A Hallo-Weenie Weekend!

On Sunday I hosted the first Crazy Cousin Costume Contest & Halloween Party for my children, nieces and nephews. It was supposed to be for thirteen kids total but life happens and it ended up being for eight kids. I was a little bummed out about this at first but I was also very tired from partying late the night before, so it wasn't really such a bad thing. With the help of Evite.com, Pinterest (my new friend) and a family potluck style dinner, the party was a success. We had a blast but I am, admittedly, a little glad to have it behind me. This was just the beginning of the next couple months worth of holidays, gatherings and all the other typical end of year mayhem and shenanigans. One down, many more to go.

This party was for the kiddos using all of the money that they earned at their own lemonade stand in my front yard last July. (To read about that day, click here) The money was used for treats, prizes, decorations and games. They had all been looking forward to it for months. That is why it was a little sad that four of the nephews couldn't attend due to cold and flu season. It happens though and I was able to drive around yesterday and drop off all of their goodies and prizes. They had earned them, literally. I hope it helped cheer them up a bit.

I know that I have mentioned Evite.com before but I am going to do it again, anyway. I love this site! They just make it so easy and I need more easy in my life. Getting to the post office can be most difficult now days. Not to mention how many adorable invitation templates they have to choose from. Here is the invitation that I used this time.

Thanks to Pinterest (Which I only recently discovered...I'm a little behind, I know.) there was tons of ideas to choose from. I created a board dedicated to this party and was able to pick, choose and modify ideas to fit the kids ages and our budget. To see my board click here. I didn't use all of the ideas but there was definitely a lot of inspiration to be had. As guests RSVP'd I emailed pictures of Halloween themed party food for families to make and bring to the potluck. It was quite a handy tool. Here are some pictures of food that everyone brought.

Vegetable Tray Skeleton

Banana Chocolate Chip Ghosts, Clementine & Grape Pumpkins and Mummy Juice Boxes

Fruit and Veggies. Fun and healthy. Inexpensive and easy ways to make a fun kids party. I also made Worm Sandwiches but served the sauce options on the side to help please the kids better. I knew they would not all be crazy about barbecue sauce. I didn't get a picture of mine but here is where I got the idea.

Sliced hot dogs on a bun. How easy! Image from Pinterest

My sister-in-law made awesome cupcakes, too. Eyeballs!

Spice Cake with Cream Cheese frosting. Yum!

I also used some of the ideas from Pinterest for our Halloween games. We did the Dum Dum suckers stuck in a pumpkin. One sucker had a colored end for the prize. Plus the kids were able to keep all of the suckers they pulled out. We also did the toilet paper ghost bowling game. The older kids had less rolls of the ball to make it more fair for the younger children. Here are pictures of where I got the ideas.

Image from Pinterest

Image from Pinterest

We also played Pin the Nose on the Ghost using a simple 97 cent door cover and stickers. And then we played a toilet paper mummy making race. Super simple and cheap. I was able to use the toilet paper for two different games.

A little blurry because he was trying to walk. Ha ha!

We ended the party with the much anticipated costume contest. Since some of my nephews could not attend, I decided to have my brother take pictures of his three kids in costume and email them to me so that they could still be included in the contest. I'm glad I did because one of them actually won one of the prizes. We had four winners: Most Original, Funniest, Scariest and Best Costume. Everyone at the party was able to vote and no one was allowed to vote for themselves. It was pretty fun and everyone received votes. Here are pictures of the winners.

Scariest: Werewolf

My daughter happened to win best costume. This was bittersweet. We announced the winners in the order I placed the pictures here. So, as soon as I announced the first winner, my sweet niece, my daughter started to bawl loudly because she didn't win. Ugh! Can you say "poor sport." I, of course, knew that she had won a prize at this time but my initial reaction, in my own head, was that I should not let her get a prize for putting on such an awful display. That was only a fleeting thought because I realized that she was on total overload. It was an hour or so from her bed time and she had been running around all day eating sugary treats and the like. I suppose a meltdown was to be expected. My husband and I did have a good talk with her last night, after a good nights sleep. Hopefully it made an impression. When we finally got to her name and announced her as the winner she immediately stood up with a jaw-dropped-smile and accepted her trophy with gusto, The Golden Owl.

