Wyatt's Creepy Crawley 5th Birthday Party!

 Wyatt had one request for his 5th birthday party and that was to play with snakes. What?! Are we related? I hate snakes but I had to figure something out to make his dreams come true.  There was no snake guy for hire so we settled for the Museum of Nature and Science where they let the kids pet some snakes. Michele helped me with these invitations which Wyatt loved!

 We had a great time coming up with reptile related food.

Slithering Sandwiches

Turkey and Cheese and PB&J. Olives for eyes. Carrot for tongue.

 Frog eyes-black olives, Pond Scum-ranch dip, Snake Skin-cucumber slices, Lizard Tongues-Carrots

 Snake Eggs-white M&M's (I picked out all the white ones from a Valentines bag.)

 I copied this from a picture I saw online.  I used mini cupcakes instead.

 I made a few regular size cupcakes for the kids too. I used the grass tip and tip 9 for the snake.

Happy Birthday my sweet Wyatt!

Wyatt's birthday cookie

 Wyatt wanted to take a cookie cake instead of cupcakes to share with his preschool buddies. Turns out his teacher said they liked this much better than cupcakes.  I'll have to remember that since this was easier.

Wyatt and his best buddy licking the frosting remains after school. Happy Birthday Wyatt!

I'm a sucker for you, Valentine!

 This was the tray of snacks Ethan chose to take for his class snack this month.

 We used different size cookie cutters to get the most heart shapes out of the pre sliced cheese. 

 

This year the 4th grade students all lost their privilege to have parties or even a chance to hand out Valentines because a boy and girl were caught kissing and doing other things inappropriate :( so we decided to bring his Valentine suckers along with the snack today.

 We made extra ones for Wyatt's class but bagged them because he was able to pass them out as Valentine's. They are really easy to make.  I used some left over colored candy canes from Christmas, laid them on a sheet of wax paper in a heart shape, and added white and blue chocolate, sprinkles, and a sucker stick.

 I found the tag on this blog.

This was Wyatt's Valentine box he helped Jared create.  For the box we used the Kleenex disposable hand towels.  I think his muncher turned out pretty cute and it only took a few minutes!

 I had to include this pic of my sweet girl and I wearing our matching heart scarves we found at Dollar Tree. We love dressing alike.  I love my girl! Happy Valentine's Day!

Valentine Pretzel French Fries

 These were for my kids teachers and the ladies I visit teach at church.

 I got these french fry boxes on Pick Your Plum.com awhile ago and have been trying to figure out what to use them for.  I thought caramel pretzels would be fun and french fryish.  They have other colors too. I added twine to the boxes that I got from there website as well and some foam stickers from Target.

 I make these pretzels in 2 steps. First I make the caramel using this recipe: 1 cup sugar, 3/4 cup karo syrup, 1 cup whipping cream, 1/4 cup of butter, and 1/2 tsp. vanilla.

Add sugar, 1/2 cup of the cream and karo to heavy pan over low heat. Wash sides with hot water and don't let boil until sugar dissolves. Once sugar is dissolved turn heat up to medium. Add other half of cream slowly then add butter. Cook to 242 degrees. Add vanilla. Pour into greased 9x13 pan.

Step 2: Break the pretzel rod in half so they will fit in the box better.  Then take the caramel out of pan and place it on a cutting board and cut small strips. Wrap it around the pretzel starting with the broken off end first.  I then cover it with chocolate right away and set it on wax paper and either cover with sprinkles, crushed peppermint (looks prettier than it tastes,) or let dry and drizzle colored chocolate over them.

I was able to fit 6 half pretzels in each regular size cellophane bag.  They fit perfectly into the boxes.
Happy Valentine's Day!

Follow the Yellow Brick Road

The Young Women leaders decided to use the Wizard of Oz theme for our New Beginnings Program this year.

 

 For info on what New Beginnings is click here. The main focus of the evening is to recognize the girls accomplishments in their Personal Progress, talk about our new theme for the year, and get the new girls, who will be 12 this year, excited about what Young Women's and Personal Progress entails.

 The theme this year is "Come Unto Christ." We got a lot of our inspiration from the blog, The Dearth Duo. It was fun to plan this but also challenging to come up with the program.  I'm not so good at that stuff but if you want a copy of it click here.
*We made our balloon rainbow by following this tutorial.

Food Table. I didn't get a close up of Aunty Em's bread and jam but it was so yummy!

 

Fruit Rainbow

Ruby Red Slipper Cookies

 Somewhere over the rainbow cupcakes: I used the Airhead sour licorice to make the rainbow and frosting to pipe the clouds. For the stripped ones I painted stripes of gel color on the inside of a parchment bag, filled it with white frosting and piped it out.

 To print the cute toppers, tags, labels, and everything else we used go to The Dearth Duo blog here.

 

Yellow Brick Road Rice Crispy Treats

 As part of our program we had the Presidents of each class (Beehives, Miamaids, and Laurels) present our new 12 year olds with gifts that represent each class and also explain what they mean. These bee cookies are what the Beehives presented to them.

 We also came up with an incentive program for the year.  When the girls accomplish a experience from one of the values they get to chose a treat from that jar.

 This was one of the take homes we did. I got this tag and the tags on the jars from Kinzieskreations blog.

 

Here is a pic of our program.  Thanks Dearth Duo blog for making it so easy! We also printed our invitations from her site.

This was our other handout. We made bottle caps charms for the girls backpacks, scripture cases, or where ever else they wanted to hook them. I found the bottle caps and clear sticker covers at Hobby Lobby. We pounded out the bottle caps so they had a rounded edge by covering them with a board and using a mallet.  Don't pound too much! We found the Come Unto Christ images on Etsy.
Thanks ladies for all your help!

Happy 1st Birthday Aryana!

 My awesome neighbor let me help her with her daughters 1st birthday celebration.  She wanted to make it easy so we reused a lot of Lucy's decor from her 1st birthday like this banner(sorry you can't see it very well in this pic), pom poms, and cupcake toppers. 

Smash Cake

 

Cupcake Toppers

Check out this adorable girl!

Love this action shot! She was going to town.  I haven't had a baby do this yet so it was so fun to watch her! Happy Birthday Aryana!