St. Patrick's Day 2012

Here is the table decorated for the kids to find in the morning. The cups have small themed gifts (pencil, duck, ball).

 

 

 

 

 

 

Green smoothies with moustache straws for breakfast

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lunch: green milk, lime jello, broccoli, green grapes, rainbow colored goldfish, shamrock shaped sandwich or tortillas

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lucky Charm treats: made like Rice Krispie treats, but with Lucky Charms cereal

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

My kids think moustaches are so fun for some reason.

 

 

 

Valentine's Day Celebration Part 2

When the kids got up, they found monkeys, balloons, roses, and a bag of candy that Chad left before he went to work.

 

Breakfast pancakes

 

I found these on pinterest and they're so easy. Just divide the batter and color half of it. After you make the pancakes, use a cookie cutter to cut a heart out of the middle of each one and then switch the cut out hearts so they're in different colored pancakes. I also put a little food color in their milk to make it pink.

 

Lunch: heart shaped tortilla pizza with pepperoni cut to spell I <3 U, strawberries, strawberry applesauce with a few Valentine sprinkles

 

Books we read

 

The girls' flowers and mine.

 

Table set for dinner

 

We always have a special dinner where everyone dresses up, we light candles and turn down the lights, and Colin acts like he's our waiter (always with a fake moustache). Makes me a little teary seeing this picture because I know it won't be long until he can grow a real moustache and that there can't be many years left where he'll want to spend Valentine's Day with us.

 

After dinner, we all played Valentine bingo.

 

 

 

The kids made lots of Valentines for us and each other. The girls made so many that we each got a gift bag full of them.

To see some of the fun things we did before Valentine's Day, see part 1.

Valentine's Day Celebration Part 1

I bought these cute platters and bowls on clearance at Target last year and wanted a reason to use them so I decided to have a little family Valentine party yesterday afternoon. We hung some decorations and made some snacks. The girls had fun helping us make all the stuff.

 

 

Pink heart shaped Rice Krispie treats, marshmallows dipped in pink chocolate, and pretzel rods dipped in white chocolate.

 

 

The girls made some heart crayons. I've been collecting broken crayons in a container for a while. They unwrapped them and put them in these ice trays. We baked them in the oven at 200 degrees until they melted. Then we let them cool and popped them out of the trays.

 

 

I made some heart shaped banana muffins for breakfast this morning.

 

Happy Groundhog Day

We were pretty busy today, but I wanted to make sure we got in some Groundhog Day fun.

We read some books.

 

For breakfast, the kids had pancakes with donut hole groundhogs coming out of them. See last year's post for directions.

 

We also had a groundhog dessert made with chocolate pudding and vanilla wafers found here.

 

Chinese New Year

We had fun celebrating Chinese New Year today. I didn't really have time to plan since we've been so busy and we had Caleigh's birthday party yesterday, but I was able to find some easy things this morning and had books on our shelf so it turned out pretty well.


Some decorations (I got the sign at Party City and the lanterns were on clearance after Christmas at Target)



Books we read


Luckily, I looked at The Joys of Home Educating this morning and saw her links to these easy crafts.

Dragon masks found here from Skip to my Lou.

Dragon puppets found here at Craft Jr.

I saw these cute dragon cupcakes here this morning. I was going to keep the idea for next year since we still had cake and cupcakes left from the party yesterday. Later, I realized I could just use those cupcakes for this and add the dragon on top. I didn't have everything to make more icing so I had to use a can, which isn't the best for decorating, but the kids liked it.

Kids reading their fortunes from the fortune cookies




New Year's Eve

This is a little late, but I wanted to share the fun we had on New Year's Eve. My kids love celebrating everything. For the last few years, they've been able to stay up until midnight to see the ball drop.


Our dining room table decorated with party hats, plates, napkins, and confetti.



Our activity bags/gifts ready to go. This idea was in Family Fun magazine and I've also seen it on the Five in a Row message boards. We've done it the last few years and the kids really like it. Most of the stuff is similar to what we did before, but they find it exciting to open stuff. Each one has a clock on it with the time to open it. They also have a little rhyme on each one so the kids can guess what's inside before opening.



Ready for the party

One of the bags had these 2012 glasses in it.

Decorating cookies

 Clock cookies

This puzzle ball was one of the gifts they got.

They also got Disney Headbandz. They have the regular one and really like it. They thought this one was really fun too.

Fun with sparklers

When midnight came, Molly decided she had to kiss Caleigh and chased her all around until they both ended up on the ground.

So Colin decided to do the same thing to Molly.

She didn't run from Daddy though.

The girls made Goodbye 2011 and Welcome 2012 signs.

Inside our bags:
1. Bubbles to keep the kids busy while waiting for pizza
2. 2012 glasses and party blowouts
3. Cookie decorating supplies
4. Globe puzzle
5. Disney Headbandz game
6. Zookeeper movie and popcorn
7. Sparklers and poppers
8. Wine glasses for a toast