DIY Baby Princess Hat

For Lady Bug's birthday I made her a princess hat. Yes, her birthday was almost half a year ago. I thought I'd already blogged about this, but I checked and, no, I hadn't. So now I am.

Picture instructions ahead!

A Minecraft Birthday

I've been fighting the idea of this party for years now. I didn't want to completely encourage Builder Boy's obsession with a video game. But it's been almost three years now; it was time.

MasterChef Birthday Party

Last Saturday we celebrated Builder Boy's 7th birthday with a MasterChef themed birthday party. Builder Boy is a big fan of the MasterChef and MasterChef Junior shows and lately has been very interested in learning how to cook. For his birthday presents I talked with his relatives and together they got him a bunch of his own cooking supplies including an awesome Fruit and Veggie Prep Kit specifically made for kids. Looking at all the presents he said that it was a "dream come true!" I asked for some recommendations from other parents for teaching to cook cookbooks for kids and from that he was given Elliot's Extraordinary Cookbook and Clueless in the Kitchen: A Cookbook for Teens. Elliot's Extraordinary Cookbook teaches kids about cooking and food through a story with a few, simple recipes while Clueless in the Kitchen is more instructive and has more recipes. We're going to cook our way though one and then the other.

So proud of his cheesecake with blueberries on top!

This spring when Builder Boy watched the cheesecake pressure test on MasterChef Builder Boy asked if he could make a cheesecake for his birthday. Not would I make one, but could he make one. I told him if he still remembered and wanted to do it then, he could. He remembered and all he could talk about when his birthday came up was that he was going to make his own cheesecake all by himself! I found an easy Bisquick recipe and while it's not perfect, it was easy enough for him to make without me touching anything and he loved it. And he was so very proud of it. He ended up making two; one for his birthday during the week and one for the party.

I had big plans for the birthday party. Those plans half way fell apart, however, when Principal Daddy got sick and I ran out of time. The things that did turn out: customized aprons for the party favor, kid chefs making their own pizza dough and learning how to toss it, and a blind folded taste test. The things that did not turn out: photo booth and pin the mustache on the chef. Because Daddy stayed in bed to keep from infecting our guests and my friend was helping with Lady Bug, I did not get many pictures. But the kids still had a good time, and that's what counts.

The aprons I got at Walmart and Joanne's Fabric. They were 3 aprons/$11. The Walmart ones were bigger and I found them in the craft section. Those I gave to the older boys. The smaller ones (for the same price) I found at Joanne's. I used red puffy fabric paint and painted on each person's name and the MasterChef logo. Same price (or less) than what you would normally spend on a bag of party favor toys and these will probably last longer.

Before the party started Builder Boy sliced olives with an egg slicer and pineapple rings, mushrooms, and bell peppers with his kid safe knife from the veggie prep kit. Principal Daddy searched youtube and picked some pizza tossing videos to show the kids so they could try it themselves. The kids had a lot of fun trying it out, and I was prepared for dropped dough. Everyone was a chef and made their own pizzas. For drinks we made the chose your own flavor drinks that we discovered from Pinterest last year.

When the pizzas were in the oven we did a blindfolded taste test with two kids at a time. They were pretty quick to pick up that we were using leftover pizza toppings as the ingredients so I pulled some other random veggies and such from the fridge. Builder Boy had really wanted a competitive component to his party and while it was informal with no "winner," he loved it.

I had wanted to make a photo booth with fun cut outs as another thing to do at the party. I purchased a roll of wrapping paper for the background and some cupcake boarder at the dollar store. Learn from my mistake: one roll is not wide enough. You have to double it to make it wide enough so you're not too close to take a picture. I did not figure this out until the night before the party. I know better now for next time.


















The boys ended up playing with all the balloons from the birthday morning surprise plus some other ones I added and that was plenty to keep them occupied for the rest of the party.
I made a MasterChef Pinterest Board with some other ideas that I had considered doing if you're interested in throwing your own MasterChef party.

Another Birthday Morning Surprise

Last week was Builder Boy's birthday! He is now 7 years old and he has such a loving spirit and is a joy to teach and parent. I am immensely proud of him.

Builder Boy really enjoyed last year's birthday balloon surprise. So I upped the ante and did another balloon surprise for this birthday. Last years' balloons formed a curtain to walk through. This year's is a catch of balloons that cascade down on the unsuspecting birthday child. I used regular party streamers to hold up regular sized balloons, using tape to keep it up. I started at the bottom and criss-crossed up adding one balloon per streamer. The whole thing from blowing up the balloons to putting them up took less than 30 minutes.

