours as I can. The reason for that, is not only do I love doing crafty things, but I am usually very unlucky when it comes to my theme party finds in the stores. For example, the year AFTER I did my son's 4th pirate party, Michaels starting carrying a whole pirate themed line of party decorations - like everything that I had to make myself. Argh! I'm always a little too early I guess.

So my notebook of things to do this year...

I've been toying with ideas for my oldest son's 6th birthday. I've been thinking Safari Party of Backyard Campout or a twist of both.

I thought it would be fun for the boys to have a safari hunt. Either going hunting for little plastic animals - like a scavenger hunt - they would have a list with pictures of each animal they need to find and a bucket to collect their finds OR go searching for peanuts (still in shells) to feed to the HUNGRY ELEPHANT.

I have a huge roll of butcher paper, which has come in handy making soooo many party decorations. I was thinking I could cut strips, twist them up or braid them and make big vines all over the ceiling and draped around the fence outside. Inexpensive cuz I've already got all the paper. It'll probably be more time consuming making them all. Good thing I'm starting now.

Then I thought I could make one of the rooms in the house a petting zoo. Something to look at as the kids first come in. My son has a ton of toy snakes, lots of zoo themed stuffies - elephants, monkeys, frogs, etc.

I haven't figured out a craft as of yet. But I like the idea of doing a craft while waiting for all the kids to arrive. Keep 'em busy and entertained! Get them going from craft to craft and game to game and time goes by quickly and I have yet to experience any meltdowns. "FINGERS CROSSED!" for this year as well.

On the flip of this idea, I love the idea of a backyard campout bit. It could still be safari themed - campout in the safari. haha! I like the idea of the kids making their own messy smores or banana boats, roasting hot dogs, etc. We would have to use one of those fire pits that are off the ground, but it would still work. And I thought how cute would it be to have the tent set up with an air matress, and blankets and pillows and do a backyard movie showing at the end of the party. The problem there...I need to find a place to rent a projection machine - and I don't want to pay alot for it. Hmmmm??? So much on the To-Do/Find-out List.

For my youngest, who is turning 3, I'm very undecided. As much as I would love to throw him a theme party, he's a bit harder to choose a theme for. He doesn't have a certain thing that he just loves or is really into. He doesn't even like cake or cupcakes, he just likes the icing.

He's quite active though - loves the rough and tumble, crazy playtime. Given that, I am torn. I think he would really like a gymnatics party at the local gymnastics centre. That would be an easy party for sure, but doesn't have me do much for decorations and crafy things. Maybe that's a good thing though, considering the party for my oldest. And the cost probably is pretty close to what I would put into his party anyways, so that doesn't weigh alot in the decision.

Hmmmmm, the dilemma.

At least I can go ahead and start on some of the vines for the Safari party. That's at least one for sure thing that I know I want to do.

Keep an eye out for the Vine Sneek Peek!

Sick Day Crafts & Games

2010-06-07T08:52:00.000-07:00

With myself and my youngest being stuck at home with nasty cases of Strep throat, I decided we needed some easy new games and activities to do.

The first one I came up with was the tried and true Fishing Game. What kid doesn't love this game?

I wasn't about to head out to get any crafts, so I needed to use what I had around the house, and luckily I have enough "gadgets" to make it work.

First, I cut out a variety of colors and sizes of fish, and other sea creatures. I would have liked to use a thicker construction paper, but alas, all I had was colored paper. It did the trick though, it just may not last longer than today.

Next, I should have used paper clips to attach on the fish, but I didn't have any of those either, so I used staples, making sure the staples lied flat and there werent any sharp edges. I guess I should be glad now, that I used lightweight colored paper...Easy to Pick up!

Next, I grabbed a pencil, attached some white yarn and tied on the magnet. I used magnet tape, bending it around the string. Easy-Peasy!

The we threw the fish into the "aquarium" and a-fishing they went. I thought another neat thing would be to put a point value on the fish, and the kids could take turns "catching" a fish and the one with the most points at the end, would win. Maybe I will have to make a little paper trophy next. hee hee!

Caught One!

My youngest decided it was less frustrating to get down low and fish, rather than to do it standing up.

At least he caught one too!

Then the kids decided their dragons were hungry, so they needed to feed the fish to the dragons!

It was a great game for them. It was something they kept coming back to & I didn't have to always play with them. I was able to rest while they were occupied.

