Helping Others ~ Making Goody Bags for Birthday Wishes

In honor of Clara’s third birthday, which we are celebrating this week we deciede to make goody bags to donate to Birthday Wishes. Birthday Wishes is an amazing organization that plans birthday parties for children that are living in homeless shelters.

We have been baking cupcakes to donate for the parties for the past 6 months and the girls are always excited to help me make them and decoreate them. They also collect goody bags which they give out at the parties. I have been wanting to have the girls make them, but haven’t had a chance until now. Since we are not haveing a friends birthday party for Clara I thought this would be a great activity to do together and we were able to spend the money we would have spent on goody bags for her friends on these goody bags.

We went to Walmart and Dollar Tree to pick up all the things we would need to fill the bags. The girls worked together to decide what would be fun to include in each bag. It was cute to hear them talking about the things they like getting.
In the end we decided to fill each goody bag with:

• Silly Straws
  
• Bouncy Balls
  
• Mini Slinkys
  
• Stickers
  
• Play Dough
  
• Spiny Balls
  
• Pencils
  
• Bubbles
  

I set everything up on our low folding table, which was the perfect height for clara to be able to take a bag and then walk around the table and pick one thing from each container to put into the bag.

The girls worked together to put all of the bags together. They were careful to check when they were finished that each bag had everything because they didn’t want anyone to miss out on anything.

Clara was so proud of her finished goody bag, she was actually able to put them all together on her own. I just helped her tie the twist tie to close it.

Together we made 25 goody bags to donate to Birthday Wishes. I can’t wait to bring Clara to drop them off.

We actually had so much fun picking out the items to go into the goody bags and putting them together that the girls said they want this to be one of our new birthday traditions. I couldn’t be prouder of them for wanting to give back to others as part of their birthday celebration.

If you would like to find out how you could help out Birthday wishes be sure to visit their website and their Facebook page.

Check out some of the other ways our family is helping others and volunteering in our community.

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How to Catch a Leprechaun ~ Leprechaun Trap Attempt #3

We are at it again…this year we were sure that we were going to catch that tricky leprechaun. He was able escape from the first cake Leprechaun Trap and our Pulley Leprechaun Trap.  This year our trap had all the makings of a great trap with no way for that leprechaun to escape!!!

We have been talking about different ideas for the leprechaun trap for awhile now.  We finally agreed that we would trick him into a large pot and then grease the sides so it would be to slippery for  him to climb out.

To accomplish this we needed:

• Popsicle sticks
• Tissue paper and streamers in rainbow colors
• A large pot
• Oil
• Toothpicks
• Paper
• Markers
• Play Dough

  I used the hot glue gun to make the ladder so he could easily climb up to the top of the pot.  Next we set up popsicle sticks around the edge of the top of the pot hooping that they would make the rainbow tissue paper that we put on top of the pot slide in easier.  Finally, the girls put the strips of tissue paper and streamers over the top.

The girls made some signs to show the leprechaun that there was a rainbow and gold up the ladder.  We hot glued them to toothpicks and poked them into green play dough.

The gold coins on top, waiting for the leprechaun!

The girls are so excited to see if they catch the leprechaun this time!!

  That tricky leprechaun escaped again!!  This time he built his own ladder to climb out with the  popsicle sticks that fell into the pot.  At least he left us some fun treats for trying.

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!

Did you build a leprechaun trap this year? If you did add it to the linky so we can check it out.

Our Elf on the Shelf Ginger Week 2

Ginger has been pretty busy this week!!!  Here is a peek at what she has been up to...

 Just relaxing on the window

Since we didn't decorate our tree yet Ginger thought she would help out

 Lifting a weights made out of a candy cane and two large marshmallows.  You need to work out when your main diet is sugar based!!

 The girls got a treat of some homemade mini doughnuts to start off their morning.

 The coffee was all set up for us on this chilly morning

 Ginger reminded us of the true meaning for the season and decided to join our Nativity Set

Ginger was just zip lining through our kitchen.  She even left the girls some candy canes and Clara a candy cane made out of a Baby Mum-Mum cracker.  Ginger is the best!!!

