Cinco De Minion Party!

This year we made the choice to combine Joe and Christine's birthdays into one party. They are 6weeks apart and I kind of go all out. So, that is a lot of planning for me to do in a short period of time. We decided to celebrate both kids on Christine's birthday which is May 5th - Cinco De Mayo. But an ordinary cinco de mayo theme wasn't enough, so we took a hint from Despicable Me 2 and we had a Cinco De Minion party!

 

 

 Because it was a combined party, our guest list was even longer than usual. So we asked my parents if we could have the shin-dig at their farm. Lots of space for the kids to roam around and plus they have some fun things for the kids to do including a "train" and bounce house. Another change we made this year was we made the party a pitch-in. So each family brought various Mexican dishes. Seriously, we ate GOOD! YUM!!

 We had a fabulous photobooth and got pictures of every family that attended the party. This is my crazy crew, including the two birthday kiddos!

 After dinner and games everyone gathered in the barn and we closed the doors... making it pretty dark, allowing us to project Despicable Me the movie on the wall and watch it like a cross between a movie theater and a drive-in movie.

I had been planning and gathering minion treats and such for quite some time. I kind of went a little minion crazy. This was the first party of ours that a few families had attended... they were really impressed. I am afraid that they will be sorely disappointed by the next party which is unlikely to be as extravagant! ;-)

  *writing this post reminded me of Arrested Development's Cinco De Cuatro... those who watched it will know what I am talking about.  ;-)

 

Our Fall Family Pictures

In preparation for our mini-session I scoured Pinterest for pose ideas. Because two of my kiddos cannot walk (or really stand) unassisted I had to keep that in mind while choosing inspiration pictures. Here are a few of the ones that I liked.

Then came the whole ordeal of figuring out what to have our family wear! I have a whole Pinterest board dedicated to What To Wear pins. Thank goodness for Pinterest! Am I right?? ;-)

Capturing Joy had a whole series on different color schemes for family photo outfits and the post on "yellow" caught my eye. I was also inspired by this post and the rule of thumb that they suggest which is {the “three colors + POP” rule}.  The last couple of times we have had pictures done I worked everyone's outfits around something cute I found for Christine. This year I took a different approach. I haven't been feeling great about my body this year (put on a few lbs) so I picked an outfit for me that I really like and feel confident in. It was a gray dress which was neutral so it was easy to build a color palette around it. I looked in everyone's closets and found bits and pieces until it came together. I ended up buying a shirt for Joe at Goodwill to round everything out. I ended up choosing the same color scheme as the pictures above - navy, gray & yellow with a POP of pink.

In case you can't tell, my kids are incredibly hard to pose. The younger two are on the move so much and the oldest wants to do bunny ears the whole entire time! But despite my crazy kids, my lovely friend Lehi was able to get a few great shots of our little family. I love them!! 

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!

Pinterest Science

I'll admit this year has been a little lacking in creativity. I have had very little energy for crafts and science projects for/with Nate. So on the last official day of school Nate had a friend over and we tackled a couple of fun science experiments that I found on Pinterest ages ago but hadn't gotten around to actually doing.  Here is what we did:

Marshmallow Catapult 

This was pretty successful. Though some of the marshmallows were a little on the soft side and had a hard time holding the skewers. But they did have a good time catapulting the mini marshmallows across the room.  ;-)

Optical Illusion

Each boy drew two pictures that went on opposite sides of a pencil. They would spin it between their hands and (ideally) they would be able to see both images together. Originally they drew with colored pencils and we found that it was too light to see when spinning. So, they went over their pictures with crayons to darken it and that made a big difference.

Milk Science Experiement

This involved making food coloring move around in the milk. The boys loved this one so much that in the end their bowls were a murky mess of colors!

Popsicle Stick Chain Reaction

We kept having premature chain reactions... but it was still pretty cool. 

The boys had a great time with all of the experiments but I will say that they didn't take up near as much time as I thought they would. Because we had just the two of them, we kind of breezed through them quickly and eventually they ended up playing games on the Kindle.  

Thankful for good friends!

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.