World Explorer Party

This was such a neat looking pinata!  It was for another really fun party, a World Explorer Party.  Katrina threw this party for her Son.  If you want to see how she made her Earth pinata go here.

One of the great things about making up your invitation yourself on the computer is that you can email them as well as printing them up and using snail mail!

Katrina also always makes fantastic cakes herself.  This one was interesting because she was following descript instructions from her Son who had very specific ideas of what he wanted.  One reason I love handmade things (like Birthday parties) is because you can customize it exactly the way you want it.  Check out more of her cake here.

Katrina’s kids love science and science experiment types of things.  This was a really fun project where they got to make their own dinosaur fossils!  More details on this activity can be found here.

Superhero Birthday Party

Anjeanette’s Superhero Party was so much fun!  She’s a whiz at using her computer to make amazing invitations!

We were greeted by this.  Anjeanette used a projector to draw this poster herself!  WOW!  As kids arrived they were given a secret word they would use later.

Pin the badge on the superhero.  Again, Anjenette drew this poster herself!  It’s totally doable when using a projector!  I love variations of Pin The Tail on the Donkey, it is so customizable to your theme!

More amazing posters.  The kids had a relay of games to beat the evil supervillains.  This one they sprayed the supervillain down with a can of silly string.

Sigh.  These capes!  She made these capes with the initial for each child in the party (there were around 20 kids!).  My kids still play with theirs!  The kids got their capes once they defeated the villains.  They all looked so cute running around in their capes!

Go to Anjeanette’s original post on this for even more great ideas!

Batman Birthday Party

My Son loves the Superheroes!  He’s had more than just a few of them.  His Batman Birthday Party is probably one of my favorites.

I really love making Birthday Banners!

I cut out some extra bats with each kids name on them and used them for various things.  One set I ran through my Xyron machine and turned them into stickers.  These were great for marking cups!

These bats are from felt and beans.  They made a fun beanbag toss game!

I also made these cupcake wrappers and cupcake picks.

The food was so much fun.  All you need is a bat shaped cookie cutter and there are so many options.  These cookies went in the kids’ treat bags.

I sealed them up with more of the bat stickers that I made.

The bat breadsticks with pizza dipping sauce were quite a hit (and yet so easy!).

Going with black and yellow is easy.  These oreos came yellow filled!  YAY!  Then we took some of them and dipped them in white chocolate with yellow sprinkles.

 

Check out my original Batman Party post for lots more fun ideas!

 

Rebecca    

Movie Star Birthday Party

A Movie Star Party.  What could be more fun?!  Those popcorn bags are sold everywhere!  Fill them with popcorn and dangle them.  I added stars and beaded coils then topped it off with a red feather boa!

Look at that negative film strip garland.  We got that from a theater.  They just gave us a whole roll free.  We draped it EVERY where and barely used up any of it!

We went with the colors red, black, silver, and white!  Very easy colors to find.  Decorate with movie candy (licorice and red vines) and red candy. 

I turned york peppermint patties into mini film reels using just red and black paper.   

Food is always so much fun!  My little sister made these adorable cupcakes for the party!  The picture doesn’t do them justice.  The fondant stars were dusted with edible glitter, for that extra sparkle!
Keeping with the star theme we had finger sandwich parts all cut out in star shapes, and served up on a gold platter.

I made red jello popcorn and put them in patterned paper cones that I made (with adorable scalloped edges).  Display them in a cute boa rimmed basket!

My favorite food though was the sparkling jello in champagne glasses.  Once again use boas to top these cute drinks off!
Hope you throw a movie star party!  We’d love to see pictures if you do (or already have thrown one).
Go here for lots more Movie Star Birthday Party ideas and details.  We LOVED this party!!

Rebecca

Week of Birthdays-Indiana Jones Lego Party

Well this is our family’s week of Birthdays.  Happy Birthday to my sisters! ;)
To celebrate I thought I would recap some of our Birthday Party posts!  So check back each day for more Birthday Party ideas!

We’ve actually had 2 of these parties in our family!  Katrina’s Son had one and so did one of Anjeanette’s Sons.  Legos are BIG in our family.  Here are both of the amazing invitations. 

Awesome, right!?  They did these invitations up on the computer themselves.  Get friendly with your computer programs girls!  Look what can be done!?

Next up is the amazing homemade cake.  Yup, you read that right!  Katrina puts most of her time and energy into her cakes.  You too could make this! ;)   
Now onto decorations.  Anjeanette used a calendar that she had, to make up this banner!  So, cute!
Lots of Katrina’s decorations were later used for her games.  She had these  super cute poison dart targets.  This one is of Beloq.  They were so amazing.  They were the dart board for the blow dart game!  Go here to see more of her designs as well as directions for them.  Her blow dart game was made using pvc pipe and those nerf foam bullets.

