Emily’s LEGO Friends Birthday Party

Oh my goodness I can not believe that we just celebrated my baby’s 7th birthday!! 

Emily and Juliette have been OBSESSED with LEGO friends ever since they got their first set last year for Christmas.  So this year when we were thinking about the theme for Emily’s party I was not surprised when she jumped up and down  with excitement when I suggested we do a LEGO Friends Party.  I have to say this was probably my favorite party to plan yet, I had so much fun searching Pinterest for fun ideas.

The decorations were simple but fun and I absolutely LOVED the color scheme she picked out.  We made the Lego Brick decorations from card stock and cut out circles on the Cricut MachineEmily built her name with her LEGO bricks.

When each girl arrived they took a picture with Emily at our Friends Photo booth.  This is one of my favorite party activities.  I love having a picture of Emily with each girl and then I print them and use them for a personalized thank you card. 

I printed out a picture of all the LEGO Friends on legal sized paper for the girls to color and use as a placemat.  I also printed a handful of Lego coloring pages and put them together as a coloring book for the early finishers.  We were amazed at how long the girls just wanted to color for. 

Next for the main activity for her party we decided to get each girl a Lego Friends Set for them to put together.  I had a craft tray for each child to work on so that the pieces stayed somewhat contained. 

We had pizza and cake and then let the girls play in the basement with Emily’s collection of LEGOS until their parents came to pick them up.  Emily came up with the design for her cake.  The “7” is made out of Sixlets candies and I used a Building Blocks Chocolate Candy Mold to make the chocolate bricks.  She then added her Lego Friends as the final decorations. 

For their goody bags I used my sister’s CIRCUIT machine to cut out circles to decorate the bags like LEGO bricks.  In each bag the girls had the LEGO set they built during the party, a box of Building Blocks Candy, a LEGO sugar cookie that we made, their coloring book and placemat and hair band lollipops that we made for each girl. (Did I mention that I LOVE Pinterest!)

Happy LEGO Friends 7th Birthday Emily!!!

We Have Joined the Poppins Book Nook Virtual Book Club!!!

This month starts the new year of the Poppins Book Nook, a monthly themed virtual book club for kids of all ages and I am so excited to be one of the co-hosts!!  Each month there will be a new theme and all the co-hosts will be posting the books they chose to read with their children and the activity that they did to go along with it.

For this month the theme is  “Where in the World.”  I will be reading the book Where Do I Live? and I am looking forward to working with the girls on a fun map activity to reinforce where we are in the world. 
  Be sure to follow along to see what we are all up too.  If you would like to participate too just pick a book that works for your children with the theme “Where in the World” read it and do an activity.  Then come back and share it with us as part of the Poppins Book Nook “Where in the World” blog hop on Monday, March 31st!
Here are some of the amazing blogs that will be  joining in the link up this month:
Enchanted Homeschooling Mom ~ 3 Dinosaurs ~ To the Moon and Back ~ Planet Smarty Pants ~ Farm Fresh Adventures ~ Growing in God’s Grace ~ Chestnut Grove Academy ~ Faith and Good Works ~ Learning and Growing the Piwi Way ~ The Usual Mayhem~ Preschool Powol Packets ~ Monsters Ed Homeschool Academy ~ Adventures in Mommydom ~ Teach Beside Me ~ Life with Moore Babies ~ Kathy’s Cluttered Mind ~ Are We There Yet? ~ Our Crafts N Things ~ Hopkins Homeschool ~ ABC Creative Learning ~ Joy Focused Learning ~ P is for Preschooler ~ Laugh and Learn ~ A Mommy’s Adventures ~ Inspiring 2 New Hampshire Children ~ World for Learning ~ The Kennedy Adventures ~ Ever After in the Woods ~ Golden Grasses ~ Our Simple Kinda Life ~ A glimpse of our life ~ Journey to Excellence ~ Happy Little Homemaker ~ Little Homeschool Blessings ~ Simplicity Breeds Happiness ~ Raventhreads ~ Water on the Floor ~ Learning Fundamentals ~ Tots and Me ~ As We Walk Along The Road ~ Stir the Wonder ~ For This Season ~ Where Imagination Grows ~ Lextin Academy ~ The Canadian Homeschooler ~ School Time Snippets ~ Peakle Pie ~ Mom’s Heart ~ A Moment in our World ~ Every Bed of Roses ~ Finchnwren ~ At Home Where Life Happens ~ Suncoast Momma ~ The Library Adventure ~ Embracing Destiny ~ Day by Day in our World ~ Our Homeschool Studio ~ A “Peace” of Mind ~ Thou Shall Not Whine ~ SAHM I am ~ eLeMeNo-P Kids
 