Happy (Belated) Birthday, Early Bird!

This week was Early Bird's 4th birthday. We celebrated in a much more....low effort way than I prefer to celebrate birthdays. I had looked up a bunch of new, cool things to do with balloons on Pinterest, but they didn't happen. Thankfully Early Bird didn't notice anything lacking, even though his presents weren't even wrapped. We went out to dinner the Saturday before, and I made our traditional birthday cupcakes (applesauce spice cake (from a box mix) with lightly sweetened whipping cream) for the actual day.

I really do cherish my sweet boy. It doesn't seem possible it's been FOUR years since we had our scare and encountered our second son two months before we were expecting him. I'm so glad we have him. I can't imagine our life without him. He has a wonderful attitude anticipating Squishy's arrival. He's even declared that HE will be the one to teach Squishy to read, and started the process by singing the ABC song to my belly.

Not much in the way of schooling has happened (I've spent almost a week and a half since my last posts in virtual bed rest.) So I thought I'd at least write some reviews on learning toys and other things that the boys have been using since Christmas. I think the Scribble and Write review was useful to some people, and I try to post only useful things on here (for the most part. I consider the Saturday Funnies to be useful for cheering.)

Best Kid Party Drink Ever!

For Builder Boy's birthday party (which we ended up doing on Thanksgiving this year) I made Koolaid ice cubes in the primary colors. Red-Cherry, Yellow-Lemonade, and Blue-Blue Raspberry Lemonade and we added them to Sprite. When the ice cubes melted they changed the color and taste of the drink. This was so cool, and it tasted really good! Everyone liked it a lot. The lemonade ice cubes were not as yellow as I thought they would be, so the orange and green weren't as strong a color as purple, but they still looked neat. Builder Boy wanted vermilion; two reds and one yellow. That cherry-lemonade in lemon-lime soda was my favorite, too. It tasted like a Shirley Temple.

Thank you, Pinterest!

PVC Pipe Building Set

This is something I heard about over eight months ago and I finally got to give this to Builder Boy as his birthday present! It's a bunch of 1/2 in PVC pipe cut into measured lengths and a bunch of different fittings to build contraptions, structures, whatever he wants. Right now he's trying to build super sized, complicated version of the mini marshmallow shooters we made yesterday. Daddy is the only one who has strong enough breath to make it work, but it's pretty cool.
 
I spent about $50 on this (family members chipped in to pay for it,) but you could probably buy less to start with and then add on later. The 1/2 in pipe was only $1.65/10 feet. I got 110 feet for $18.15. The rest went to a $13 ratchet pipe cutter (which was completely worth it and I wouldn't recommend doing this without one) and the fittings. Three types of the fittings could be about in packages of 10 or 25 for less money per piece than you would pay for each one individually. But some of the other fittings had to be bought individually; some for $0.36/each, some for $0.80 each.

Here's how I cut the pipes:

5 ft / 5 ft
5 ft  / 5 ft
4 ft / 4 ft / 2 ft
4 ft / 4 ft / 2 ft
3 ft / 3 ft / 3 ft / 1ft
3 ft / 3 ft / 3 ft / 1ft
2 ft / 2 ft / 2 ft/ 2 ft / 2 ft
2 ft / 2 ft / 2 ft / 2 ft / 2 ft
1 ft X 10

That gave us (4) 5 ft long pipes, (4) 4 ft long pipes, (6) 3 ft long pipes, (12) 2 ft long pipes, and (12) 1 ft long pipes. I left 2 pipes uncut to see what he would need after he started building. He ended up using the short pieces from the mini marshmallow shooters, so I'll cut one of the leftover pipes into 3 in and 6 in pieces.

I got 2 plastic shoe-boxes at the dollar store to keep the fittings in and I got a tall plastic garbage can to hold the pipes in.

Builder Boy loved this present immediately, and it's all he's played with since he got it yesterday. As soon as spring comes this will become an outside toy. But until then it's a way to bribe him to clean up all his other toys so that he has room to make his structures.

Added later: here is a video of a double mini marshmallow shooter that Builder Boy built, powered by Daddy.