Our Elf on the Shelf is BACK!!!!

Ginger, our The Elf on the Shelf made her first appearance right after Thanksgiving and the girls couldn't have been more excited.  She was waiting for them on top of the front door where Juliette spotted her the second we went downstairs for breakfast.

Throughout the day Juliette kept telling us that she cant wait to see where Ginger is tomorrow and I wonder what she is going to do tomorrow.  I love their excitement over her and the anticipation of what she will do next.

Do you have an Elf on the Shelf?  Where have you found your elf playing?

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How to Catch a Leprechaun ~ Leprechaun Trap Attempt #2

Last year we made our first Leprechaun Trap and the girls are even more determined to catch him this year.  Since he was able to eat his way out of the trap last year, the girls decided we needed something a bit sturdier and decided to use some boxes that we were going to recycle, string and some Plastic Gold Coins.

Emily and Juliette painted the boxes using rainbow colors in hopes of attracting the Leprechaun.  Then Daddy helped them rig up a pulley system over the chandelier with some string that was attached to gold coins.  When The Leprechaun picked up the gold coins we hoped the box would fall on top of him and trap him. 

The girls were all ready for bed and so excited  to see if the trap worked.

   We didn’t catch the Leprechaun, but he did leave us some chocolate coins and in his haste to escape he left his hat behind, which made the girls really happy.  The trickster also turned our milk green and the water in the potty green too.

Hopefully we have better luck catching that tricky leprechaun next year!!

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!!!!!

stART ~ My First Thanksgiving

 

Welcome to stART! I hope that you will enjoy our story and art project and maybe even share your own too. All I ask is that you link back to A Mommy’s Adventures somewhere in your post by either adding my button or a text link, so that others can see all the other great projects that everyone shares too! The linky will be open all week.  Be sure to stop by and visit the different links…every week there are so many different and fun book and craft ideas!

Check out the  stART tab in my navigation bar where you can find our past stART projects.  All the books that we have read and did a stART project for are listed in alphabetical order.

This week we read My First Thanksgiving, by Tomie dePaola.  This book simply and clearly explains  the first Thanksgiving as well as  why and how  we celebrate Thanksgiving today.  I thought that is was a great introduction to talking about Thanksgiving with Emily.

To go along with this book we made these cute placemats with our Art Group.  I loved that Emily and Juliette were both able to make one.  I printed the saying “For Our Blessings We Give Thanks” on a piece of paper and then had the girls glue it onto the construction paper.  They used crayons and Thanksgiving Stickers (from the Target Dollar Spot) to decorate it.  I laminated them once they were finished so they would last longer.

Emily’s Placemat

Juliette’s Placemat

(She did all the stickers I added some of the crayon drawing)

We will be able to use these when we celebrate Thanksgiving with our family as we remember all the things that we are thankful for throughout the year.

Christmas 2009

All the presents ready for Christmas Morning!

Emily seeing all of the presents under the tree in the morning. I love her expression!

Juliette’s First Christmas

Emily helped Juliette open her presents.

After we opened our presents my family comes over and we all have Christmas Breakfast together. We started this 6 years ago and it is one of my favorite Christmas traditions.

Emily received so many wonderful presents, I can’t wait to play all of the games with her!

I was so excited for some wonderful new TOTSchool games, puzzles and activities :0)

My Favorite Christmas Tree Ornaments

We have had a real Christmas Tree since our First Christmas that we were married.  My parents kept a piece of the trunk of their first Christmas tree in our garage (it may actually still be there now!!)  That inspired me to make these very special ornaments for our tree. 

Michael cut a thin piece of the trunk of the tree right after we got it home.  Then he drilled a hole at the top and I decorated it with glitter paints.

Our First Christmas Tree

Emily’s First Christmas Tree

 Juliette’s First Christmas Tree

Now we will always have a piece of our first Christmas Tree, and the Girls will have a special memory of their first Christmas Tree!