The other great thing...it didn't cost me anything to make and it was done in about 10 mintues.

For the next activity, I cut up a variety of circles, squares, triangles, rectangles, etc...of different sizes. I got the kids to play with all the shapes and see what kind of pictures they could come up with. When they discovered a favorite one, they were able to glue it onto a sheet of paper and hang it on the fridge. My oldest was more into this than my lil one, but it did keep them both entertained. My Lil One was interested in seeing what his big brother was making - Mission Accomplished!!!

If you have any inexpensive favorite kids crafts or game ideas, please feel free to share - I love to hear new ideas! Thanks & have a great day :)

Mardi Gras Recipes

2010-05-16T09:01:00.000-07:00

Yum YUM yum...
Mardi Gras Party Food!

As promised in the Murder Mystery page, I'm listing all the recipes I used for the party.
I found all the recipes on the net, but as I am Link-challenged, I will list the source, but unfortunately there will be no link up the original page.

I didn't test any of these recipes beforehand (which I realize is such a big no-no at a dinner party) but I had faith that at least half of them would be yummy. Most turned out really well, although I might tweak some here and there when I make them again. Enjoy! And I hope it inspires you to try something new.

So my first stop when I decided to throw a Mardi Gras party was to check out one of my favorite internet sites - Britta Blvd. She is quite the party planner and has great ideas, and lucky me, throws Mardi Gras parties.
Off her site, I made Merle's Spinach Balls, Kings Cake, and Mardi Gras Punch.

Merle's Spinach Balls
Makes 6 - 8 dozen

2 (10 ounce) packages frozen spinach
2 cups herb-flavored stuffing mix
1 large onion, finely chopped
6 eggs, well-beaten
3/4 cup melted margarine
1/2 cup grated parmasean cheese
3/4 Tbsp cayenne pepper (or to taste)
1 1/2 tsp garlic salt
1-2 tsp creole seasoning (optional) - this took awhile for me to find - I finally found it at a meat shop

Preheat oven to 325 degrees F. Lightly grease a cookie sheet. Cook spinach according to package directions and drain well, squeezing to remove excess moisture. Combine with stuffing mix, chopped onion, eggs, margarine, cheese, cayenne and garlic salt. Mix well. Shape into 3/4 inch balls and place on cookie sheet. Bake 15-20 mintues.

(can freeze by placing on a pan in freezer until hard, then store in airtight bags. To serve, thaw slightly and bake 20-25 minutes)

* for my party, I halved the recipe because I just wanted little taste. I believe I ended up with just over 2 dozen. I made mine slightly bigger - a 2 bite spinach ball.

King Cake
Traditional New Orleans Recipe

1/2 cup warm water (110-115 degrees)
2 packages active dry yeast
1/3 cup plus 1 tsp sugar
3 1/2 - 4 1/2 cups flour unsifted 1 tsp nutmeg
2 tsp salt
1 tsp lemon zest
1/2 cup warm milk
5 egg yolks
1 stick butter cut into slices and softened, plus 2 tbsp more softened butter
1 egg, slightly beaten with 1 tbsp milk
1 tsp cinnamon
1 1-inch plasic baby doll or dried bean (I decided to skip this part of the tradition, since my party wasnt really for the actual Mardi Gras holiday.)

Mardi Gras Punch - Non-Alcoholic
1 bottle grape juice (40 oz)
1 container pineapple juice (48 oz)
1 (2L) bottle 7up or Sprite
2 oranges or lemons, sliced for garnish
2 limes, sliced for garnish

* it was listed to add 1/5 vodka (750 mL) is desired to make Alcoholic, but I actually added a little malibu coconut rum. I think it went perfectly with the sweet taste of the punch. I also halved this recipe as well because I had the 2 punches.

Then I checked out the Martha Stewart website and decided on a dessert recipe from her collection:

Louisiana Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce
Serves 4 to 6

1/4 cup bourbon ( i used Jack Daniels - much cheaper and was still YUMMY!)
1/2 cup raisins

1 1/2 cups heavy cream
2 tsp cornstarch
1/3 cup sugar
1/3 cup bourbon

4 cups (about 1/2 baguette) 1-inch cubes of day-old baguette
1 1/2 cups whole milk
1/2 cup heavy cream
2 large eggs
3/4 cup sugar
1 Tbsp pure vanilla extract
1/8 tsp salt
1/8 tsp ground all-spice
2 Tbsp unsalted butter

