last 27 days of being 27

Someone once told me that your golden year is when your birth age and day are the same. My birthday is december 27th and I turned 27. Disappointingly this year has been pretty sucky (mostly October but the whole year didnt really pan out either..) I have actually spent more time in the last few days, more then I should probably blog about, thinking about the golden year concept. First off I would like to point out that im sorry for people born on the 1st! My poor cousin was born on the first, of April to boot, but she wears her birthday with pride (and often a stuffy nose) Second I dont want to look back on my 'Golden year' and all I see is faded bronze, so I have decided to change life's plan and make my own Goldenness appear! While trolling Pinterest (like the addict I am) I came across this blog post. I was very inspired by her compassion and selflessness. So I have decided that for the last 27 days of being 27 I would like to preform 27 random acts of kindness, one a day more if I come across a random opportunity to do one. Here is perhaps the best part of my whole concept, I would like to challenge everyone to do the same. The holiday giving season is already in the air and I would like to have you help me pass it around. There are lots of great ideas on the Internet and tomorrow I will link up to some of my favorites. In the mean time, I challenge you to open your eyes to the world around us and for the next 27 days pass on as many random acts of kindness as you possibly can!



And because I cant help by share our skipping school for the day adventure, we ditched and went and saw old st.nick!!

I-Spy Orniment (PEN PAL SPOILER ALERT)

(NOTE IF OUR KIDS ARE PEN PALS READ NO FURTHER BECAUSE THEY ARE BEING SENT YOUR WAY!)



Last year after we decorated our Christmas tree my kids spent an hour playing I-Spy with the Christmas ornaments. It was so cute that I made them I-Spy bags for gifts and they have been everywhere with us, Doctor appointments, car trips, soccer games, time out stints. Then when I was going though our Christmas stuff for our Halloween party (see Halloween party posts) I came across the ornaments my kids made their Aunt and thought BINGO those are like I-Spy bags! How about I-Spy ornaments! (Note I did see one one pinterest since I posted this) So this is how I made my kids I-Spy Ornaments (or you can buy them on my ETSY ;) )



Supplies:
Clear Plastic Ornament (with removable topper)
Small Ornaments (or finding)
Poly Fill (or do what I did and gut some beany babies)
Ribbon
Glue Gun (Note super glue or E6000 melted my plastic.. weird right?)

Step 1:
Pop top off your ornament, if yours look like mine push out the little scalloped edges so it goes on nice with the glue.



Step 2:
Cut off string off little ornaments. (See how cute these are they are the Nativity!!)



Step 3:
Plop little ornaments into the big ornament.



Spet4:
Fill with poly filler (I saw some fake snow flakes im going to try tomorrow to see if I can make these a little less heavy)



Step 5:
Add glitter... because everything is better with glitter.



Step 6:
Hot glue and seal top on. (Make sure you cant pull or twist it off)



Step 7:
Add a ribbon to hand it and gift it to your favorite little I-Spy-er!!

Im 'sprakling' with genius!!

I like my crafts like I like my men... glittery!! ha ha ha ha ok a lame twilight joke but still can you tell im extra excited for the movie tonight? I dont know why I dont blog more about the things I do... I think it has to do with the fact I come up with a great idea then google and realize everyone else already had the same great idea. Not that im not a crazy 'pinner' and recreated of all things wonderful, but sometimes I feel like because someone else did it I shouldnt blog about doing it. But that all changed last night when I was smacked with a great idea, actually I was trying to come up with some holiday stuff and this ran me over. I was almost like a deer in head lights when I googled and didnt see anyone else doing it, then I thought BLOG IT!!

I love this time of year! I go straight from my fall/halloween high right into Christmas joy. I love baking and the music and the magic the season offten offers. But my favorite thing is when they forecast snow. I get that happy crazy feeling inside me and seriously cant sleep even if its a light dusting. We dont get snow like we did when I was little but every time it does snow its like magic, the world get so quiet. Snow also smells amazing, it smells cold and special. So while we patiently wait for our snow to come we make paper snowflakes from printer paper and dream. My kids love making them. Every snowflake just as different as the real ones. My house off ten looks like a blizzard hit it during the winter, so why not capture that fun more permanently?

So in all there awesomeness here are our snowflake shirts!


Here is what you need:
Heat and Bond
Glitter
scissors
an iron
and something to put it on (we did shirts but im doing hand towels and scarf for christmas)

Cut the head and bond into any size squares, fold in half then in half again (Ok im assuming you know how to make a paper snow flake but just in case lol)
Cut out your design, making sure not to cut off the folds.
See how pretty!


Now Lay on your shirt and iron over heat and bond (Iron on the paper side, just in case that wasnt apparent


When it cools, peal off the paper. You should be able to feel your snow flake.
)





Pour glitter on printer paper a little bigger then your snowflake and a pretty thick so the paper doesnt stick to your shirt


lay shirt down over glitter and iron on back. I ironed a little longer then I normally do since it was two layers.

I let it cool then lifted my shirt up and shook off the extra glitter
(NOTE: I HAVE SINCE FOUND THAT IF YOU PUT THE GLITTER ON YOUR SHIRT (NOT SHIRT ON GLITTER) AND IRON ON THE PAPER IT STICKS WAY WAY WAY BETTER)

TAAAA DAAAAA


Glittery snowflake and mine didnt come off in the wash!!!
(Note since you glitter in on the paper just slide the extra back in the tube for the next one!!)





And I bragged about myself here:

im a nerd and I love it!!

