Family Traditions, Wonderful Memories

Lake Living

Looking back on my childhood, there are a handful of memories that stand out among the rest, the vacations we took and our family traditions. Every Halloween we had dinner together and my family took part in the Halloween party I arranged before we headed out to trick or treat. My dad always took my sisters and I out while my mom stayed inside to hand out candy. And no wimps allowed, when it came to trick or treating we wanted to cover the entire neighborhood and no cold weather or rain would stop us. Once we were satisfied with pumpkin buckets bursting, we hurried home to spread out our goodies on the floor while categorizing and trading with each other.

Most likely my first party invitation, age unknown

Christmas Eve was another favorite, we were allowed to open one present, attended Christmas Eve Mass, enjoyed a candle light breakfast and a reading of  Twas the Night Before Christmas before my sisters and I excitedly gathered in the same room for our "sleepover!" To this day, I actually prefer Christmas Eve with all the excitement and anticipation over Christmas Day.

Of course who can forget a family vacation to Disney World?! I remember my mom planning this trip for months and it was every bit as magical as I had hoped it would be. My husband and I took our boys last year for their first time while the girls got to spend some quality time with grandma and grandpa (we are planning another trip back when the girls are older). It has been six months now and the boys are still talking about it. Plus, it was great to give them our undivided attention again since they have been so patient and loving towards their little sisters.

Another vacation tradition was our week long cottage vacation on Lake Michigan. I remember these vacations like they were yesterday, always the second week in July, playing in the white sand all day, swimming in the warm water, the 100 year old Victorian cottage with a wrap around porch, drifting off to sleep listening to the waves crashing on the shore, picking out candy at the nearby general store, and spending time with our extended family. It was an event we all looked forward to every year and still talk about to this day.

Now that I have my own family, we have started many of our own traditions. Visiting the pumpkin patch for a hayride to pick out pumpkins, filling the kids' rooms with balloons on their birthdays, visiting the tree farm to pick out the tallest Fraser Fir our home can hold for Christmas, and our after dinner walks and water balloon fights during the summer.

This past year we mixed it up and did this instead of filling their room with balloons while they slept. They LOVED it!

I have also carried over many of my old family traditions. One of the those is our week stay at a cottage on one of Michigan's many beautiful lakes during the summer. We started doing this when the boys where just 7 months old and have been fortunate enough to do this almost every year since. This particular year, I was pregnant with the girls and spent a relaxing week over the Fourth of July floating in the water and spending fun filled days with "my boys,"our family and friends.

Sisters having a blast on the water!

The table is set for our 4th of July shrimp boil

I made a shrimp boil for the boys' Under the Sea party when they turned two and was excited to try it again with a couple adjustments. Fourth of July on the lake with our family was the perfect opportunity. Shrimp, clams, red potatoes, onion, corn on the cob, and sausage all boiled with a little Old Bay seasoning and garlic. Simply drain the liquid (strong muscles required, as this is heavy :) and serve with lemons, hot sauce, cocktail sauce, butter, and bread.

Shrimp boil

The rest of the ingredients for a relaxing and memorable vacation at the lake are .......

Peaceful mornings with coffee and a magazine

Lots of time on the water

and in the water

Watching an amazing  fireworks display put on by a fun uncle

Eating lots of s'mores made over a campfire while taking the time to watch the sunset

and lots of love.

So while the latest Lego set or Barbie mansion might be highly desired by our children, it's the family traditions and time spent together that we remember forever.

Do you have any family traditions you would like to share? Please feel free to leave me a comment.

To see more of my party ideas, home decorating, favorite recipes, twin activities x 2, and all things "Mrs.Party Planner" please check me out on facebook and "like" the page. New blog posts will appear in your news feed.

Fun in the Sun Party

Prior to the birth of my second set of twins, I worked part-time as a school social worker. It was a job that I absolutely loved but it certainly came with a fair amount of stress due to the nature of the profession. Every year when June arrived, I got just as excited for summer as the kids and teachers did. No early morning alarm going off, long, hot days at the beach, sunshine, grilling, fresh fruit, I could go on and on. With all this excitement came an idea to host a "welcome to summer party" that included bubbles, inflatable pools, slip n slides, water balloons, silly string, sprinklers, sunshine, and a group of very excited kids, mommas, and even a daddy! The guests included my wonderful friends from work and a Friday play group at church. They all have children the same age as mine. One of these amazing women was pregnant and in the hospital so her brave husband brought their daughter to this party as the only man among all the other moms and kids.  