Mini Marshmallow Shooter

We had to cancel Builder Boy's birthday party this weekend due to his cold. It was just a few days before Thanksgiving so we decided to do his birthday activities then. One of the things I had planned was a cool mini marshmallow blow gun for the guests to put together and have fun with. I got the idea from Pinterest (here's the pin.) It was originally posted on the Filth Wizardry blog. (Check out her neat blog!)


What you need (for each kit)

1/2 in PVC pipe in 3 in, 4 in, and 5 in lenghts
an extender fitting for a mouth piece
a T-junction
an end cap

a bag of mini marshmallows
stickers for personalization

Filth Wizardry has an instruction sheet you can print out that also include rules of engagement. She also included cheap swimming eye goggles and a paper plate shield for extra safety.

Party Favor Kit

I got the pipe for $1.65/10 feet. Each "gun" needs only 1 foot, so it cost $0.17/blow gun. The T junction I bought in at about $0.20 for each piece and the extender in a bag for about $0.15 a piece. The end cap was around $0.30. Walmart had bags of mini marshmallows for $1.00, and I got the stickers at the dollar store. So the whole things cost about $1/kit.

We purchased a ratcheting pvc pipe cutter and it was definitely worth the $12. I also purchased a bunch of pipe for Builder Boy's building kit birthday present, so we needed it for that, too. I've been researching this project for about 8 months now. Everyone who wrote about it said that trying to cut it with a saw was an awful experience that left a jagged edge. The pipe cutter was easy and smooth, and it took us less than 6 minutes to measure and cut all the pieces for 10 kits.

I put the pieces in the dishwasher and sterilized them since we were going to put our mouths on them.

Target Board

I made a target out of poster board, and sorted colored marshmallows so that teams could keep score if they wanted to. I taped plastic bags behind the holes for easier cleaning. Also, Early Bird had a lot of fun making the ammunition "disappear."



This was so much fun! Our family had a blast with these! We were cracking up and having a wonderful time. The adults started aiming at each others' mouths which was really funny. Luckily, all the adults were wearing glasses. I think this just became a new family Thanksgiving tradition.

Target Practice at Nana and Apa's House

Sniper Daddy

Lifetime in Seasons

Days in a year is a big number, and could be overwhelming. But I put Builder Boy's years in terms of seasons, which is something that he could relate to better. The seasons have been turning, changing noticeably lately, so he's able to connect to it. I found some black and white season symbols at edupics.com. I printed out a set for every year, we colored them and taped them together to make a strip.

How many days have I lived?

As part of our activities exploring what a birthday we talked about how a day is one turn of the earth and a year is one whole orbit of the earth around the sun. I played the sun and Builder Boy spun around while I guided him in an orbit around me six times.  365 is a big number to comprehend, so I made pages of 365 (or 366 for leap years) squares on a page; one page for each year, to show how many days he has been alive.

I don't know how to share documents on the blog, so I turned them into jpgs to share. You can copy and paste to make your own.

(Link to a list of leap years.)

365 Squares

366 Squares (Leap Year)

What Does a Birthday Mean? (Growing Song)

Builder Boy's birthday is this week! I had a brain-spurt a while back and wrote down some ideas for what I want to do. We have our family parties on the weekends, but I try to make the kid's actual birthday day special, too. I came up with some ideas to make it different from any other day, and to give the kids an idea of what a birthday actually is.

It all started with a song parody that popped in my head (and got me planning when I was suppose to be cleaning.) This will also be good for when we study the human body and learning about growing and changing.

To the tune of "If You're Happy and You Know It"

If you're growing and you know it stretch up high,
If you're growing and you know it stretch up high,
 If you're growing and you know it then your height will surly show it,
If you're growing and you know it stretch up high.

If you're growing and you know it bend down low,
If you're growing and you know it bend down low,
 If you're growing and you know it then your weight will surly show it,
If you're growing and you know it bend down low.

If you're growing and you know it stick out your foot,
If you're growing and you know it stick out your foot,
 If you're growing and you know it then your size will surly show it,
If you're growing and you know it stick out your foot.

Birthday Morning Surprise

Happy Birthday, Builder Boy!!!!!

I got the idea off Pinterest to make a balloon curtain for when Builder Boy woke up :) He loved it.

(I would recommend using regular-sized balloons if you have them. I thought I did, but I couldn't find them, so I had to use little balloons instead. Luckily I had a balloon pump.)