Happy Un-Birthday!

My lil sister, her two boys & our parents are all visiting Renee & me in Texas! Hooray! What do we do to entertain 7 little children, 2 teenagers & 7 adults? We have a faux birthday party! Since we see each other rarely, we decided that we should celebrate all the holidays we miss together. Today's schedule: Everyone's birthday. We drew names and shopped at the dollar store and a resale shop, the budget was $2 per person. We made cinnamon cupcakes with cream cheese frosting. (they were decadent!) We put up Mandy's fabulous birthday banner, (she made me for my birthday this year!) our front yard party sign, a little dancing music and celebrated! The kids loved it, the adults loved it, and the teenagers even smiled a few times. Winner, winner, cupcakes for dinner! (literally. cupcakes for dinner. that's how we roll.) If it was socially acceptable, we'd walk around with sugar I.V. drips. But since it's not, we fill our purses with m&m's. Wish I was kidding....

Here is some of the fun we had:

My dad had a unique ability to guess everyone's gift BEFORE they opened it. Rich acted surprised by the screw driver anyway. I'm a little scared by his acting abilities, hmmmm....

Some might call what my child is doing in the picture below, pushing. But I like to think he is multi-tasking. He's quite talented how he can play and shove at the same time. That's my boy!

Zeke didn't seem to mind too much and was thrilled to get a ball wrapped in a happy meal container. Martha Stewart ain't got nothin' on our wrapping skillz!

We sang happy birthday and each blew out our own cupcake. Less germy that way! And if you knew Mandy and me, you know we're thinking about the germs almost as much as our next sugar high.....

See what I mean about everyone loving this? The adults got into it as much as the kids!
Stay tuned for more of our mock holidays. I think Christmas, New years and even General Conference might be in the future line-up....

This Party was Dynamite!

So, first of all, if you haven't seen the movie Napoleon Dynamite, or you just didn't like the movie, you should probably just skip this entire post. You just won't get it.

Usually a party is either hit or miss. This party ended up being both, depending on who you ask. For me and my husband, it was a definite hit. For some of our guests who couldn't remember anything about the movie, it was definite miss. I realized something got lost in translation when a party guest asked me if Zac just really liked tater tots. Oh dear. Zac and I both really love the movie Napoleon Dynamite and we sit and watch it a few times a year and laugh at the same lame jokes. Here are the invites. I just set the scene, took the picture, printed, and sent. Like my attempt at a unicorn? Me too.