That year our last day of school was on a Thursday, this party took place the following day, on a hot, sunshine filled morning! With this age group of children, naps are a must so I invited everyone over around 11am to play, eat lunch, and then head home.

The boys and their cousin checking everything out before their friends arrive. The pick flamingos are from Oriental Trading and always a colorful addition to an outdoor party. The bubble machine was also going and creating large bubbles all over the yard.

When I began planning this, the first thing I wanted to make was the water blob I first saw on mommiesmademedoit.com.  The materials consisted of a large, clear painter's tarp, duct tape, and a hose. It looked easy to make and lots of fun. Although when I began filling it that morning it did have a handful of small holes which I was able to cover in more duct tape. I was five months pregnant at the time, so sitting in the bug filled grass assembling this a couple nights prior was a little daunting. I also learned that when doing this, it needs to be on a completely flat section of the grass. In the end, it was functional and I think the pictures speak for themselves.

 

 

I had a couple of planned activities, but most of this was set up for free play so the parents could kick back and relax while watching the kids play! I had the Little Tykes bounce house up and running, two inflatable pools, a water table, home made side walk paint (equal parts corn starch, water, and a couple drops of food coloring), chalk, a slip n slide, the big red ball, a bug dig, bubble wands, and various pool noodles, balls, and outdoor ride on toys available. Much of the yard is under the bright noon sun at this time, so I added a beach umbrella and a couple of blankets for a little shade.

My adorable niece loved the sidewalk paint

I found the inflatable ball at Costco. You can climb inside and roll around. It's always been a favorite summer time toy!

I brought our rice bin outside, added a pack of plastic bugs from Dollar Tree, and a few plastic shovels for some clean bug digging.

After the kids all played great together and the parents relaxed for hour or so it was lunchtime. Everyone generously offered to bring something which I happily accepted. We had a rainbow display of fresh fruit, kid's yogurt, pasta salad, veggies and chips. I grilled hot dogs for the kids that morning and kept them in the warmer until it was time to eat. I also made sandwiches for the adults and had a cooler of water and juice boxes. Our friends also brought cookies and popsicles for dessert. The food table was covered in a dark blue table cloth and sprinkled with brightly colored summer time confetti. For the kids' meals, I used our red food baskets lined with red and white checkered paper and red plastic utensils. 

For the adults I made these "crab-wiches" filled with either chicken salad or egg salad. Source: Family Fun magazine

After everyone ate, it was time for a little more fun before they left. I had blown up blue balloons and drew a shark face on them which I put in one of the pools and had the kids do what they could to pop the balloons.

This kept them busy for a little while.

The parents joined in and we used our large play parachute for a water balloon toss. Although, this didn't keep the kids' attention for long so we ended up having an old fashioned water balloon fight!

I called the kids over then and handed each of them a can of silly string from the dollar store and told them to go after their parents. It was hard for little fingers to spray these so the parents happily joined in to help out.

After every last can of silly string was sprayed and water balloon tossed it was time for a nap and sweet dreams of the summer ahead!

To see more of my party ideas, home decorating, favorite recipes, twin activities x 2, and all things "Mrs.Party Planner" please check me out on facebook and "like" the page. New blog posts will appear in your news feed.

Top Favorite Winter Activities

The first snowfall, it's magical for kids and adults. Kids can't wait to dig out their snow pants and rush out the door to flop on their backs and make the season's first snow angel, even if there is only an inch of snow on the ground! The anticipation and excitement of the upcoming holiday season is upon us and freshly fallen snow glistening on the tree branches is just beautiful.

This year we had much more than one inch of snow!

And then January comes. The excitement of the holidays are over, it's cold, it's dark, and this year, well a good portion of the country has experienced record snowfall and cold temperatures. I personally spent a majority of January stuck in the house with my kids, all day, everyday. I lost track of the unusual amount of days off from school this year. The first couple of snow days were cozy and fun filled with indoor and outdoor activities. Then the temperatures dropped to below zero and the cabin fever started setting in. I could feel my blood pressure rising significantly over the smallest things. That's when I knew it was time to get creative and pull out some of our "tried and true" favorite winter activities and test out some new ones too.

1. baking or cooking with your kids
It doesn't matter if it's homemade soft pretzels or brownies out of a box, kids love to help cook. Not to mention great skills for them to acquire. One of our easy and fun meals to make is turkey hot dogs and spaghetti. You can use any type of hot dog, but I like to get the Oscar Meyer Naturals Turkey dogs. I cut them up into bite size bits then let the boys push about six strands of uncooked spaghetti through the middle of the hot dog. Boil until spaghetti is cooked, about ten minutes and enjoy. My kids always eat these up.

