Hours of kid fun!

I cannot take credit for this project. Nor can I say, "Hey, I found this on Pinterest." No, no. This was 100% my children. They thought it, they made it, they asked permission to use the materials, and they play with it. I repeat ALL CREDIT GOES TO MY KIDS.

What is this fantastically free, easy to do project that has given my children 2 days (so far) of entertainment? Cardboard laptops. Yup. That's it. Cut out a rectangle, fold it, and hand over the permanent markers!

Do yourself a favor and try to see what my darling kiddos have written as their favorite laptops (Juliana wrote Vaughn's). They even made mouses for their computers!

 They informed me that the ones on the left are games (Cats and dogs, "cer bers"- Care Bears, "Hary Potr"- Harry Potter) Then there are the four sizes of dogs to choose from during the one game. 

The middle section is Netflix. cats and dogs, scooby doo, super heros (Sopr Hyro), Spidr Man, bath man, cars and cities, my little pony, dog and popy (?), Spas bogs (Space dogs).

The section on the right is the Toy Shop. I can't tell if that is a section to shop in or games. Who knows. 

This one is Juliana's. She's the one who came up with the idea AND made hers and Vaughn's. I am SO impressed with her creativity!! Far right, top, is a bank account. According to Bean, if you click on the numbers it gives you MORE money. I think the top middle is supposed to be facebook. She also said something about clicking on stuff to make more stuff pop up. You can't see it, but she also drew a camera on the back. :D

This is Xander's. His makes me laugh. He included Pinterest and Pottermore. Fish Games is supposed to be Big Fish Games. He liked the idea of Angry Birds, but thought it would be clever to have Angry Pigs instead. He also has a place to buy movie tickets, Netflix, AND another place for movies. He has included Facebook and Twitter (How does he know about Twitter?). 

I love these kids and their smartypants-ness!!!!!

Birthdays are Magic!!

What?! 2 birthday posts in a row? Yes. Because my boys are on week shy of being 4 years apart. I only do parties every 4 years, but this means EVERY time the boys have their parties, they will be this close together! Luckily, Xander's party was much easier to do. He wanted a magician to come. Also, his party colors were the same as Vaughn's. The big box of 24 disappearing inks were used for both parties. So, this is what we did:

I made some simple invitations

 Rearranged the crepe paper & made a new banner:

Made 14 top hats without a tutorial. I think there is no tut because they really aren't too difficult.  I'll do a for real tutorial later.

We set up 5 stations. I only have pictures of 2 of them.

At the first station, I taught the kids a couple money magic tricks I found on Pinterest. I'll post links later tonight. The kids thought that was cool. Then I split the kids up. We had 11 kids come (plus the birthday boy), so there were 3 groups of 4. 

The second station, Roger was in charge of. He did the potions "class" that we did at Vaughn's party with the cups and spoons. Check out my last post for details.

The third station, which I was managing as well, was called Yummy War. I knew I wanted a card game, but didn't have time to learn any new ones so we played war. Winner got candy. They all got candy, though, so no worries! 

The last two stations were the favorites!

The fourth one was the top hats. They had markers, crayons, and cutouts/glue that they could decorate their hats with. They thought that was pretty cool!!

The last station was a photo booth. This is actually a wedding reception trend, but I could not resist the idea of having mustaches on sticks!!!!

Here are a few of the poses!

THe backdrop was a roll of paper from the dollar store. I found a thrift store frame. We had a lot of fun with these.

Once everybody had completed all their stations, they picked up their goody bags

Then Xander opened his presents (while all the kids played with their whoopee cushions......). He got some sweet stuff! And some money, too. We were very blessed by his gifts this year!!

The kids went outside to play for about 5 minutes until the magician came and set up. Then all the siblings were invited to join as well as some of our friends of various ages. The magician was AWESOME!!!

We had magical fun!!!

Have a Very Harry Birthday!

Today is Vaughn's 4th birthday. Yesterday I threw a big Harry Potter birthday party for him. I posted about it a few days ago (it should be the last post).  So here is how it all went down:

First, the guests  came to Platform 9 3/4

They came in and got their wands

Then they colored a picture until everyone got there. Once all the guests had arrived, they all took a turn with the Sorting hat. My friend, Rachel paper mached this for me.

We only had Ravenclaw and Hufflepuff represented, just to make life easier. Once the kids were sorted, they played Pin The Club on the Troll

Once the troll was successfully clubbed, we went to charms class. I bought these Magic Scratch lanterns from Oriental Trading. They have a bunch of different shapes. These ones just happened to be on sale.

It didn't take long for these munchkins to finish Charms class, so on to Potions we went. This was SO my favorite!!! I found the idea on Pinterest. It's from one of the parties on my Pinterest board by How Does She. Here is the set-up

Each station had a cup of vinegar and a cup of water. The night  before the party, I put a drop of food coloring on each spoon. Then in the morning, I scooped baking soda into each one. Care to guess what happened next?

Seriously so much fun!! Even the adults were in awe!

The next part of the plan was SUPPOSED to be Quidditch practice- relay races with brooms. However, I didn't think that through. Relay races + 4 year old attention span...