Here's Zac all posed next to his pinata. He thought the shorts and tall socks would help him look like Kip, Napoleon's older brother. We're pretty sure no one realized why Zac had his socks like that.
Here's the baby all dressed up as Rex, the tae-kwon-do instructor. Zeke was also dressed up as Rex, but he had no business getting his picture taken with the pre-party tantrum he had going. My mom made the pants and I knew it was meant to be that Wal-mart carried this patriotic doo-rag. Seriously, who would wear this in real life??
I googled "Napoleon Dynamite cakes" and found something similar to this. If you remember in the movie, he feeds his llama Tina her dinner from a casserole dish. And he calls her a fat lard. So this is referring to Tina, the llama. Not my husband. Pretty sure our party guests didn't remember this either, I'm thinking they went home thinking I'm a really rude wife. On a side note, can you believe I actually took a cake decorating class once? Obviously I didn't learn much.
I made this happy birthday banner a few weeks ago. Totally love it. I found a similar sign done on eighteen25 and had to do it for us. The one part of the evening that the guests actually understood.
Here's our little "Time Machine" for Zac. Just some pictures from the past I thought everyone would enjoy seeing. I'm thinking they think we always have our bookshelf full of Zac's childhood pictures.
So now here are the activities. We just got a new dance video game, Dance Central, and we played that upstairs in the living room and then we had the movie Napoleon Dynamite playing downstairs. The dance game was awesome and we had a lot of good laughs making fools of ourselves. When everyone came in, I had them draw their rendition of Zac's face. (Remember in the movie when he draws a picture for the girl he wants to ask to the dance?) It was pretty funny to see what everyone came up with. I also had Glamor Shots by Deb all set up, but the person I had planned to be "Deb" got sick last minute. And I was too busy running around to do glamor shots, so we didn't end up doing it. I also forgot to take a picture of the hubby riding his bike around the neighborhood while I ran around throwing rubber dog-toy steaks at him, ala Uncle Rico.
I had this great idea to make some boondoggle keychains like Deb did in the movie, but here's what I ended up with. 4 keychains. That's it. And do you know how long it took me to make these 4? You don't want to know. Way too much time for an ugly keychain, so I gave up the idea that I'd include those in the party favors.
Here are the party favor bags.
And here's what was inside. Classics from the movie. The bags doubled as a way to hold the candy from the pinata we smashed.
Now for the food. Here are the cupcakes. From a box. I know, lame. For cupcake toppers, I wrote out some of my favorite quotes from the movie.
This one was my favorite cupcake. Living in Idaho and all.
I ordered a couple party trays of sandwiches from Jimmy Johns.
"Chicken Farm Protein Shake" It was really orange juice. If you've seen the movie, you would actually think this is funny.
The Dang Quesa-dillahs. I actually just used the chicken taquito recipe from Our Best Bites and omitted the chicken and turned them into Quesadillas. They were a big hit and I think it's the only part from the movie that people remembered!
"Deb's 1 % milk"
"D-Qwon's Dance Groove Energy Drink"
"Fun Pack Chips" "Napoleon, you know we can't afford the fun pack!"
The Birthday Boy!
And here's the two of us at the end of the night. Super fun, super exhausting. I decided that the best part of planning a party is the actual planning, but it was worth all the effort for all the fun we had. Happy Birthday Zac!!!

Only slightly creepy

So, have I mentioned it's cold in Idaho? Um, yeah. Yesterday was 52 degrees with only 8 mph winds. Heaven! You've never seen me happier than I was walking my dog and the boys yesterday. Being cooped up in the house all winter has forced us to be a bit creative and has me thinking of ridiculous party ideas. Hubby's birthday is next month, and in order to follow with my awesome party theme (that I'm not going to tell you until I post about the whole party) I made this piñata. It's supposed to be the hubby, BTW, not a lumberjack with shorts. I think his friends will have an awesome time beating him up:) I'll be happy to be behind the video camera laughing hysterically.

As you can imagine, this was a labor of love. I used a couple diaper boxes to construct the body and the head and I duct taped it all together pretty well. I did remember to put a bent metal hanger in there (with plenty of duct tape) so I could hang it up in back. The arms and legs are rolled up newspapers. The shoes are small blown-up balloons and the hands are rubber gloves filled with shredded newspaper. Then I paper mache-d the entire thing ala 4th grade with your regular flour/water/newspaper method. I love it. It dries like a rock. Then I just mixed up some paint to resemble skin color and used tissue paper for the beard, shirt, and shorts. FYI, hubby wouldn't be caught dead in jean shorts, but I think his corpse looks good in them. I did have to include his favorite shirt that I made for him here, so people knew it was him.

Anyway, I'm pretty happy with how he turned out, and more importantly, hubsters thinks it's hilarious. Whew, glad it's done. Time to move on to the next party planning project...

TO BE CONTINUED....

Texas Independence Day

So we moved to this Country called Texas around 5 years ago. I know, I said Country. But if you're a Texan you BELIEVE that the U.S. couldn't live without Texas, but Texas COULD live withOUT the U.S.! If you don't believe me, just check out any bumper sticker on any Ford-150 pickup. It would be squeezed in between a sticker that says "I wasn't born in Texas, but I got here as fast as I could" and "I'm from Texas, what Country are you from?" Vain I know. Funny, yes. Narcicist, absolutely! My sis moved here over ten years ago and has been a Proud Texan ever since! Every March she throws a Texas Independence Day party and this year she went all out. It was the kind of party that tops all other parties and makes you re-think hosting your potlucks with paper plates and styrofoam cups. Here are some of the fabulous details......


