the bug trap

I love my children's imaginations!!

A Rootin' Tootin' Far Out Birthday Party!

On Sunday, we celebrated Austin's third birthday TOY STORY style (his actual birthday was Sept. 28th). We had 17 adults and 24 children in our home! We are so blessed that 1) we have enough room for that many people now that we're in our new house and 2) it was decent weather, so people could be in the backyard to play!

There are lots of pictures, so I'll try to be brief in my words. Leave me a comment if you have a question on anything you see. And, if you want to see the picture larger, just click on it.

WELCOME TO THE PARTY!

This will be the third year I've re-used this banner...I've just changed the pictures each year. Each circle has a picture of Austin that represents each month of this past year.
Monkey Party banner here
Construction Party banner here

My original plan was to feed everyone dinner, but when I realized that EVERYONE on the gust list could make it, we did light snacks instead (that's a lot of people to feed!). The menu was mango-peach salsa (YUM!), guacamole, tortilla chips, fruit, snack mix, and cucumbers and carrots with dip.

And, of course...cupcakes!

I went a little easy on the decorations this year and focused more on the activities. Since there were going to be so many kids in attendance, I knew there had to plenty available to keep them all busy! I came up with the idea of having "stations" available (similar to what I did last year for Austin's construction party), but this time I gave each child/mom a list of all of these activities.


My creative juices just happened to be flowing the night before the party, so for each station I came up with a rhyme and made a sign to hang at each of the locations.
Cupcake time...Austin loves him some cupcakes!

Of course, he loves him some presents, too!
I decided that with so many kids around and you know how much kids love presents, that whoever brought him the gift he's opening, they get to sit right there next to him. Part of the joy for me was seeing the smiles in the faces of the present-giver. There is just something about watching someone open a present YOU gave to them...makes me smile for sure!

And did I already mention there were 24 kids there?!
So, therefore there were 24 goody bags to hand out. Well, technically only 19 since any child under 2 went home empty handed. Sorry Hannah, Levi, Claire, Bradley & Anna...I still love you! It just so happens that the majority of the goodies in the favor bags were found on clearance! Each bag probably cost me just about $1! The top left in the picture below were for the 15 bigger kids and the bottom left were for the 4 littler ones.

All in all, it was a smashin' success and a fabulous day to celebrate my boy! We are so blessed to have such wonderful friends who love and adore our children!!

Another birthday party TACKLED! I love planning these parties, but they are definitely a big job! Speaking of tackling, I should probably get going on cleaning up the leftover party mess. I got started last night, but somewhere along the way I lost my motivation.

{And, slowly, but surely I'm getting back into this blogging thing!}
MORE BIRTHDAY PARTY INSPIRATION HERE!

Want to see more Tackle it Tuesday?
Head on over to 5 Minute for Mom.

a gift to give - Easter bunnies & chocolate

Look! I actually did something crafty...


We're moving in less than a week (for real this time) and I just couldn't resist giving our current neighbors one last gift for the holidays! I already shared this Easter bunny, but yesterday during the kids' naps I whipped up 5 more to use as gifts for the neighbors.


I wanted to give them some sort of a treat, too, so I filled empty bottles of Starbucks Frappucino bottles full of Easter candy.

{a bunny's not complete without its cottontail}

Instead of using ribbon around the lid, I cut strips of decorative paper and glued them, followed by a circle punch from green, a scallop punch of pink and a Happy Easter greeting from the Boos Family (printed off from the computer) to go on top.

Mikayla loves going to the neighbors to hand out treats. We'll just have to wait until the rain goes away...it's been a wet one today.

Want the tutorial to make one of these bunnies for yourself? Visit my Stampin' Up! blog to find it.

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It's amazing how quickly a year goes by!
This was our "sweet tweet" we gave last year for Easter.

i should be wrapping presents...

Yes, there are many, many presents still to be wrapped, but instead, I've decided to use my time in other ways...like blogging!

Yesterday (Friday) my sister and family came into town and they are staying at my parents' house for the next 10 days. After naps, the kids and I decided to head on over there to spend the rest of the evening with family since Ryan was going out after work for a poker night!

Day 18 of our "25 Days to Christmas" activity for the day was to decorate cookies with the cousins! We actually did 2 activities on Friday and ended up also going to a local church to watch the new Christmas Veggie Tales movie. {Please excuse the not-so-good-quality pictures...the camera was having an off night!}

Cookie Time!

Cousin Jacob

Cousin Noah
Every little sprinkle in place...
Cousin Hailey just observed.
Death by sprinkles!!
Heading out to the movie.
Sugar overload!!
(cousin Hunter joined us after the cookies)
WE LOVE COUSIN TIME!!

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The activity for Day 19 (today) was one of those "quick, think of something to do!" kind of days. I had mentioned in an earlier post that I wouldn't have all of the activities pre-planned at the beginning of the month. Usually I just think of something we can do the night before or maybe there's something we already have planned for the evening that becomes the activity. This way I make sure it's going to fit into the schedule. Well, finally at 7:00 PM, after some begging and pleading from Mikayla to do the activity for the day, I came up with a quickie...

SNOW-POPCORN BALLS!
(I added a few red sprinkles for fun!)
I'll spare you the pictures in the kitchen. We were rushing because bed time was fast approaching, but the recipe we used is Best Ever Popcorn Balls found at allrecipes.com

Diggin' in!

Cheers!

We ended the evening with reading Frosty the Snowman and then it was off to bed!

Hope everyone is having a wonderful weekend!
I should really try to get caught up on reading all of your blogs (I'm so behind...sorry!!), but the wrapping of presents has got to get done!

more Christmas fun - join in!

Yikes! Can you believe we only have 1 week until Christmas?!

I must admit we've been having a blast with our 25 Days of Christmas activities and it has truly helped us enjoy the holiday season just a little bit more. However, there still seems like there's so much to do, but a lot can happen in 7 days, right?

As part of Liz's Countdown to Christmas,
I'm sharing this week's activities...
{click on each collage to view larger}

On Monday (Day 14), our activity was all about trees! We made paper stand up trees and the kids got to use my circle punches again to punch out patterned papers. We even punched out some stars to add a little bit extra. This wasn't anything too complicated and it actually didn't last long, but they had fun nonetheless.
After dinner, the kids got to decorate sugar cones with green frosting and sprinkles. The perfect edible Christmas tree!

On Tuesday (Day 15) we spent the evening with some dear friends of ours, the Newton family. We enjoyed spaghetti & meatballs for dinner and the kids had ice cream sundaes for dessert! The kids exchanged books...a tradition we started last year. Earlier in the day, Mikayla and Austin helped wrap Ellie & Claire's books...boy did they have fun with the tape!
On Wednesday morning (Day 16), we headed over to my friend Sarah's house for a little play date with the kids (and the moms). We thought it would be fun if they did a little craft, so the kids made reindeer by painting their hands and feet, which they loved! It was a pretty simple activity, but we had fun.

Yesterday (Day 17), after dinner the kids decorated some coffee cups with stickers and then we made some "hot-cold cocoa" that the kids could take with them in the car while we drove around to look at lights. We didn't go anywhere too spectacular...just drove around the neighborhoods in our town. At this age, the kids are excited over any kind of lights!
That's us! How about you?
Hope you're soaking in all of the fun of the season!

Ryan has all of next week off, so we're looking forward to that. My sister and family are in town starting today, so I'm sure we'll be spending lots of time at my mom and dad's. Christmas card to be sent, presents to be wrapped, more gifts to make...and the list goes on. But most of all lots of fun to be had!