2. make an indoor obstacle course
We have done this with the use of couch cushions, a tunnel, toy cones, and hula hoops, whatever we have available for crawling, jumping, hopping and weaving through the course. Another type of obstacle course that has become our favorite is this one:

Yes, my boys love to dress themselves in mismatched pajamas!

That is yarn from Dollar Tree, you can tell it's from the dollar store as I can tug hard on it and it breaks. I wouldn't recommend using this for any knitting projects, but it's great for this. We also had the perfect spot at our old house, I didn't even need to use tape. We have since tried this at our new house and don't have the catwalk for it so we used a hallway which required tape on the wall. Shh, don't tell my husband. I used clear packing tape and it didn't leave any residue on the wall or take off any paint but of course it will come down if you pull or tug on it too much. So instead of jumping and diving through the string like we used to do, it has now become a game of "try not to touch the laser beams!"


3. food tasting
This came from my childhood and was a favorite with my sister and our wonderful neighbor friend. I have no idea how we started this, but one person is blindfolded and simply has to taste a small amount of various "foods" and try to guess what they are. And of course, we always threw in a sampling of cayenne pepper or something similar and laughed hysterically about it. I have not done that to my boys, yet! We pretty much stick to the basics but I do throw in avocado or another vegetable, along with a piece of candy.

4. arts and crafts
Sometimes we plan to make something specific, but many times, I hand my boys the plastic containers filled with various art supplies and let them create whatever they want. Glue, markers, "wiggly eyes," pom poms, glitter, pipe cleaners, and vehicle shaped sponges for stamping have all been good finds at Dollar Tree.  Crayons, construction paper, and paint I usually pick up elsewhere.

One year I saw these little, puffy handmade hearts on Martha Stewart's website and wanted to make my own with the help of the boys. I got red, white, and pink material from the fabric store along with white and red fabric paints and cotton stuffing. I cut the hearts out of the fabric and let the boys decorate them with the fabric paint, glitter, and sequins. Once they dried, I sewed a decorated heart onto another undecorated one, stuffed it, and sewed it up with a small loop to hang on the branched floral arrangement I put up during the winter months. My sewing skills are beginner to say the least, but this project was completely manageable. The boys loved the hearts and patiently made several of them.

Since we had fabric left over and the boys had so much fun with this, I decided to make two small pillowcases for the boys to decorate and give to each aunt for Valentine's Day.

5. get outside
If the temperature is not freezing and bearable, we love to get out of the house and burn some energy sledding, making a snowman, painting snow (food coloring and water in a spray bottle from Dollar Tree), or making a snow fort. My 1 year old girls have loved going outside this year and being pulled in their sleds too!

Snow painting

A small "bunny" hill in the backyard works for us!

Ice blocks 

This year we made ice blocks, water and food coloring frozen in various plastic containers and cups. Since it has been so cold, we set the tubs of water and food coloring outside and they froze in a couple hours. You could also freeze these in your freezer if needed. Once frozen, I ran a little bit of hot water on the outside of the tubs and they popped right out. The ones frozen in the plastic containers popped out much easier than the ones in plastic cups. The kids played with these for a few days before they melted due to the warmer temperatures. Their favorite activity was burying these in the snow and then "digging for buried treasure!"
Source: Happy Hooligans 

6. outdoor activities for freezing temperatures
While I don't recommend taking your kids outside when the temperature is this cold, we did find a couple fun things to do. At zero degrees or below you can take boiling water and throw it into the air and it quickly freezes into tiny ice crystals and looks like a cloud. We had so much fun with this, we did it a few times. But, PLEASE be careful and use caution if trying this.

You can see the water freezing instantly

and then the cloud appears

The other below zero activity we tried was blowing bubbles. While our bubbles hardened into a stretchy film, they didn't completely freeze before popping. I didn't use a homemade bubble solution as recommended, but if we have another day of freezing temperatures I will try this again. You can see another mom's frozen bubble pictures here.

7. fun baths
They have to take them anyway, so why not make them fun? Aside from bubbles and toys, our two favorites are shaving cream paint and glow sticks. Use small plastic bowls, fill with dollar store shaving cream, add a couple drops of food coloring, mix and paint the tub with paint brushes! It washes right off and doesn't leave stains, plus the shaving cream doesn't smell bad either.

