Valentine's Day

I kept it pretty simple for Valentine's Day. 

Heart Shaped sandwiches for the kids' lunches.  Plus I put in a little love note

 

My hubby and I don't like going out on the actual day, so we make steak and had a yummy dinner at home with the kids!

Hubby got me these pretty tulips and another houseplant

(per my request! I need houseplants more than flowers that will die in a few days!)

The kids got a pretty good balanced meal for once, too.

They all thought it was pretty cool to sit at a *fancy* table.  

Oh and the cats were definitely coveting our steak...

Frodo apparently thought this place setting was meant for him!

Easy Valentine's using Tatoo boxes

 Making cute and unique Valentine's for school parties doesn't have to be stressful.  I found these little boxes with tattoos inside at Walmart.  Then I printed off little labels and Sam signed each one.  We slapped them on the box with a piece of tape.  Boom.  Done.

 

Luke's were just as easy.  I printed off these cute little pennants and Luke signed them and taped one to each pencil.  Boom.  Done.   

{Sorry for the lack of an "after" picture.  The project was done and put in a backpack pretty quick!}

Sam's Dinosaur 4th Birthday Party

We start asking our kids a month (or more) in advance what kind of birthday party they want.  Sam stuck to his guns this year and wanted a Dinosaur birthday party!  Since he was turning 4 and had never had a "friends" party, this was his year for that.  The funny thing is though, that Sam's best friends are Luke (his brother) and Mara (his cousin)!  We also invited our neighbor friend Finn, who is a little older, but whom Sam and Luke play with all the time.  Since his other "friends" were family, we just invited all the near-by cousins to join the party (like we usually do).

Also, let me note here that Sam was HAPPY his entire birthday day!  This is kind of a big deal because we have been dealing with a serious case of pouty-lip syndrome where Sam acts like his life is completely terrible all the time.  He's even earned the nickname "Sadness" like from the movie Inside out because he will literally just melt onto his face on the floor and lay there in utter sadness over the silliest little things. But Sam was super happy all day for his birthday which made the whole day great for everyone!

Sam enjoyed helping me hang up the balloons and footprints for his birthday backdrop

 

Walmart made my life a little easier with this tablecloth, dinosaur plates, and ready-made dinosaur masks!

We have TONS of dinosaur toys which was perfect for both the decor and the games we played.

These dinosaurs were all ready for the party in their little birthday hats!

I know that party favor bags aren't really necessary, but it's our way of saying thank you for coming to the party!  I keep it simple and just put in a few pieces of candy, bubbles, play-doh and these bags had little dinosaur toys that were cheap.   

  

 Sam and Mara ~ Enjoying Dinosaur chicken nuggets and fries!  Everyone else ate pizza, but Sam is the weirdest kid and doesn't like pizza...

And here is the cake!  There was a minor freak-out the night before when the dinosaur "picture" cracked and fell apart when being transferred to the cake...but it was repaired and you can't even really tell!  Sam kept changing his mind about what color he wanted the dinosaur to be...I ended up making the choice for him and did orange.

 Let it be noted that this is also the first year Sam actually ATE the cake!  He previously wouldn't eat cake and only would eat the ice cream.  He loved every bite, though!

(His 4 shirt made of dinosaurs was PERFECT!  I found it on clearance at Kohl's just before Christmas.  I couldn't have made a more perfect shirt for this occasion!)

 Happy Birthday, Sam!

I can hardly believe you are already FOUR years old!

Thanksgiving

I got to host Thanksgiving at my house this year!

I actually really was looking forward to decorating the tables for an actual dinner party! I’ve never been able to do that before!

Here was the Adult Table: I used polka dot wrapping paper I found in the $1 section of target for a table runner.  I had the orange placemats already, but I used argyle pieces of scrapbook paper on top of them and under the plates.  I got the yellow floral plates at a thrift store a few years ago. I already had the basket (Pick Your Plum) and the pumpkins (Walmart) and the leaves (walmart).  I printed off these utensil holders.  

I also got to do a fun kid’s table since my niece and nephews were coming (as well as my own kids).  I got these plates at Target last year and this is my first time using them! They are perfect for kids because of the different sections.  I decorated their table with thanksgiving stickers and leaves and coloring pages.  The table was covered with paper so they could color on it, too, if they wanted to.  I made these cute suckers for all the kids.  I just covered the suckers with brown paper and then glued on leaves for tails, googly eyes and felt beaks and gizzards.  The kids LOVED them.  And then of course all the yummy foods…   

Little Miss Ruby Kate slept for over 4 hours in her swing (most of that time it was turned off!) I guess she needed to catch up.