Here is another variation to that blow dart game.  Anjeanette drew up the characters onto boxes.  The blow darts were straws with paint-tipped Q-Tips.  Find out more about theme here.
Watch out with this one, though.  The Dad’s got quite competitive with it and played many extra rounds themselves!

These were the amazing cartouches that Katrina made up for each child.  Those symbols are initials for a child in the party.  They each got one with their own symbol initials on it!  They loved them!  They are made out of shrinky dinks!


Our love for shrinky dinks continues here.  Print up black and white versions of the Lego Indiana Jones characters (you can find them online).  Then, cut up sheets of shrinky dink.  Let the kids trace and color in a character of their choosing.  Punch a hole in them and bake them all up.  Add a key ring and they have awesome key rings they made themselves!  I love activities like this at parties.

For a treat make up your marshmallow eyeballs.

If you can sew, whip up a bunch of Indiana Jones Hats.  Then, you might as well throw in those amazing homemade whips (from the first photo on this post!).  Anjeanette made all of these (and in bulk).  She came up with her own patterns for both.  The fantastic thing about the whips is that she made sure to make them so if you whip them in the air, they really make that cracking noise!  Holey cow they LOVED those whips!
Check the original posts for even more details and ideas!
Click here for Katrina’s Lego Indiana Jones Party. 
Click here for Anjeanette’s Lego Indiana Jones Party .

And don’t forget to keep checking back all week for more great party ideas!

Birthday Party Week

In our family we have a bunch of Birthdays this week!  So, I thought it would be fun to celebrate by having a week of Birthday party posts.  Check back all week long for fantastic ideas on amazing Birthday parties (even more than once a day!).   These are our parties that we’ve posted before.

Do you have boys and find there aren’t enough boy parties out there?  This is the week for you.  Our family is almost all boys (at least for the young ones).  There will be lots of ideas for girls, boys, and gender neutral parties!

Can’t wait to see everyone here every day this week!  Let the partying begin…well, around here we started partying already!
Rebecca

Preschool Play (or even older kids)-Foam Beads

 
What can you do with a pile of foam beads?  I think these are pretty self explanatory.  It’s another one of those things that is so quick and easy to make a whole lesson/activity with! 

I have cards that are 1-10.  Each kid first had to put their numbers in order.  Then, they put the appropriate number of beads underneath it.

Sort by colors.
 
Sort by size.

Sort by shape.

Match shapes, sizes, and colors.

Patterns are fun!  This one is a color pattern.

Next up is a size pattern.

Last is a pattern by shapes.

In the end let them bead up a pipe cleaner bracelet any way they want.  What a great motor control activity that is!

There are so many other things to do with these.  How about have them make specific stacks.  Or for older children have them add and subtract with them.  What about teaching basic multiplying by seeing the groups?  Use them as stamps in paint and make a pretty picture.  What would you do?

Rebecca

Building A Happy Home

Love love love this idea!  As soon as I saw it, I had to use it in my home.  I found this AMAZING idea from Sugardoodle.  We LOVE Sugardoodle!  She found this idea on this really cute new site, Chicken Babies.  Just to be clear, the idea is from Chicken Babies but I found it via Sugardoodle! ;)  I like to make sure I give credit where it’s due!
The idea is that you build a small lego home.
 
Then, you take blocks off of it.  I thought taking off about half the house (over 60 blocks) was the perfect number for my family.  I’m storing the blocks in a cute Lego container, right next to the “Happy Home.”

I first showed my kids the nice pretty “Happy Home.”  Then, I took the blocks off. 
I told my kids that we want to make sure that we always have a “happy home.”  Every time I see them doing something sweet for someone in our home, we will add a brick back onto the home. 
When we build our “Happy Home” back up we will get a reward.  I always let my kids pick rewards like this.  We decided a trip to the movies was the perfect reward.
 
There is a catch.  When I see my kids doing things that tear down our happy home, then we will remove a brick!

I LOVE this idea because I’m always trying to work on our family (and home) being a place where everyone loves, respects, and has fun with one another.  I think this lesson will be so easy for my kids to understand and be such a fun way to focus on it.
My children are so excited about this activity that they asked if we can keep it going once we finish this house.  They want to then build something together, and it will be the new “Happy Home” to build back up!  I love that because I had initially thought about having them build this home in the first place (to help them understand that it takes all of us to make a happy home).  But I got too excited and couldn’t wait for them to get home from school! ;)
Rebecca
PS.  Make sure to check out Sugardoodle’s and Chicken Babies’ sites!