We went back inside to have ButterBeer floats (vanilla ice cream, butterscotch syrup, and cream soda) and eat Snitch Cake Pops. Vaughn opened his presents and handed out the goody bags

Here are a couple last shots of some of the details

Don't worry. I did not actually cut up any Harry Potter books. I scanned the first page of each chapter, resized it so that it would FIT the triangle, then printed it. All of the pennants are also glued onto paper bags for substance. This banner will be used again, for sure!

All in all, I'm pretty sure Mr. Vaughn had fun!!

Parties!!

So, you know those blog posts about those fabulous parties that some moms throw for their kids where they go ALL crazy out and make everyone else in the universe ooh and ahh? Yeah, they don't tell you how much TIME is spend doing those parties. I decided to be "that mom" since my kids only get birthday parties every 4 years. And, I'm a glutton for punishment. My boys are turning 4 and 8 this year. A week apart from each other. Vaughn is having a Harry Potter party this Saturday. Xander is having a magic party the Saturday after that. SOOOOOO..... for the past month, I've been working on these parties and STILL, this week is crunch week #1.

Here is what I have done so far:

Invitations:

I learned something here. For the wax seals, I used old scentsy that had not much smell left in them. I stamped them with a rubberstamp. I was so excited to deliver them and everyone was home except for 2 people. One day when I was out and about, I decided to take them with me and deliver on my way home. So these two invitations with wax seals sat in a bag in my hot car. What happens to wax in the heat? Oh yes. They melt. BUT it did not ruin the invitations. As a matter of fact, those may have been the coolest invitations BECAUSE- I turned them into vellum!!!! Yup. THe paper was then transparent (and smelled yummy). Pretty cool, eh?

I also have  the wands all made. I've made all the BASES of the boxes, but still need to finish the lids and label all of them:

To make these, I used dowels, put designs on them with hot glue and then handpainted each one while I watched Edward Scissorhands for the first time. The boxes are made out of paper grocery bags.

I also made this troll. We're going to play pin the club on the troll:

Also, I don't have pictures yet, but I have also made chocolate frogs & troll bogies (playdough), designed lables for chocolate frogs, every flavor  beans, troll bogies, and invisible ink.

Still to do:
Finish wand boxes
Make Platform 9 3/4 (a sheet painted like brick)
Get labels printed
Decide how to set up Ollivander's
Figure out cake
Buy last minute stuff (cups, spoons, cream soda, streamers, ice cream, tablecloth)
Make sorting hat
Put goody bags together

Yup, busy week! Then the next week it is finishing Xander's MAGIC party. Luckily I've hired a magician for that one, so I'm not NEARLY as stressed

June 2012 STS Color Challenge

Ok, I made a mini kit for the June 2012 blog train at Stuff to Scrap! I hope you like it! Please remember to leave some love since I don't have a download counter! Click on preview to download.

HOORAY for being back at it!

I have some incredible news! I'm finally on a Creative Team again! I LOVED being part of Maurine Stettler's (Let Me Scrapbook) but, if you follow this blog, you know that last year pretty much put my life on hold. But since Paisley is here and healthy (and getting so big), I decided it was time to get back in the game. So when I saw that Scraps by Missy was having a CT call, I JUMPED at the chance. Guess what? I got in!! She sent me a whole bunch of kits and I got busy! Here's what I did yesterday! (Bed? Overrated)

 This first one was using a kit called A Beautiful Summer Afternoon and I participated in a challenge at the studio called "Me, Myself, and I." I need to go back and add some journaling for it to be legit, but I finished at a ridiculous hour.

This was a using a kit simply entitled JOY. It has some GORGEOUS colors in it. I just barely tapped into two of them! This particular page was part of a scraplift challenge at Stuff to Scrap

I didn't do this one yesterday, but about a month ago when Maurine was the Designer of the Month at the studio. SO- it's not Scraps by Missy , but Let Me Scrapbook. You can get the full kit here or the add-on here so here ya go!

I want this!

Ok, so one of my secret loves that makes me all giddy is nail polish. I even follow a couple of nail blogs. Right now, my FAVORITE nail blog, Babbling Brooke, is having a giveaway that I want so badly it isn't even funny. GORGEOUS nail colors, a towel (that is one of the things I'm MOST excited about), a SUPER cute PAISLEY bag, flip flops, a book, all kinds of fun stuff!

Cross your fingers for me, please!!

June 2012 LDS Blog Train

Sorry I'm a few minutes late in posting this! Please click the image to download the file. Then, if you're interested in a few other free downloads by me, please see THIS post and THIS post. On all posts, please remember to comment as I have no way to count downloads.

Here is the rest of the train:
My Digi Chocolate
One Scrap Happy Chic

 

Granny Enchanted
Sassy Girl Studio
Craft With Me  <-------You are HERE!!
WinksArt Graphics
Toddlers of Unusual Size
FranB Designs
Scraps by Missy

 

JMC Designs
Crystals Crafting and Scrapbooking

 

KatLen Kreations
Twiisters Design Shoppe
Psychozoe Designs
Let Me Scrapbook