15 on the 15th: December

Here I am again documenting our day on Monday. I tried a few new settings on my camera to try to learn something.....but I think I might need to actually take a class or something to figure out how to take artistically pleasing pictures. For now, I'll just document life.

Sam finally got up on his own in hockey - he was SO proud of himself.

On our way to the Homeschool Christmas Party

Stopped to look at Christmas lights on the way home

And that's a wrap! Next month we should have a new baby in the house.......crazy!

Brian & Elijah's Minecraft Birthday Party

I don't quite understand the minecraft craze, but my kids sure love it. Brian was so excited to get the full game for his birthday. They had just been playing the demo version which you can't save or do multiplayer.

Anyway, so the boys wanted to have a minecraft birthday party. There are loads of ideas on pinterest and after letting them search and pin some ideas, I helped narrow down the potential craziness to a few simple games and decorations.

We started out with some minecraft coloring pages that I just found online and printed off, then we ate "creeper" pizza

I found this free printable minecraft bingo. It was great, but it was kind of hard for the kids (especially those who couldn't read well yet) to see if they had the item on their card.

 After bingo, we did the "ghast" pinata. I made the pinata just with a cardboard box wrapped in white paper with streamers hanging down. Elijah drew the face.

We also made a little bean bag toss creeper game (you can see it in the bottom left). But we don't have bean bags, so we used some blocks to toss instead. The kids just played with it in between activities on their own.

After the pinata, we had cake and lava (orange sherbet ice cream with cream soda pop). If you're familiar with minecraft, you'll recognize that this cake looks like what cake looks like in the game. It really was a miracle that it ended up looking ok. It was super crumbly (I just used a cake mix) and the icing was not sticking on the sides. It was just falling apart because it was too heavy. Of course this was all happening 10 minutes before the party was starting...... I called John (cause he is the icing expert in our household), and his advice of adding a little milk and whipping the icing for a few minutes made the icing not so thick so that it ended up working out.  I just added some cocoa to make the brown icing and the red squares are fruit roll-ups. I really was happy with the end result....and so were the boys, so all was good.

Another birthday over!

Sam's Dinosaur Birthday Party

Sam turned 4 a couple weeks ago and wanted to have a dinosaur birthday party. Luckily pinterest has loads of ideas, so we found lots of fun and simple things to make his birthday special.

I found these cute invitations and pretty much copied them. I guess I didn't take a picture of them though. Sam loved them. We put angry eyebrows on ours though, cause "dinosaurs are mean."

 He invited 4 little boys, and they were sure easy to entertain. We started off with these dino colouring pages while we waited for everyone to arrive and then played a dinosaur matching game (Sam's only request for party games). I found this one from Itsy Bitsy Fun and printed off a set for each of the kids to take home.

Next we made dinosaurs with foam shapes - also a pinterest find from Little Family Fun. The kids loved this and I sent a set home with each of the kids in their goody bags.

I made these bath bomb dino eggs the night before. They were really hard for me to get to stick together, but they worked out in the end. The kids were mesmerized with them.

Sam wanted to have a pinata. I was not excited about making a dino shaped pinata after remembering Hadley's lovely pony pinata, but luckily I have a smart husband who gave me the brilliant idea of just making a dino egg. Duh. Hadley painted it and I think it turned out pretty cute.

 I am not much of a baker, but managed to pull off this cute dino cake for Sam. Thank goodness for pinterest!

It was a great low-key birthday party. Sam was happy with it and that's really all that matters!

15 on the 15th: November

My friend Rhonda has been posting 15 everyday pictures from the 15th of each month on her blog for a while now. Every time I look through them, I think that I should start doing it, but then I forget....and another month goes by. This month I was determined to do it. I am not a photographer, but I would like to learn and am hoping that if I commit to at least practicing once a month, maybe I'll get a bit better at capturing our life in photos.

So, here is our Saturday on the 15th:

Halloween

Halloween was fun, but I was sure worn out by the end of the day! I had put off getting the kids costumes ready, so the morning was spent making their costumes, them doing their own facepaint, and making doughnuts for our homeschool group party. Hadley decided she was going to be a zombie cheerleader about a month ago and Brian decided to be a zombie too. Elijah wanted to be a mummy. Sam had lots of ideas of what he wanted to be, but in the end he chose to be a zombie. Nellie was a dragon....cause it was easy.

 

 

Brian and Hadley played their part well.....

After the party, John made some rootbeer with dry ice and we had supper and got ready for trick-or-treating.

It was a beautiful night. Warm, no wind, gorgeous! I took Sam and Nellie around the neighbourhood and the older kids went on their own.

A great Halloween - too bad the nice weather didn't stay.