At night, we like to turn off the lights and toss in a bunch of glow sticks (yes, Dollar Tree sells these). 
 
Source: ffffound.com

8. marshmallow snowmen
When it's too cold to go outside, we build our own snowmen inside with marshmallows, toothpicks, and edible markers. The larger marshmallows are perfect for this, but really you could use whatever you have and let them get creative. I found the edible markers at JoAnn Fabrics.

Little "smartie" knows he gets to eat the marshmallows after, hence, the many arms and legs

9. hide n seek in the dark
Once the girls are in bed, the four of us head downstairs, turn off this lights, grab our flashlights, and have a blast playing in the dark and scaring each other.

10. making our own science experiments
These are a huge hit here and we do a couple every month. Most of them require basic ingredients that you probably already have like baking soda, water, and dish soap. These are our two favorite recipes that we make often wizard's brew and oobleck.

baking soda experiment

And our final favorite winter activity? Snuggling up on the couch with popcorn and a movie! A nice break for all of us :)

To see more of my party ideas, home decorating, favorite recipes, twin activities x 2, and all things "Mrs.Party Planner" please check me out on facebook and "like" the page. New blog posts will appear in your news feed.

A Delicious Girl's Night In

Girl's night! We all need them! Whether it's for the reason of getting out of the house, away from your routine, catching up with your friends, or venting about your week while indulging in chocolate and/or wine it's good for the soul. I tell my husband all the time how the occasional girl's night makes me a better wife and mother.

Dinner, manicures and pedicures, yoga class, coffee shops, movies, shopping and those places where you can paint and drink wine are all great girl's night outings. But if you are looking for a different idea, why not bring girl's night to your house and cook up something delicious.

One day I got an email from one of our local grocery stores about a giveaway. The store was partnering with one of their food supply companies and giving away a food tasting party at your home. One of their food ambassadors (similar to a chef) would come to your home fully stocked with all the food, bake ware, and utensils to teach your guests how to prepare a few recipes and of course, sample them. I immediately signed up and really hoped to win as this would be the perfect girl's night. As luck would have it, I opened my email a couple weeks later to read that I had been selected to host a party! All I had to do was choose a date and invite the guests!

Receiving this giveaway certainly made this girl's night an easy one for me to pull together, the opportunities are endless with this type of gathering. You could hire a chef, perhaps a student at a local culinary school or host and teach yourself. Maybe have a couple of friends each bring a recipe to make and share. Have your guests bring a fun apron to wear or make your own at the party. You could even make this a couples' night. Last year I went to a freezer meal party a friend hosted, there were seven girls total so we each pre-made six of the same freezer meals for everyone attending with cooking instructions attached. My first thought was wow, this is going to be a lot of work. But it was a lot of fun and definitely nice to bring home a week's worth of different meals! 

My party took place at the end of February. I was so over winter at that point and really enjoyed bringing out crisp, clean, white spring decorations. My floral arrangement of white and light green hydrangeas was a center piece along with white tulips from a local florist. I used a white quilt as a tablecloth, much cheaper than high end linen. In the dining room I hung white lanterns over a temporary guest table and used white tea lights throughout the house.

Appetizers greeted hungry guests

The appetizers were caprese bites (a basil leaf, mozzarella ball, and grape tomato on toothpicks then drizzled with balsamic vinegar) and multi-colored cooked tortellinis on a skewer with a pesto sauce. I also made a salad and put out some chocolate petit fours since I didn't know how much food the ambassador was preparing and didn't want anyone to leave hungry.

For drinks we had plenty of wine, soft drinks, and pudding shots. These were fun and yummy! For the recipe I used click here, although instead of the Irish cream I used Kahlua and put a dollop of Cool Whip on top. I served them in cups made out of chocolate that I picked up from a local specialty food shop. I can't believe I didn't take a picture of these, but the chocolate cups looked just like this. However, the ones I found were not anywhere near that price!

With drinks in hand and lots of chatting, we turned our attention to the food ambassador who gave a thorough explanation of the food and how to make the recipes. A couple of the girls got in there and chopped away, preparing the food, but a majority of us kicked back and just waited to sample everything.

My mother in law was in town and being the great cook that she is was very serious about this experience :)

After everyone drank and ate, the food ambassador cleaned the kitchen while we finished catching up! Everyone left that night with recipe cards of the food sampled and another fun, but relaxing girl's night on the books!