There are few thing I like about myself more then how nerdy I am. I honestly radiate nerdiness! So besides being a die hard potter fan I also enjoy Twilight. I didn't even see the first one till the third one was in theaters, but after watching the first one at 2 am feeding a brand new baby I was hooked! I bought the whole series the next morning spend the week reading them, bout the first and second and by Tuesday I was in the theater watching Eclipse and now have been eagerly awaiting Breaking Dawn. I have never been to a movie opening night (unless you cound the Starwars Episode 1 when I won ticket... but had never even see the old one and it was the night before so there was no line sleeping in ect lol) Anyways my cousin and a good friend of mine decided we would make it a ladies night out, and because I can not do anything with out gifts I came up with these little beauties (then I got and Etsy and alas all good ideas have already been done, but I thought I was being creative and cool)


So we will be rocking matching Vampire bite Pearl necklaces at 12:01 AM because not only do I radiate nerdiness but I also infect my friends ha ha ha

Oh fall!!

Oh how I love fall. If Halloween wasn't awesome enough our trees are so late to change and the colors have lasted so long that every morning its like a new picture and the streets are cover with floating beauty (all of this makes me very happy inside) So yesterday before preschool we decided to go on a leaf walk. We found tons of awesome leaves. Red Yellow Green Brown, spotted and half and half in color. We stopped at almost ever tree to look up an spin around. They were crazy into it this year and it was awesome. When we got home we did some leaf coloring then pulled out the craft box. Now left me say that I do do crafts with my kids. I normally left them start them then I finish them because they do them "wrong" and I'm to OCD to let them make messy thing, which I will admit is horrible but I honestly cant help it. I now have an army of leaf people and I didn't step in once. With a bottle of Elmer's in hand they went nuts! (I even woke up this morning to two of them already at the craft table) We have leaf kings, and super hero's, and a zoo, and every family made in leaf form. we have a leaf feeling board, and a leaf chore chart... we went leaf crazy. We even made really cute leaf turkey cards. (Watch the mail box pen pals these awesome thing are headed your way :)

Plumblers, Parties and MRIs oh my!

My cousin and I are going to a concert after trick or treating tonight. Normally I would never dream of going out on Halloween unless it was kid involved but giving the past month life has dealt me and the fact my favorite band is playing in out state, right up the street from my house, for the first time Im not sure even life could keep me from going. Since its on Halloween its a dress up thing and we are going as Mario and Luigi!


I sewed the jumpers from duck cloth so they would be a little stiff in the A frame. then we painted home depot paper paint hats and added our shirt and our converse because yes they are our own shoes we had and how freaking perfect (on a side note this is the first pair of leggings I have ever owned and I dont ever want to take them off and while I still refuse to wear skinny jeans or anything called a Jegging, im pretty happy about leggings)





Party Clean up is 80% done, the rest of the stuff can stay up for the kids to enjoy tonight. And the mose important news..... Dangers EEG and MRI were both normal. So we go see the neurologist on the 7th and hopefully we wont have any more episodes!

Nightmare before christmas halloween party

Saturday night we threw our 3rd annual kids Halloween party. It was the crazy most off the wall time yet! (Good and bad) This years theme was Nightmare Before Christmas. We had to convince our 4 year old it would be harder to get little girls to come to her 5th birthday if it was NBC so she reluctantly gave it up to Halloween. But it turns out it was a great idea. After months of planning and looking around on the Internet and realizing not many people throw NBC parties and write about them I set off with a note book full of awesomeness... unfortunately family trauma plagued October which left us with no time for my awesomeness and a bunch of scrambled put together craziness. But it turns out those hours I spent planning awesome games like a wall balloon dart pop jack face and a 3 legged stocking race wernt needed because all the kids wanted to do was eat junk food and play in the playroom. We did do the bob for donut game but it was even disorganized and stupid, but the kids still are talking about it so I will chalk that one up to happy for sugared donuts ;) we had bought skeletons to have a put the bones together relay, however the only kids that wanted to play were the really small ones and with no parent participation it was a mess, but they all got prizes and i have 4 colorful skeletons for next year. I would love to show you pictures of all these but my camera went missing during the party... amongst other things...
The food was pretty awesome. We made dipped Halloween Oreo pops with twislers for Sally.


We did Oreo cake balls of Jacks face (but the food coloring pens stopped working!!) FAIL


We did inside out S'more reindeer's


veggie Christmas trees and pumpkins. We made spaghetti (for our vegan vegetarian friends)snowman Jack pizza, and worm hot dogs. We did deviled eggs and meat roll ups. I was surprised how fast the brownie bites with strawberry Santa hats went. And the fresh fruit the kids inhaled. (Good sign)There were mini cup cakes and sugar cookies and Dr. finklestein (I ran out of time for his glasses) jello brain.



My favorite element was Oogie Boogie. I sewed him out of burlap. I left an opening in him and filled it with gummy worms and gummy bugs and this was the favorite at the table for sure.


The house looked awesome adorned with out traditional Halloween decorations and 10 Halloween decorated christmas trees. I painted the mayor tree out of a broken lamp shade. It was the best tree I think.









We had a craft table for the kids to make treat bags and bat ornaments. The kids were so creative I was totally jealous of most the ones that went home. We bought 3 packs of 12 ornaments at the dollar store and spray painted them black. Added a Halloween colored ribbon hanger and the kids foam sticked, googly eyed, and pipe cleaner ed them. We had lots more then just bats and spiders be made and my kids have since made about more. For good favors I made crayons out of a pumpkin mold I bought at the dollar store. The kids were nuts for these too. So Hats off to October for kicking my butt, but for not letting my lack of what should have been at the party be evident. 29 kids in all showed up about the 20 adults and boy am I still one tired mom!!

And these are my little trick or treaters. Captain America, Harry Potter, Sally from NBC, and a little scary crow ;)