This quote pretty much sums up how Texans feel.....


It ain't a Texan party without Texas sheet cake. And of course they had to be in the shape of the almighty Texas! Do other states have cookie cutters in their state shape? Hmmmm..... And yes, it tasted just as good as it looked!


The sign that greeted the guests.... It's suprising how many carry here......

Drinks that originated in Texas were served such as Dr. Pepper and IBC Rootbeer (I got carded buying the rootbeer! It's exciting for us non-drinkers!) In order to keep your drink separated from your neighbor's and to avoid sharing germs (I'm a proud germ-a-phobe!) Renee came up with these cute tags that she antiqued and wrote names of cities in Texas. There are some crazy towns in Texas like, Cut & Shoot, Miami, Beverly Hills, and Canadian. Really? Canadian? It's true, look it up!

Renee also made a banner with cute fabric remnants. The napkins were also various colors of handkerchiefs. Seriously cute!



Just to make it authentic, peanuts were served.


And every guest walked away with a GIANT mug, which Renee etched with a Texas star and est. 1886. My mug is sitting in my freezer right now, waiting for me to fill it with a rootbeer float! (It's my treat for doing this really long blog post) If you know me, I give myself treats alot for doing practically nothing. And then wonder why my jeans keep shrinking......


She also made this cute front door wreath. With burlap ribbon and rusted tin stars.

The party was a huge success. With everyone wearing their best "Texan Flair". My favorite outfits included a very cute pregnant girl looking like a Cow & another guest with a MUM sash. Now if you don't know what a MUM sash is, I could explain it to you, but it will NEVER make sense. Let me just tell you it has something to do with High School homecoming, girls parading the sashes and craft stores make HUGE profits! We had a game of Texas facts which we all pretty much failed, even the true Texans! And we ate, and ate, and then ate some more. I definitely won't ever complain about the awesomeness of Texan BBQ! Happy Indy-Pendence Day Ya'll! I think it would be great if ya'll threw yourselves one of these parties. Because, it obviously doesn't matter where you're from as long as you get yourselves to Texas before ya die!

wannabe Halloweeners

I can't believe I'm about to post this picture. I mean this tops ALL embarassing moments. You see, hubs and I really want to be into Halloween, but we're just not! It's like kids in Highschool who want to be cool, but just can't pull it off. That's us trying to pull off being into Halloween. It's an attempt, but a lame one at best! I have to tell you what started off our bad dressing up experiences- it was October 31, 1996. Just a few days before hubster proposed & if I didn't run after this event, I must be a keeper! Soon-to-be hubs invited me to take his neice and nephew trick or treating. "Ahh, how cute is that?" I thought. I show up and he is dressed as some guy (don't know which one, never plan on knowing either) from Star Trek. He had this whole jump suit that was black & red with the whole emblem and everything. His sister and her husband were also dressed up in Star Trek jump suits. I thought, "Ok, they must totally be into Halloween, that's cool I guess." Then his sister proudly pulled out a spandex jump suit for me! Oh wow! Spandex? But you don't know my size, we just started dating! What could I do? His sweet sister had made all the costumes! So I put on the tight in all the wrong places and baggy in all the wrong places jump suit. It was about 3 inches too short in the body which made it ride up all night long. Just imagine. Uncomfortable! And then my I-can't-believe-I-didn't-run-away-hubs pins a Star Trek emblem on me. It was just like pinning a corsage on a prom dress. He was so proud! Then icing on the cake, it was a talking pin-corsage (I mean, why wouldn't you buy a talking one? I would expect nothing less!). Hubs literally beamed as he pushed the button that said "Beam me up Scotty!" You should've seen the look on his face. So happy! I'm afraid to know what my face looked like, but I remember eyeing the front door like I've never done before! So, happily we went trick or treating. Why was I happy you ask? I was happy I was finally in the dark with my wedgy giving cat suit! Fortunately for me I have no pictures to remember that interesting Halloween night. I'm left only to remember my permo-wedgy! It took me 9 years later to dress up (recover) again for Halloween. But again, completely unsuccessful! This was us 3 years ago. I think I want my Star Trek outfit back after my sister (who was kind enough to document our lameness!) sent me this picture! I have a feeling we looked better as Star Trekkies than we did attempting to dress as Dwight & Angela from the Office.
I still get the shivers when I look at hubs dressed as Dwight. And not good shivers! That whole night I avoided making eye contact with him, because I was literally afraid I would never be attracted to him again! I however, wasn't any better looking as Angela. (shivers again) Ewwww! So this is our last attempt at dressing up. You can see this just isn't our thing. We wanted it to be our thing but we just came off as creepy with a side of homeless. So here is my idea if you want to host a Halloween Party and maybe even invite us: Do yourself & your eyes a favor and don't make it a Costume required Party! But if you still insist on having a Halloween Party here is an idea. Have each guest bring an outrageous costume (I've got some nice Star Trek spandex ones if you need something) wrapped in a paper bag. When all your guests arrive, place them under a chair and play musical chairs. When the music stops each person grabs the costume under their chair and that's what they wear for the night. I think it sounds fun, but then again I dressed up as a Homeless librarian/Angela.

