Quick DIY Art - Bunting Frame

I have been wanting to create some simple artwork to replace the photo collage I have had hanging for awhile. I scoured Pinterest for ideas and was immediately drawn to this bunting frame. (click photo for pin)

 

 And then I saw this one and loved the combination of burlap and fabric hearts! (click photo for pin)
 
I rounded up some fabric scraps in my sewing stash and broke out my hot glue gun. It was seriously one of the fastest projects I have done. So simple!



I can't wait to see it up on the newly painted walls!!

A Very Harry Potter Birthday

A couple weeks ago was my oldest's 9th birthday! AH! I can't believe I am mom to a soon-to-be 4th grader!
Well, this boy loves Harry Potter so we put together a pretty Pintastic, magical Harry Potter party for him.

My awesome friend who runs a before and after school program let us borrow a Sorting Hat to sort the boys into the different houses at the beginning of the party.

Each boy had a lightning bold drawn on their forehead, Harry Potter style glasses (really just these that we cut up to be like Harry's), a Hogwarts robe and house tie.

Each of the boys got a Harry Potter goodie bag with some fun treats including: Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans, a pair of Chinese handcuffs, a box of sparklers, a Hogwarts notebook, and a Hogwarts certificate/scroll.

Our local library had a Harry Potter party on the same night as I had planned the party so we decided to incorporate it into the plan. So, after the boys were sorted we all loaded into the van and headed to the library.

They had Potter themed snacks including: pretzel wands, butter beer, wizard hats (Bugles) and magic color changing potion drinks.

There were craft stations where the boys were able to decorate their own wands, color pictures, get house badges, and make Monster Book of Monsters.

After the fun at the library we came home for dinner and movie.  We had some Potter themed drinks, Wizard Chex Mix, fruit and of course a party staple... PIZZA!  ;-)

Because I wasn't sure which kids had seen which movies I chose for us to show the first Harry Potter movie (The Sorcerer's Stone). 

** Because the Harry Potter books and movies get progressively darker Nate is permitted to read a book each year around his birthday and then we follow it with a family movie night to watch the corresponding movie. Shortly after the party he and I finished listening to the audio book of The Goblet of Fire and watched that movie as a family.

I am wondering how much longer Nate will be into themed parties and such.  As much work as they are I love being able to make his birthdays special and unique every year.  He is an incredibly special kid and I am proud to be his mama!  Love him!

Little Mermaid 4th Birthday Party

As usual Pinterest was my go-to place to get party ideas. I kept pinning and pinning... way more ideas than I could ever actually do.  And I was kind of feeling partied out so I wasn't very motivated to do a whole lot.  Thanks to my friend Lehi for loaning me a bunch of beachy/luau stuff that kind of went with our Little Mermaid theme. 

 We did a surf board craft and had the kids "go fishing". They loved it!

  Thanks to Jess for doing all the printables! Not pictured are coloring pages and paper dolls that were in the family goodie bags - which were sand buckets with fun treats in them.

 Cut out sandwiches for the kids...

 Chicken Salad Crabs from Lehi! So good!

 Clam shell cookies...

and who needs cake when you can have Jello?  ;-)

Our birthday girl was sweet and smiling the whole time!  

She enjoyed every minute of her Little Mermaid party!

 

 

Pinterest Inspired Photo Collage

For a long time we had three large frames with pix of the kids hanging in the living room. And for awhile it was great. But my kids are pretty darn cute and I while I wanted to hang new pictures, I hated taking down the old ones. So I wanted to find a way that I could display more of the great pictures we have of our cute little family.

So to Pinterest I went... I was inspired by this pin.  There were several others that I liked too but this was one of my faves. I love the combination of pictures and other items and the unifying black frames.

In preparation, I spent months collecting black frames in all shapes and sizes from Goodwill. They cost anywhere from $.49 to $2.99.  The fancy "swoopy" frames and the non-photo frame pieces I got from Hobby Lobby when they were 50% off. They ended up sitting in a box atop my dryer for months waiting for us to tackle the task of hanging them.

 My hubby was such a huge help when it finally came time to hang them.  He was right there with a level and duct tape to make sure each and every frame was level.  There are some perks to having an OCD husband.  ;-)

And here is the view of this side of the living room. We even have a family pix on the tv!  ;-)  I am so happy with how it turned out. 

Muppet Movie Birthday Party!

 Well, its birthday party season here. My birthday was last month. Joe's is this week. Christine's in another five weeks and then my hubby's a couple of weeks after that. We will get a little break before Nate's. Which is good because he is full of ideas of things he wants to do for his. But that is for another post.  ;-)  This is Joe's birthday party post!

 

Last fall we found a whole bunch of cake toppers in the Walmart clearance and Nate helped me pick ones out for each of the kids' birthdays for this year. Joe got The Muppets. So we decided to have a movie "night" in the afternoon.

 We had juice boxes, popcorn and individual candy for the kids to munch on during the movie. We originally had aspirations of really creative Muppet-y themed food and decorations but practicality got the better of me and we kept it simple.

The kids did really well during the movie. But it probably would have been a little better had it been an hour instead of two. We ended up having a couple of the kids make puppets and eventually had Joe open presents while the movie was still going because they were gradually losing interest.

We ended up having the afternoon matinee be "friends only" and had the family come over for dinner afterward.  Thank goodness I split it up! It was crowded enough as it was! At both "parties", it was clear that Joe loved having his favorite people around. 

In particular we were very excited to have a classmate of his join us. It is the first time we've really connected with a schoolmate before. Joe and Katie have been in class together from developmental preschool on and have been buddies the whole time. When we told Joe that Katie was coming he was so excited he practically got whiplash trying to see if she was coming in the door. We had to explain that the party wasn't until later. It was really neat to see him communicate his excitement so clearly.

 

Here is our store-bought cake (I usually make my own, but again practicality won) with the clearance cake topper.  Pretty cute! Who doesn't love a little Kermit and Miss Piggy?

 Per usual, we took a pix of all five of us toward the end of the long party day. See Nate's face... that is exactly how I felt.  ;-)  But seriously, we are so blessed to have friends and family who love and accept our special kiddos. I am thankful to have so many who love us.

Kindness has a beautiful way of reaching down to a weary heart 

and making it shine like the rising sun.

Homeschool Co-op Lego Class Part 1

In our homeschool co-op all the moms take turns teaching classes.  I have done different story/craft classes for the younger grades before but this time I took on something a little different.  I wanted to find a subject that would really (hopefully) get the kids to engage.  With the plan to teach Nate's 3rd grade class I offered to do a Lego Class.

Thanks to Pinterest I have found tons of great Lego learning ideas that I have been able to use in our class.  In this post I will share what we did in our first three class sessions.  I will have a follow-up post with the details on our last three sessions next month.

Week One - we helped the kids cut out and assemble their own Lego minifig paper box (a printable found in this birthday party kit)

Week Two - the kids played Lego Bingo and then had some free-build time.

Week Three - the class had fun wearing their Lego masks.

 

A few of the kids had recently seen the Lego Movie and were all singing the "Everything is Awesome" song.  So they had to make "Everything is Awesome" out of Legos. ;-)

Its been a pretty relaxed class.  Its extracurricular, the kids are having a blast.