1. Heat bourbon in a medium saucepan over medium-low heat until warm. Pour over raisins in a small bowl; let stand at least 1 hour or overnight.
2. To make whiskey sauce, bring cream to a simmer over medium-heat in a small saucepan. Whisk together cornstarch and 2 Tbsp cold water; slowly whisk into cream. Bring to a boil, whisking constantly, 1 minute. Remove from heat; stir in sugar and bourbon. Set aside and let cool completely.
3. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Stir together bread, milk and cream in a large bowl. Whisk eggs, sugar, vanilla, salt, and allspice in a medium bowl; add to bread mixture. Stir in raisins and bourbon.
4. Melt buter in an 8-inch square baking dish in oven. Remove from oven, and swirl to coat bottom of dish. Pour in bread mixture, distributing raisins evenly. Bake until bread cubes are browned around edges and custard is cooked, about 35 minutes. Let cool completely on a wire rack. Serve with whiskey sauce.

Then I started surfing around for Mardi Gras recipes and got onto the Taste of Home website and nabbed up 2 recipes from there:

Country Corn Bread
serves 9 Prep/Total Time: 30 minutes
1 cup all-purpose flour
1 cup cornmeal
1/4 cup sugar
1/2 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp salt
1 egg
1 cup (8 ounces) reduced-fat plain yogurt
1/4 cup canola oil

In a large bowl, combine the flour, cornmeal, sugar, baking soda and salt. Whisk together the egg, yogurt and oil. Stir into the dry ingredients just until combined.
Transfer to an 8-inch baking dish coated with cooking spray. Bake at 375 degrees for 20-25 minutes or until top is lightly browned and a toothpick inserted near the center comes out clean. Serve warm.

* my husband made up a bourbon honey butter to go with the corn bread - soooo good!

New Orleans Beignets
4 dozen Prep: 15 minutes Cook: 35 minutes
1 package (1/4 ounce) active dry yeast
1/4 cup warm water (110 - 115 degrees)
1 cup evaporated milk
1/2 cup canola oil
1/4 cup sugar
1 egg
4 1/2 self-rising flour (cake & pastry flour)
Oil for deep-fat frying
Confectioner's sugar

In a largebowl, dissolve yeast in warm water. Add the milk, oil, sugar, and egg and 2 cups flour. Beat until smooth. Stir in enough remaining flour to form a soft dough (dough will be sticky). Do not knead. Cover and refrigerate overnight.
Punch dough down. Turn onto a floured surface; roll into a 16-inch x 12-inch rectangle. Cut into 2-inch squares.
In an electric skillet or deep-fat fryer, heat oil to 375 degrees. Fry squares, a few at a time, until golder brown on both sides. Drain on paper towels. Roll warm beignets in confectioners' sugar.

* I think if I made these again, I would try adding a bit of cinnamon & nutmeg, even though these were pretty yummy.

Recipezaar gave me 3 recipes:

Jerk Chicken Wings
Serves 8
5 lbs chicken wings, rinsed, dried
10 scallions, chopped
5 hot green chili peppers, seeded, chopped
5 bay leaves, broken in half
4 garlice cloves, slivered
2 Tbsp distilled white vinegar
1 Tbsp ground allspice
2 1/2 tsp dried thyme
1 1/4 tsp salt
1/2 tsp fresh ground pepper
1/2 tsp cayenne pepper

Remove tips from chicken wings and seperate wings at joint if desired; place wings in large bowl.
Place remaining ingredients in food processor or blender and process until thick paste forms. Spoon onto chicken and stir to coat. Let stand at room temperature 2 hours or refrigerate overnight; turn wings occasionally in marinade.
Heat broiler (or grill). Place half the wings on broiler pan and broil 4 inches from heat for 10 minutes on each side. Transfer to serving platter. Scrape marinade from broiler pan and spread on wings. Repeat with remaining chicken wings. Let cool and serve.

Baja Blue Jello Shots
serves 24
2 (3 ounces) boxes blue Jello gelatin
2 cups very hot water
1/2 cup coconut rum
1/2 cup blue schnapps
1/4 cup unsweetened pineapple juice

Place your jello shot cups on a cookie sheet (that you know will fit in your fridge), for easy transport.
Place 2 cups very hot water (but not boiling) in a pitcher. Slowly pour in contents of jello packages while stirring constantly. Stir until completely mixed (about 2 minutes).
Add in the remaining ingredients and stir well.
Pour into plastic jello shot cups or you can use a 9x13 pan if you'd like.
Chill 4 hours or more until set.
If you are using a cake pan, simply cut the set Jello into squares and place into individual shot cups for serving.
If you want to get silly, top each one with a small dollop of whip cream just before serving!

