Thankful for Thanksgiving Family Activity

Just finished the final touches on my Thanksgiving decor around the house.  This is my absolute favorite holiday all year...family, friends and wonderful food minus the pressures of holiday gift giving.  In the spirit of Thanksgiving we thought we should remind our children all they have to be thankful for.  To instill this sense of thankfulness everyday we created a family thankful jar.  Our jar sits on our dining room table where everyone is sure to see it and take a moment to fill out a slip...so far the plan is working.  We decided we would read them all on Thanksgiving.  I just used a couple of items from around the house to create our thankful jar.  I canning jar, some burlap scrap, twine and a foam leaf.  A little hot glue later and our jar was complete.  I just printed out some "I am thankful for" slips and we were all set.  How does your family celebrate Thanksgiving?  I would love to hear other ideas on how to remind ourselves how much we have to be thankful for.

As always thank you for stopping by. -Robyn

John Deere Farm Birthday Party

I cannot tell you how excited I am to share this party with all of you.  When my soon to be five year old stated that he would like a John Deere/farm party I thought...really?!?!?  No way to just run out to the party store and pick up the supplies.  Naturally I turned straight to Pinterest and was overwhelmed with all of the great ideas I found.  If you would like to see how obsessed I was just check out my Pinterest Board for yourself.  As usual I would have loved to have taken more pictures, but that just was not to be.  So sad that I did not take a picture of the Happy Birthday banner that I made...oh, well.  Naturally we choose green and yellow for our colors with some orange thrown in (the birthday boy's favorite color).  I had many games and crafts planned for the day, however I found that all the kids wanted to do was play in the backyard.  So much for all of my planning, but thrilled no one was bored!  The first activity that the kids did was to Plant A Garden, which was my favorite of the day.  I saved a bunch of tin cans and punched holes on the bottom with a nail and hammer, for drainage.  Then I got busy crafting with some cute burlap ribbon and my hot glue gun.  I printed out the John Deere logo from Google Images onto card stock and then cut them out and covered them in clear contact paper to try and protect them.  I cut small slits on the sides and threaded them with the green ribbon and again used the hot glue gun.  I have to say that I was quite pleased with the results.

We set up the wheelbarrow in the backyard with dirt and scoops (found these at Target) and some tomato plants from the local nursery.  We tried to grow our own from seeds as a fun project for the kids, but this just wasn't meant to be.

Then I had made paper pinwheels following these instructions which I had each child's name attached to.

We had a guess the seeds game set up which only a couple of the kids played, however I was amazed at how good they were at guessing the seeds correctly.  We also had a puppet craft and a clucking chicken craft.  The clucking chicken was a huge hit.  I had printed out a bunch of farm themed coloring sheets and had those set up with crayons and markers.  We also had a Feed the Pig game which was simply a cute little pig garbage pail I had found at Meijer and some bean bags we had.  Then there was a Tractor Races game which was just a board set up and some small John Deere tractors to race down the ramp.

We served lunch for the kids which included Pigs in a Blanket, also known as bagel dogs which we kept warm in the crock pot.  Popcorn, watermelon and corn on the cob was also on the menu.  

For dessert the kids enjoyed dirt cups.  I loved the carrots in the dirt which I had found here originally.

While the adults had carrot cake.  This carrot cake is one of our favorite recipes which I make every year for Easter, so I was happy to be able to pull it out again so soon.  You can find the recipe for this Carrot Cake at Taste of Home.  Just a note, I prefer mine more cake like and bake it in a 13"x9" baking dish and bake it for 45 minutes or until a toothpick inserted in center comes out clean.

The party favors were very simple and included a homemade s'mores snack mix which we made from the Pepperidge Farm graham cracker fish, mini marshmallows and milk chocolate chips.  A homemade chocolate covered oreo with green and yellow drizzles.  My inspiration came from here. Of course we had to include a candy Cow Tale.  

This party was so much fun to plan and host.  Next time I guess I will just host a large playdate.  :)  As always, thanks for stopping by.  -Robyn

S'Mores Hostess Gift

Last summer our good friends were kind enough to invite our family out to their lake home.  As a hostess gift I choose to bring a s'mores kit complete with the roasting forks.  I wanted to make the gift family friendly since they have two kids.  I purchased the white cake box at the local craft store and packed it with graham crackers, marshmallows and Hershey bars.  There were Reese's peanut butter cups in there as well, although you cannot see them in the pictures.  You could include any candy you think that they would enjoy...the ideas are endless.  Tied up with a bow it makes a sweet gift.

Thanks for stopping by.  -Robyn

Fall Family Fun List

Since fall has arrived here in the Midwest we thought we should have a fall family fun list of things to do just as we did for the summer.  We thoroughly enjoyed checking off things this summer we decided to make a fall one as well.  I can see a seasonal tradition being made...  Hope you enjoy your fall as much as we have.

 

Summer Fun 2013

So to make our summer vacation more fun we made our own family version of the ever popular bucket list.  Every member of our family weighed in and this is what we came up with. 

 

 

Hope your summer was filled with fun.  Looking forward to making a fall list.