Donnovan's 4th Birthday! My baby turned four and he wanted a Car's themed Birthday. We kind of threw his birthday party together last minute (ok so the night before isn't exactly last minute but close enough). We bought cupcakes from Macey's, and I had seen on pinterest here where she used donuts to look like tires. I decided to then place the cupcakes around a pizza pan and put the "tires" in the middle. It turned out super cute!

 Dad hung streamers from the ceiling in the kitchen and we took down the boys' curtains in their room and used them as a table runner.

 We also stole from the boys' room the signs and all the Cars toys. The picture isn't that great because the signs reflected the light. Someday I will take a class and learn how to take great pictures. Until then, please forgive me.

                                        Here's the mantle with more signs and more Cars.

 We had the fourth of July Banners still up, but I thought they kinda went with the whole Cars theme. You know like the flags at the race tracks.

Ryan and cousin Trevor

Here is the Birthday Boy Blowing out the Candles!!!

 Activities for the party were as follows:
      1. Color Lightening McQueen or Mater coloring page.
      2. Cars bean bag toss (we threw bean bags into a Cars garbage can which we got from Aunt Mert)
      3. Cars Secret Agent Mission (treasure hunt)
      4. Pin the lightening bolt on Lightening McQueen
      5. Cars race (used Donnovan's Halloween Costume and had the kids race between orange cones)
      6. Treasure Ball ( go this idea from a lady at church. She rolled up in streamers a bunch of different toys and had the kids take turn unrolling to get their prizes.)

Favors we gave were: McQueen tops, kaleidoscopes, mini cars, and bouncy balls on strings. We also had a piniata filled with fruit snacks and Cars candy. We gave out Bubbles that we had written Rusteze Car Wash. They also for the treasure hunt found Cars Sour Spray with a charm (found them at Easter and knew I would need them someday).

 We had invited our new Neighbors, Christopher, Aria, and Aaron and our cousin Trevor.

 Donnovan got a bunch of toys including: a Cars mat with Lightening McQueen.

Christopher, Aria and Aaron gave Donnovan a 24 piece set of Playdoh!!

                                                                                                   Trevor gave him a Car's puzzle mat!

Kiersten gave him a Mater Car.

Emalee gave him some puzzles!

Ryan gave him some Car's Friends to play on his new mat!

 And Mom and Dad won by giving him a fire engine Robot! Well he seemed the most excited about it. Although he plays with all of his presents.

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DONNOVAN!!!

Beastly Bush!

We have this wild rose bush that grows on the corner of our house. We have to cut it back all the time and when we don't it grows huge and wild..hence the name wild rose bush huh?! We bought a cheap $10 trellis from Walmart, but the beast of a bush knocked it down. We knew then that we needed a stronger, more durable trellis.

We looked at them, but I was not about to pay $50 dollars for one. We had a broken screen door that was just sitting there and one day I actually "looked" at it and noticed that the wrought iron decorative piece would be a great trellis.

Soo with the help of my awesome hubby we dug two holes and placed two pressure treated 4x4's in the ground and cemented them in. Then we just drilled the decorative piece right on the wood. Total cost: $20. Total time: 3 hours. 

Take that beastly bush!!!

Square Foot Garden!

I wanted to show you all my square foot garden. You see those ones out there made out of wood, but I wanted to be different. I needed  a garden box where I don't have to bend over cause, well, I don't want to hurt my back and plus I am way too big to get down on my knees. So I thought and thought and finally it came to me.... a garage door! One panel of garage door hit me at the knee..  yes, I am that short! 

before...

After!

We had a 16 foot door panel that we cut into fourths. My wonderful hubby also cut a pressure treated 4x4 into fourths also. We then drilled the door onto the 4x4's leaving about 6 inches of the 4x4 out of the bottom. Then we dug wholes in the yard where we wanted to put the garden, put the 4x4's in the whole and then filled the garden half way up with dirt.
 We have 2 huge mounds of dirt in the backyard so finding dirt was easy peasy. We filled the rest of it up with garden grow planting soil and then planted our tomatoes and cumcumbers!
Now we just need to find a few more garage doors for the rest of my veggies!