* we did the whip cream, but "dolloped" the whole bunch when we set them out and unfortunately as the night went on, the whip cream got pretty sad looking - and it was the only picture i got of them. so lesson...really only put whipped cream on just before comsuming.

Roasted Corn and Herb Dip
3 ears corn on the cob
1 Tbsp olive oil
4 ounces cream cheese, room temp
1/2 cup plain yogurt
1 Tbsp chopped fresh basil
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme
1/4 tsp hot pepper sauce
salt & pepper

Shuck corn and preheat bbq to medium. Brush corn lightly with oil and grill, turning to cook all sides, for about 8 minutes until tender and browned. Leave to cool.

Scrape the kernels off the cobs with a serrated knife into a large bowl. Transfer to a food processor. Add the cream cheese and yogurt and puree until blended. Add the basil, thyme and hot pepper sauce and pulse until blended. Season with salt and pepper to taste.

Place in a serving bowl and serve immediately or cover and refigerate for up to 2 days.
Before serving, bring to room temp. Check Seasoning.

* I wasn't a huge fan of this dip, although Ithink it has potential. I ended up adding about a tbsp of lime juice for a bit of tang. I would've liked to add fresh cilantro, but I didn't have any, but if I make it again, I will definately try it.

At epicurious, I found a great jambablya recipe:

Louisiana Jambalya
Serves 10
1/2 cup (1 stick) butter
2 red onions, chopped
5 green onion, chopped
1 large green bell pepper, chopped
4 garlic cloves, finely chopped
2 bay leaves
1 jalapeno chili, finely chopped with seeds
1 Tbsp creole seasoning
1/2 tsp ground cayenne pepper
1/2 tsp dried oregano, crumbled
2 Tbsp tomato paste
1 pound andouille sausage or hot italian sausage, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
3/4 pound ham, cut into 1/2 inch pieces
2 - 14 1/2 ounce cans chicken broth
1 - 16 ounce can plum tomatoes, diced, with liquid
3 cups long grain rice

Melt butter in heavy large Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add red onions, 4 green onions, bell pepper, garlic, bay leaves, jalapeno, creole seasoning, cayenne pepper, and oregano. Cover and cook until vegetables are tender, stirring occasionally, about 15 minutes. Mix in tomato paste. Add sausage, ham, broth, tomatoes and rice. Bring mixture to simmer. Reduce heat to low, cover and cook until rice is very tender, stirring occasionally, about 1 hour. Garnish with remaining green onion and serve.

All in all, I was pretty happy with how all the food came out. I think I will even make a few of these recipes again. I have a craving for Jerk Chicken Wings...MMMmmmmm.

Here's hoping for a hot weekend...For Jerk Chicken Wings and bottle of Beer on the Patio - Ahhh!

Mardi Gras Murder Mystery Party

2010-05-16T07:57:00.000-07:00

Oh my gosh - what a fun time the murder mystery party was!!!
After a long wait & lots of planning, last night was finally party night & what a blast!
Everyone who came got into their characters, dressed the part and made it an event to remember.

Connika Gothika & Cayenne Pepper

Melissa DuPre & Matthew "Gator" Crovitz

Elise St.Gresch & Bourbon DuPre

J.Stephen Peek & Alexis DuPre

I thought it would be much harder to play, but once you start, it really does start to flow. You actually get the feeling of conversations between the characters because the booklets guide you to respond to certain comments from other players, or what to say if a character accuses you of a scenerio. In starting the game, the thing I was most concerned about was who starts & whether or not the conversations will run out of order and not make sense. Luckily it wasn't like that at all. Everything fell into place and it didn't seem to matter who started first. As hostess, I decided to start reading first and then it would either go around the circle, or someone would just jump in and go.

We had some great inquisitive minds that helped get the discussions flowing after each chapter reading. They had lots of great questions to ask to try and pry out the secrets of the characters. It helped offer alot of information & secondary questions for the more quiet guests.

