Party Planner Extraordinaire

Remember these?  My friend Kaisha made them for her daughter's 2nd birthday party.

I thought I would show you the rest of the pictures from this super-cute party (in case you are planning a very special birthday party for a very special little girl).

Lots of color-coordinated sweet treats.  The fabric for the tablecloth and matching scrapbook paper (from which the invitations were made) were both purchased at Hobby Lobby.

Another view of all the treats.

Time to open gifts!  Notice the matching balloons and birthday banner.

A nice touch for the whole family to coordinate with this lollipop theme!

Lollipop cakes.  I'm not sure if she made these herself or had them made.  You would probably make them yourself if you have a round cake pan and some basic frosting tools.

My sweet friend and her little E-bug.  Notice my friends orange & green attire.  She really does pay attention to every single detail.  Me ... I'm just happy that everybody is dressed most of the time.

Sweet sisters (in matching lollipop shirts).

Menu Plan Monday: November 21

Love the menu planning for the short week.  Especially a menu plan that includes leftovers only.  I will be busy cooking on Wednesday though as we are hosting my family on Thanksgiving Day. 

Warning: You will be seeing a lot of creative leftover turkey recipes in the coming weeks.  I purchased a 20-pound turkey for my family of 6 adults and 5 kids (5 and under) to eat. 

Monday: leftover margarita grilled chicken from Chilis, black beans, chips/salsa/guacamole

Tuesday: leftover breakfast casserole, hashbrown casserole and blueberry muffins

Wednesday: eat out with a coupon

Thursday:  Thanksgiving!

Friday: More Thanksgiving with Will's family

Saturday: Game Day food!  The Alabama/Auburn game is on at 2:30!  Roll Tide!

Sunday: leftovers

Check out Laura's blog for more Menu Plan Monday.

It's beginning to look a lot like Christmas ...

No, I haven't forgotten Thanksgiving ... my favorite holiday.  But it seems the retail industry has.  My kids went berserk when we saw Christmas trees at Target yesterday.  And I will admit, I have listened to Christmas music once ... check out the Bing Crosby Christmas channel on Pandora.  (White Christmas is my all-time favorite movie and I make Will watch it every year ... he knows all the songs now too.) 

Anyway, one of the first things I always do to get ready for the Christmas season is order my Christmas cards.  I'm a little late in the game right now, but I have decided to order them from Costco this year so I can pick them up quickly in the store.  And, I'm going to order them tomorrow.  I've had my pictures since September so I really have no excuse.

I love to receive Christmas cards.  Especially photo cards.  And I love looking back and previous years' cards.  But how is the best way to store them?  In the past, I've scrapbooked them in the back of our annual family scrapbook.  But, since I haven't done one of those since 2006, it really is not the best solution.  Plus, I would like to get the past years' cards out at each Christmas ... not every annual scrapbook for the history of our marriage.

So here is what I have come up with.

(1) Purchase a Christmas Memory box from Paper Coterie.  Cost is $38.00 plus shipping.  But I got mine for $8 plus shipping because I had a $30 off coupon code.  Like them on Facebook.  They give you discount codes all the time.  Also, follow The Mom Creative (Jessica Turner) on Facebook.  She finds and posts coupon codes for this website all the time.  I will keep this box out on our coffee table and put our current year's cards in it as they come in.

(2)  For past years' cards that are not already scrapbooked, I am going to stack them together, hole punch them and connect them with binder rings and make a notebook of sorts.  I found the idea on Pinterest.

Source: allendesigns.typepad.com via Susan on Pinterest

I could probably put current cards and past cards clipped together in one box.  (These boxes are huge and super-nice ... take my word for it.)

And sorry for all the rambling.  Will accidentally made a pot of coffee after dinner so we drank it and now I am going to be up all night long.  (He was making the coffee for tomorrow morning and instead of setting the timer to brew in the morning, he turned the machine on and the pot was already half-way full when we realized.)

Test

I am testing out blogging with Windows Live Writer. 

Um, so far so good. 

Preschool Corner: P is for Pumpkin

Since David finished learning all of his vowels, I decided to skip ahead to Letter P (for pumpkin) to coincide with our trip to the pumpkin patch and Halloween.

{David is 3 years, 7 months old}

Here is David working on his letter P words from Raising Rock Stars.

Handwriting ... I think this is his least favorite thing right now.  As you can see, we are still working on the correct way to hold a pencil. 

Watching a Halloween Barney video with Claire & Luke on my Ipad.  Hello ... see all those blocks on the floor?  Luke was keeping himself very busy while we were doing school. 

Most of our pumpkin printables came from Confessions of a Homeschooler's LOTW curriculum.  We used pumpkin seeds as our counters and David thought that was grand.  He did not like eating the pumpkin seeds though.

Tiny, tiny seeds that I continued to find on the floor several days later.  Maybe not such a good idea after all! 

This was our first week to do a magnet page and it was one of his favorite things.  I made our own magnets with sticky circle magnets and pom poms.   

Crafts for the week included a pumpkin shaker and stained-glass pumpkins (neither of which I have a finished product photo).  Oh well, he had fun making both of these crafts. 

Paint and/or color coffee filters.

Spray with water.  (His most favorite part by far ... he can entertain himself for hours with that spray bottle.)

Dry.  Make pumpkins.  Laminate and hang on window.

More LOTW activities (with all of my laundry in the background).

Playdough Ps. 

P is for penguin coloring page.  This boy loves penguins.  We even walked around like a penguin.

Reviewing our P words one last time before cutting and pasting them onto our alphabet page.

Sometimes I let him cut, sometimes I let him glue.  Whatever interests him that particular week.

Working our our RRSP verse craft/activity.  Our verse was "Praise the Lord!  For it is good to sing praises to our God."  This was a patterning activity with the music notes.  Then we just glued them on in no particular order.

Reading our easy reader from RRSP.  We do this every day and it is one of his favortie activities every week.

Cutting/taping our verse together.  Another favorite weekly activity from RRSP.

More handwriting practice with our pumpkins.

Pumpkin puzzle.

Pumpkin number matching.  (No way was I getting the pumpkin seeds out again!)

This post is linked to the following sites where you can find other awesome preschool (and Kindergarten) ideas:

Fall Soccer

Claire played in a new soccer league this year and we LOVED it.  (1) The season lasted 6 weeks.  (2) College soccer players run the practices so she was actually learning soccer skills. (3) Everybody practices and plays games at the same time so when David plays next year, only one practice night and one game day per week.  The only "con" of this league was that it was co-ed.  But that didn't seem to bother Claire!

Meme keeping David entertained during one of the games.

I only took pictures at a couple of games, but at the last game, Claire was super-aggressive and scored 5 goals for the day.  Her soccer skills have definitely improved and she is still a super-fast runner.

Her buddy Sophie.  Her dad was Claire's coach.

Claire's #1 fan.

Our motley crew on the sidelines.

Team photo.  The last game fell the week before fall break so several team members were out.  And we probably should not have posed the kids facing the sun.  Sophie (in the center) was clearly not a fan!