Angry birds

So I have found this Evil site...Pinterest. And when I say evil I mean "the best website who loves to suck me in and not let me out for hours". While on it the other day I came across this pin about Angry birds and knew that my kids would love it. So I went down to the dollar store and bought red, yellow, blue and green balls. I decided to glue felt on to them with hot glue, but it didn't stick.

SO I tired E6000. It looks like it might stick!!

Now we are collecting boxes so we can try out our angry birds. I can't wait! We might even use them for Young Women's.

Emalee's Birthday Part 2

SOoo I know its been like a month but I needed to finish putting up Emalee's birthday. She had a great time. We first colored pictures, then we made lanterns, pascals, played pin the nose on Flynn Rider, Ate ice cream and cupcakes, played on the slide and untanlgled outside, opened presents, castle pinata, and then just played. weww!! We were tired!!!

Kiersten starring at the cupcakes Aunt Katie made! They are multi colored yellow, pink and purple.

 sliding outside.

playing with pascal. This is Donnovan's favorite part of the movie. Where Pascal sticks his tongue in Flynns ear.

Made a castle out of a oatmeal box and then cut a hole in the bottom. I then taped one string to the trap door and then put about 30 more sticking out the bottom. Then one by one they pulled on a string to see which one opened the castle's trap door. We had Rapunzel fruit snacks as the candy.

 Birthday girl loving her cupcake! She ate like 3 of them!!

 Here are all the things that we gave the kids. They made the lanterns and the Pascals. They had a treasure hunt for the bags of candy, the fruit snacks came out of the castle and then she gave each kid a frying pan!! It was soo cute. She had a great time. She's already planning next years party.

Em Turns 6!

My little girl Emalee turns six. I am so excited! She is growing up so much. (It makes me feel old) So ever since I found that evil site, Pinterest, I have been pinning ideas. I decided that I wanted her to have a Rapunzel Birthday party. She had to be talked into it since she wanted a Princess Tiana party. Luckily it didn't take too much convincing to get her to come to my side. I found so many great ideas from here and here and had so much fun doing it all.

I made the invitations and I think they turned out pretty cute and actually had to ask one of our cousins to give it back because I forgot to keep one for the scrapbook.

We had a lot of fun making the Pin the Nose of Flynn Rider Game. We borrowed a projector from Mert ( why she has one I don't know, but I'm glad). After I got done copying him to a poster board, Kiersten, Emalee and Donnovan had fun making a nose on him. Silly kids!

Here is Flynn at the Party. We had the kids draw a nose on paper and cut it out. Then we played Pin the Nose. I was fun. They had a great time, until Ryan started cheating and trying to feel where everyone elses noses were, so I then moved them off the board.

We had fun decorating. Since Grandma's house has a flat back yard we asked her if she would host it and luckily she loves me enough to have it there. We hung yellow crate paper to kind of mimic hair. We made some crafts and one of them was making lanterns out of foam paper, or a sheet of foam, I don't know which one to call it. I like the sound of sheet of foam so I'll go with that.

Anyway, We had the kids take a sheet of foam, fold it hot dog style and cut on the fold making slits it in. Then opened it up and glued it into a cylinder. Added sticky foam peices and a handle and.. voila... lanterns.( You can see them sitting on the table in the living room.)

I asked my awesome,creative, wonderful sister in law to make us her coloful cupcakes. They are pink, purple and yellow and sooo delicious!! She is amazing. We then decided to put the ice cream in little cups also. I loved the idea of having the food presented in the frying pan so we hauled out Dad's heavy duty cast iron ones, trying to not let Donnovan hit people over the head with them. I think it turned out kind cute.

We made these pascals as a craft project also. We tried to glue them, but the kids were getting impatient to play with them so we pulled out grandmas stapler and went to town. The eyes are sticky back so then the craft went much faster.

We had some fun outdoor games for the kids to play. One of them was "try to get untangled". My mom had these "lovely" chair lawn decorations. You might think that I planned the chairs to represent the chair that Flynn Rider gets tied to in the movie. Well, to be completely honest... I did. Grandma's had these chairs for about 5 years in her back yard and as soon as I thought about this party I knew I wanted to use them somehow.

 So we placed them in a retangle, cut up a yellow plastic table cloth into strips,  and made a whole bunch of crisscrosses. The kids had fun trying to go over and under it.

I have more to show you, but for some reason I have to go an feed the Donnovan. So I will post more of her birthday party later.