I won't spoil the ending for those of you who might want to play this boxed Mardi Gras Murder Mystery Party set, but I will say I was the only one who guessed the murderer...and it sure wasn't easy! In this boxed set, the murderer finds out on the first page of their booklet that they are the m urderer. And while everyone else has to answer questions truthfully, yet not offer more than is asked, the murderer is allowed to lie.

I highly recommend giving one of these parties a try, whether it be throwing one or attending one - So FUN!

The Draw Prize Winner

Because I was the only one who guessed the murderer, I put names in a hat to draw for the winner's prize. I wanted to give it away because it was a bonus Murder Mystery Game.

The Jester Cutouts - Fun!

I decided to shy away from the recommended menu plan that is offered in the back of the book, mostly because I didn't want to be trying to cook while the party was going one, but also wanted a little more variety than just salad & jambalaya. So I opted for a buffet style which I premade and then reheated and set it out.

Food Table

our menu plan consisted of:
Country Corn Bread
Jerk Chicken Wings
Merle's Spinach Balls
Roasted Corn & Herb Dip served with Tortillas
Louisiana Jambalya

for dessert:
Louisiana Bread Pudding with Whiskey Sauce
New Orleans Beignets
and King Cake (of course - a staple for any Mardi Gras party)

I used the Hurricane Punch recipe at the back of the book for the main drink of the evening and then I made up a non-alcoholic Mardi Gras Punch (which I later spiked my own drink of this with a little malibu - YUM YUM YUM) and we made Baja Blue Jello Shots.

Drink Table
(I will post all recipes on a secondary blog, if you are interested in checking it out)

I also planned another little trivia game for after the party. I placed "trivia tickets"around the party areas. They each had a little Mardi Gras tidbit written on them. Since all the guests were couples, I made it into a couples game. They divided into their 3 teams, and I gave each one a "trivia sheet"nad a pen. The couple to find all the answers correctly won a prize. I don't know if anyone actually left the party remembering anything, but it was fun to see everyone run around looking for the answers, and interesting to see which couples had good teamwork ;)

The Trivia Game

Looking for answers

The Trivia Winners

The Decor

the Entrance

Masks Shelf Decor
Room Decor
Balcony Dancers

Bowl of Christmas Balls - a great way to add a little Bling

Homemade Napkin Rings
Table Set-up
Dinner Name Tags

Game Booklets
Wall Decor - see the trivia tickets on the wall?
The "Lounge"

Hope you enjoyed the pictures as much as I enjoyed putting it all together.

What a Blast!

Mardi Gras Party Projects

2010-04-28T13:32:00.000-07:00

So I thought I'd share a couple of projects I'm working on this week:

This is, hopefully, going to be 2 jester cutouts - a great Photo Op - to pose with (hence the GIANT heads). It depends on if I can find something economical around here that I can use to paste them up on. If I have no luck, then they will "grow" faces and become part of the wall decor.

My 5 year old wanted to jump in the picture too - it's a great way to show the scale of the jesters, I guess :)

I found some pics off the net of some other Jester cutouts and recreated them onto my roll of butcher paper. As you can see, the paper isn't wide enough, so I had to add extra pieces on so that they could have arms. I'm hoping once I paint them, the paper lines won't be too noticeable.

Then I've got 2 giant Mardi Gras masks partly done. I traced some mask shapes out on a large piece of cardboard, cut them out and gave them a base coat of paint. I still have the embellishments to put on - extra swirly paint designs, rhinestones, some tinsel to go around the edges, but it's getting there.

Also, I'm working on napkin rings. I wanted to keep some cost down ,as I purchased new linens from the dollar store, so I used paper and added a little bling with some rhinestones. I suppose if I knew how to sew/owned a sewing machine, I would've been able to find some scrap pieces of fabric and done basically the same thing, but it would've added a more luxurious feel. But, I work with what I got :)

the almost finished product

I have a few project ideas for next week too.

1. I'm thinking of tearing into my Christmas decorations and pulling out any relevant colors of tinsel or balls. I need some tinsel to finish the giant masks, as I've had no luck trying to find Christmas decorations in Spring ;) The balls I'm going to put into big bowls for extra color and decor.

2. Find some suitable branches. I want to spraypaint them gold and put them into a pot or holder of some sort & make "Mardi Gras Trees". It's something I keep coming across on my party searches. Looks really nice. Now if I can just pull it off.

3. Make one more Big Jester Head or partyish decor, on the big butcher paper, to fill some space on the walls here.

Stayed Tuned for next weeks Works in Progress

Have a great day :)