Good friends

One of my best friends gave me an angel with the saying "friends are angels following you through life." I couldn't agree more and can't imagine where I would be without my amazing friends by my side!!

Friends for 20 years and counting!!

Learning a Letter a Day

Between my twin boys' need to learn their letters and not wanting to hear one more episode of Calliou's whiny voice I got an idea to incorporate a little learning while having fun. I found some intriguing and active letter learning exercises in Family Fun magazine last winter which gave me the idea to have the boys learn a letter a day, similar to what they were doing in pre-school. Hopefully this reinforcement would help them cement their knowledge of recognizing, writing, and learning the sounds of letters. After all, learning and parenting is all about consistency and repetition, right?

The fun part of these days would be the outings, crafts, games, and food associated with the letter of the day. The learning part was the boys' identification of uppercase and lower case letters, practicing sounds, and tracing/writing the letters in mini lessons. And when I say mini lesson, I mean 10-15 minutes tops and the use of lined handwriting paper I found at Dollar Tree. As any mom of a toddler knows, three and four year old attention spans are short.

The amount of time, energy, and money you put in is up to you. Some "letter days" we went on outings to the Air Zoo, downtown, or ice cream shop. Other days we simply played hide and seek and ate hot dogs. Also, we did not do this consecutively. My goal was two" letter days " per week. While I did well sticking to my goal, I do have to confess that we did not make it through the entire alphabet. Life gets busy. A holiday, trip out of town, and warm weather distracted me from this project. However, we did have a lot of fun doing this and I am proud to say the letters we did learn, the boys know very well! I also plan to do this with my girls when they are ready to learn their letters.

On letter "A day",  I started with showing the boys the uppercase and lowercase A. We practiced the sound and made a game out of who could come up with the most words that began with A. Then I had them each trace the letter and write a line of uppercase and lowercase As. Once this part was finished I told them about our trip to the Air Zoo to see lots of airplanes and even an astronaut. I'm not sure who was more excited for this trip, my husband or the boys?! We were fortunate to have an amazing air zoo not too far away.  This place is full of real airplanes, a few rides (airplanes and hot air balloons that go in a circle), simulators of trips to space, and a large space exhibit where kids can sit in a pretend spaceship, watch real space shuttles take off on the screen, and take a 3-D space shuttle ride. 

This was their favorite ride

You can't sit in this one, but it's fun to look at.

Watching a space shuttle blast off

"inside the space station"

Throughout the day I had the boys find the letter A on various signs and tell me what sound it makes. For snacks, I packed apples and animal crackers. 

Since this adventure took a good part of the day we finished by reading our books on outer space and talking about astronauts. Again, you can do as much or as little as you want, incorporating activities into learning a letter a day. In the end, it was a fun way to sneak in a little learning.

For "B day" we started off the same way.  Bacon and bananas were included in breakfast and then we did our lesson on uppercase and lower case B. The boys then took a bubble bath, we blew up balloons and used them as targets for our Nerf guns. A visit from cousin B, making brownies (out of a box-lol!) and indoor bowling completed our "B" day.

Again, "C day" began the same as the other days and included coloring, crafts with letter C (making a cat out of construction paper, pipe cleaners, googly eyes, feathers, glue, and glitter). We played cars, ate carrots, celery (ants on a log), cheese and crackers, and cantaloupe.We also watched Cat in the Hat and had caramel corn for a snack.

Once we learned three letters, I played an easy letter review game with the boys. I got this idea from Family Fun magazine. On a piece of paper I wrote the letters we learned (upper and lowercase), and threw in three or four other letters. I spread the pieces of paper out on the living room floor and whose ever turn it was had to find and jump on the letter I called out. If they got it right, I tossed them a Hershey Kiss. They had a lot of fun with this and requested to play often. Now that I'm thinking about it, I'm sure the chocolate had nothing to do with their love of this game!!

Easy letter review game

This one gets extra credit for not only tracing the letter but dressing himself as well :)

Another great tool for learning and writing letters and numbers at home is the Letter School app from i-tunes. If you have an i-Pad or i-phone I highly recommend this $2.99 app. My kids love it.

You can also print out free letter handwriting sheets from The Measured Mom by clicking here. This blog is by a former teacher and has a lot of great learning activities you can do at home.

To see more of my party ideas, home decorating, favorite recipes, twin activities x 2, and all things
"Mrs.Party Planner" please check me out on facebook and "like" the page. New blog posts will appear in your news feed.