You can see the dates to link up below for the upcoming themes:

• April 28th – Planes, Trains and Automobiles!
• May 26th – Folktales
• June 30th – The Great Outdoors
• July 28th – Ye Old Pirates!
• August 25th – What Will I Be When I Grow Up?
• September 29th – The Wild West
• October 27th – Beyond Our Planet
• November 29th – To the Kitchen
• December – No Book Club
• January – To The Laboratory
• February 23 – Poetry

 
The Poppins Book Nook co-hosts are proud to present to their readers the opportunity to win a fabulous FREE Kindle Fire HD 8.9" 32GB WiFi 4G w/ Charger to one lucky entrant. This way, you can download and read all of your favorite eBooks you have and will collect along your learning adventures.  You could be having absolutely fun times doing all the things that this Kindle Fire 32GB WiFi 4G w/ Charger can do, be it learning activities, free reading, or let’s face it, playing that just released new version of that game you know and love so much, whatever that may be.
Poppins Book Nook Giveaway! Thank you all for your continued support and for following along with the Poppins Book Nook Book Club! May this bring a spoonful of reading fun into your households for your children. Enjoy this Kindle Fire giveaway!
The winner will be randomly picked by Rafflecopter and will be notified by Enchanted Homeschooling Mom via email. This giveaway is open to all people ages 18 and over with an active USA address for delivery (United States Domestic and APO/FPO/DPO as designated by the USPS) of the prize. This giveaway is in no way associated with Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest or any other entity unless otherwise specified.

By entering this giveaway you are also acknowledging that you have read and agree to all of the Rafflecopter terms & conditions as well as Enchanted Homeschooling Mom's HERE(http://enchantedhomeschoolingmom.org/disclosures/). 
Just enter the Rafflecopter below to win: a Rafflecopter giveaway

Baby Fun ~ Big Buttons

 

Clara is 9 months old and wants to do everything that her big sisters do.  She loved playing with our collection of  really big buttons.

These REALLY BIG BUTTONS are a lot of fun for all ages!  We use them for sorting, patterns and now baby play.  Clara enjoyed exploring them.  She looked inside the container, picked up the buttons and especially liked dumping them all over the floor.  This is a great activity for developing fine motor skills and cause and effect relationships.

Valentine’s Day Cards

 

Love is in the air and we had so much fun making these cards for the girls to pass out to their friends at school!

When I saw these “I Love You to Pieces” valentines  I immediately thought of Juliette.  She loves cutting and is always creating a little scrap pile of cut pieces for no apparent reason.  This was perfect to put those cuttings to use for a real project.  I gave her pieces of pink, purple and red construction paper and had her make confetti out of it.  Then she glued the pieces on to the hearts like they were sparkles.  She had a blast!! 

  I picked up these cute pencils for Emily to hand out, but wanted something else to go with them.  These printable mazes were so cute and the perfect way for her to include a sweet massage and her name. 

Pasta Painting

I was cleaning out the pantry and found a box of expired lasagna noodles.  I felt bad throwing them out so we decided to try painting them instead, I figured at least we could put them to use before the tossed them!!

 The girls had a lot of fun painting piece after piece.  The ridges added a fun texture for them to work with.  They also loved how cool they looked when you held them up to the light.  It was like a stained glass window effect. 

Hot Chocolate Pancakes...Yummy in my Tummy!!!

Brrrr it is cold out!!  We have had some of the coldest weather that I can remember here in a long time and we have been obsessed with Hot Chocolate.  So the other morning when I was making pancakes for breakfast I thought it would be fun to add some of the Hot Chocolate mix to our pancake batter.  The girls loved the mini marshmallows inside their pancakes.  

It was definitely a fun treat on a cold winter morning!

Here is our Hot Chocolate Pancake Recipe

Ingredients:

1 1/2 cups unbleached flour

3 1/2 teaspoons baking powder

1 teaspoon salt

1 Tablespoon sugar

2 packets of your favorite Hot Chocolate Mix

1 1/4 cups milk

  1 egg

3 Tablespoons canola oil

Directions:

1. In a large bowl mix together the flour, baking powder, salt, sugar and hot chocolate mix.  Make a well in the center.

2. Mix together the milk, egg and oil then pour into the flour mixture and blend until smooth.

Heat a lightly oiled frying pan over medium high heat.  Pour or scoop the batter onto the pan.  Brown on both sides and serve hot.

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!!!