Don’t forget the PIE!!!  My sister brought pumpkin pies and then I made an apple pie.  I made the crust for the chocolate pie, too, but the filling I had Brenda help me with that!  The chocolate pie was SO GOOD.  You can find the recipe here.  

It was so fun to hang out with my sisters family and with Scott’s mom on Thanksgiving! One of the best ones we’ve had in all the years we’ve been married. 

Luke’s Lego Birthday Party

This party was fairly easy to throw together—especially with the help of my mom and hubby who helped me do all the decorating the night before! My mom blew up a ton of balloons—would have taken this breathless pregnant girl 10 times as long to do that! And hubby did all the climbing on step stools to reach the higher decorating (definitely a no no for me!) 

There are so many great ideas on the web that it’s super easy to plan a great Lego party!  I even crossed off a bazillion things that weren’t needed (like a piñata) and the party still turned out perfect!

First here is the invitation-- I made this in Photoshop and printed them as 5x7 photos at Costco (cheap).  Luke had fun delivering them to his friends.

Here is the happy birthday boy and his little brother ;)  I made Luke’s shirt (you can find cheap t-shirts at Hobby Lobby or Walmart) using a freezer paper stencil and fabric paint (image at the end of post)

Our growing family!
The spread:

Party Favor Bags: cut out construction paper circles and attached them to these party bags (hobby lobby) for favor bags.  We filled them with Lego sugar cookies that I made and each kid got a Lego car kit, glow sticks and random candy. 

Mega Bloks were used to make holders for the eating utensils, napkins and plates!

We used these printables (deliacreates) to cover juice boxes

I made Lego faces on my computer and cut them out using my vinyl cutter then I just stuck them on these yellow cups for popcorn (Luke LOVES popcorn!) (download below)

I made these sugar cookies (Our Best Bites) and used M&M’s to make them look like Lego Bricks.  Luke was a great helper sorting out all the colored M&M’s for me!

The Cake!!  I make the Lego bricks using melting chocolates (Wilton brand/ Wal-Mart or craft stores all carry them in lots of colors) and Lego molds (Amazon).   It took me a long time to figure out how I wanted his cake to look, but we settled with simple ;) Then, as usual, it took 2 days to make it and decorate it!

Hubby hang all these balloons and streamers for me!

I enlisted hubby to build Luke’s name out of Duplos for the mantle and then my mom blew up and hung all these balloons! 

For one of our games just there on the side for whenever kids wanted to do it, I made this Lego Man bean bag toss. I covered a box in wrapping paper, cut out the Lego Head (image at end of post) on 12x12 scrapbook paper and then cut out his mouth.   I didn’t grab a picture of the Lego bean bags but they were super easy to make!  Just cut squares out of felt, hot glue them together, fill with rice and then glue on circle felt of the same color to make them look like Lego bricks.  Then play Feed the Lego Man :)

I made a crayon container with legos and printed off all kinds of Lego Coloring pages off the internet. Something to do waiting for all the kids to arrive.  
Also had this table set up for kids to play and build whenever they wanted to. 

We had a bunch of really easy games planned, but with the coloring pages and the table for building legos, the kids were pretty content.  We played just 2 games.  The first one we just see who could build the tallest tower without it falling over in 2 minutes!

The second game we had a bowl of 10 small Lego bricks and the kids had to carry them over one by one on a spoon to the empty bowl.  The team that gets them all over to the other side first wins!
 We had a pizza break in there since it was close to lunch time.

Then we opened presents
{i love how Sam is laying with his head resting on his hand in this picture}

Then it was the long anticipated time for CAKE! As always, Luke was really excited about his cake.

Lastly, I made kids take pictures in front of these giant Lego bricks I made out of dollar store table clothes and plates. 

Here is one zoomed out to give a better idea of what they looked like.  They were hung up on the big wall in our front entry so it was the first thing people saw when they came in!

This was the best shot I got of all the friends and cousins that could come!  Notice that stinker Sam only let his legs make an appearance (far left).  I think this was the best and easiest party to put together that I’ve done so far!  I’m super happy with how it went and the kids had a lot of fun!  Thanks to everyone that could help out, attend and make it happen!
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For those of you wanting some help with the cut outs here are the black silhouetted jpegs (see my printables tab for tips on downloading these to your computer)

Once saved to your computer, you should be able to use the “trace” option and cut them out with your vinyl cutter.  I use SCAL and a Cricut Expression and these worked great. 
 
The Bean Bag toss Lego Head: one with the face and one without.  I cut it out of 12x12 yellow paper and then blackened in the eyes and eyebrows with marker.
 

The faces for the cups 

This is the image I made for Luke’s shirt.  Cut it out of freezer paper, ironed it on and then painted it with fabric paint.  One with a 6 (the one I used) and one without.