Happy Halloween planning everyone!

Family Reunion- Minute to Win it!

We had a really fun time playing this at our family reunion. All thanks to Mandy. There's just something about late nights, food games, and a camera that bring out the crazy in us! Here's a really fun game to play with your family or friends. Small crowd or big- this is really fun!

Penny Race: Get some pantyhose, preferably new. (or dirty and watch people squirm faster!) Place a penny in the foot of each leg & have someone hold them to start. See photo below. You can't have your hands touch anything while you retrieve your pennies. Much harder than you think and requires much concentration. (or a funny expression works too!)

Oreo Race- This is my favorite! Place an oreo on your forehead and without using your hands, get the oreo into your mouth. I challenge you to do it gracefully. It looks more like an excorsism when I do it. Of course, I looked like that in every challenge!
Skittle challenge- Two bowls per person needed. Place ten skittles in one bowl and with a straw move each skittle to the other bowl. Then do a happy dance. Preferably IF you win. Rich won this round & Renee's hopes and dreams of becoming a professional skittle sucker were dashed. Then she took Mandy and me on. Not much of a challenge as you can see.

Apple Stacking: Stack 5 apples and have them hold in place for 3 seconds. Much harder than it looks!

We had so much fun playing these games. The best part is looking at the pictures afterward and seeing the hilarious facial expressions that come as people are trying to concentrate! So keep your camera handy!

Bedroom Bling

I love parties. I especially love the decor of parties. The puff balls hanging from the ceiling, crepe paper stringing from one wall to the next. It's just fun & happy. That's what I wanted my M's room to look like. She's just like me, all about the party! So I made this very simple banner to hang in her room. And when I say simple, I mean easy peazy! Here's what I did:
Step one. Fabric- I bought 4 different fabrics each 1/3 of a yard. This is enough to make 2 banners, but you need the length so 1/3 is the smallest I could buy for my banner to be the size I wanted. I made each triangle 12" wide at the top and 13" in length. After I had one cut out I layed it on top of the fabric and used my rotary cutter to cut the next one. I cut 3 triangles in each fabric, but only used 10 for my final banner.

I don't have a picture of this next step but I used grosgrain ribbon and sewed the triangles onto the grosgrain using matching hotpink thread. I think hot glue or fabric glue would work just as well though. I didn't back the fabric or anything. Unless its backlit by a window, it's not necessary. Here's my finished banner- and let me just say she loves it!
The cost of the project was $8.10 for 1.3 yards of fabric and 5yrds of grosgrain ribbon. It only took around 30 minutes to make & I can't wait to make more for my other two kids. I think this would be great for baby showers & birthday parties too. So easy & fun!

Paper Party Garland...Anthropology Style

Want a fun vintage way to add shape and movement to your next party? Have I got the project for you! These remind me of paper projects from childhood and they are easily done with old books, sheet music, or newspaper found in your own home. I found a wonderful old antique children’s story book from 1947, the only problem was the pages were falling out and it just wasn’t readable anymore. A few simple scrapbook products later and I had garlands made for myself and a few friends. Depending on the length, eight ornaments seem to be about right.

You’ll need:
Paper
Ribbon or twine
Grommets and tools (optional)
Hole punch
Stapler

To begin, you’ll cut the paper into strips; each ornament takes the following strips;
1- 2.5” X 5”
2- 2.5” X 6.5”
2- 2.5” X 7.5”
2- 2.5” X 9.5”

The papers are then ordered with the single paper in the center followed by the next size up on either side, ending with the longest piece on the outside. Make sure all of your papers are lined up on one end (since they are different sizes they can only be lined up on one end).

This is where the grommets and tools come in, if you scrapbook then apply a grommet to the top for the ribbon or twine to be strung through. The quick method is to staple the end and then add a small hole punch to the top to string the ribbon/twine.

Next, to arrive at the final shape, you’ll begin pushing the papers up from the bottom until they are all lined up; add a staple to the end so the ornament holds its shape. Do this to all of your ornaments.

Finally, string your ribbon or twine through the grommet/hole punch at the top tying a knot to keep each one in place. The spacing can be a bit tricky so a friend or spouse can come in handy.

Now you’re ready to party, Anthropology style….

Ready to Pop!

I know, I know. I've missed my Monday blogging, total slacker. Well, maybe I wouldn't call myself that- Dad and I have been very busy with lots of this...

Oh yeah, I'm totally sore. I'll show you the results (hopefully!) next week. I'm totally going against my mom's recommendation to NOT put this picture in. I feel like it makes me seem like a "real" person out in this big bloggy world. But maybe I'll regret this picture after my total exhaustion from working so hard fades away, hmmm.

Alright, so we had the baby shower last week and I thought it was a major success. Of course though, being a new blogger, totally forgot to get pictures during the party, but just imagine that it was beautiful. We decided to go with a "Ready to Pop" theme and drank soda pop, ate jalapeno poppers, peanut butter popcorn, popcorn balls, lollipops, pop rocks, ring pops, Oreo pops (it was all very poppy!) along with fruit, fried cheese balls, and a teeny little vegetable tray. Gotta get our 5 a day! We also had balloons everywhere for extra Pop! Sorry for the lack of pictures, rookie mistake.

So, here are the invitations, I found them on etsy here. I thought they were cute and easy. (This isn't the actual invitation, just the example from etsy) Instead of saying OH BOY! at the top, I had it say READY TO POP! and also, we didn't meet at "The Hunt Club." I don't even know who Stella Gray is anyway.... moving on, I thought the invitation was cute, and, most important to me, it matched the colors.

Here are the Oreo Pops I made. Sounds simple, right. Stick a lollipop stick on an Oreo and dip in almond bark. Easy as pie- or not! Maybe it would've been easy if every Oreo didn't have a major fracture. Not fun, but in the end they look good and we all know that looks are all that really matter. I think they tasted pretty good too. Here's a hint- use double stuffed Oreos, and maybe Popsicle sticks instead.

Again, here's the diaper cake I showed you- I got lazy and just added a little toy on top. Makes it a little bit cuter, I think.

A party is not complete in my eyes without the Martha Stewart tissue balls, found here. I recently taught a bunch of women how to make them, I think they are so fun and make everything really festive. I also thought this white one turned out especially perfect, perfectly round and beautiful. I've still got these hanging in our living room, I think I might keep them up for a while. Mr. Z thinks that they're balloons. They cost about a buck each to make- about the same price as a balloon, but these last longer. Totally tricky to hang though, so I used, guess.... staples. I totally have staples stuck into my ceiling. I tried thumbtacks, but the ceiling was too hard and I just ended up bending a bunch of tacks (and hurting my thumb). Also I used clear thread, but you could also use fishing line to create that "hanging in mid-air"appearance.

So that's all my party pics- I'll remember to take more next party I throw!