She made up a song about it last night while banging away on the piano (no, she does not know how to play the piano) and kept singing loudly, "I won a trophy!" over and over. My husband and I just looked at each other, shaking our heads with a mix between amusement and concern. I said to him later, "Yup. That will be our daughter. Winning a Grammy someday and being the girl in poor taste who writes a very gloating song about it." We have a little work to do. Ha!

Because all of the kids were so darn cute, here are the rest of them in their costumes.

Creepy Jack-o-lantern Man

Skeleton Reaper

Alien Invader

Like I said...It was a success. I think they all enjoyed themselves. I was dead tired, though. My husband and I had attended a party at a friend's house the night before, on Saturday night. I was designated driver that night. (Next weekend is my turn to drink. Woo hoo!) We got home just before 3:30 AM and the second I stepped foot on the carpet, both babies woke up...of course. So, I had been up all night and then up most of the day cooking food and getting ready. Ah well. All worth it in the end. After everyone was gone and my three little ones were in bed, I sat back in the recliner with a crisp cider beer and fell asleep while watching The Walking Dead. Not a bad night, I must say.

** Also, I am reviewing a delicious popcorn treat that I received in order to taste test it and one lucky reader will win some and a nice new popcorn bowl! Click here to read the review and enter for your chance to win. Contest ends at midnight CST 11/6/2013. Thanks for reading. **

Snickerdoodle Popcorn. What!?!? Stay tuned.

Serenity Now!

Serenity means to be free of stress and anxiety. I wonder what that is like. It sounds quite nice.

I could use some serenity in my life. I have more stress than I care to admit quite often. I have also been known to have my share of anxiety attacks. It is usually my own fault. I put too much pressure on myself, want everything to be perfect and hold myself to ridiculous standards. I am aware of this and consciously battle inside myself to keep it in check. I am now, and always have been, a extremely independent person. There was a time in my life when I began to feel this part of myself slipping away. I was able to remedy my situation and get this quality back. Although, I am realizing now that while striving for this independence I have brought some extra self-imposed stress into my life.

My house is not as clean as I wish it were. I have very recently come to terms with this. I have not given up but I am now cutting myself a little slack. I have a husband, three children, a dog, two cats, a full time job and I currently volunteer at the school two hours each week. Housework is just one example of where I am currently making an effort to be less stressed. It will get cleaned eventually.

This brings us back to "serenity." I am literally bringing serenity into my life. Starting this Saturday, my husband and I will be playing a role playing game called Serenity with nine other friends. We will meet every other Saturday night until March 31st. That is seven Saturday nights away from my three wonderful children. For those of you who do not know me well, this is a HUGE step . I realized last night that by beginning this game I will be doing something I have not done for myself in nearly fourteen years. I have not been away from my kids on a regularly scheduled basis to do something for myself since I became a mother at twenty years of age. I would be lying to you if I said I was not a little freaked out. I am not sure how the time got away from me. I do know that being a mom is one of my favorite things in life, I just didn't mean for becoming one to consume me. This experience will hopefully help me to let go a bit and be a good thing for me and my understanding husband to do together.

The game should be a fun time. There was a show on for a while called Firefly. They later made a movie to wrap things up called Serenity. It was a kind of western set in the future outer space. Adventure, drama and comedy all wrapped into one. We all have our own characters that we have created based on the story line of the shows and will meet and play out outlandish scenarios given to us by the leader of the game. To some this will sound very geeky but I am looking forward to the time with good friends. I am nervous to leave my kids for so many nights but also know that by doing this I will push more stress right out of my life. My daughter will get to spend some quality bonding time with a few of her grandparents and my sons will have some time away from me with friends or possibly being trusted home alone. We will all grow from this. I am scared and excited at the same time. Serenity now!

Game on!

If you have children and you do not have a family game night on a regular basis, I highly recommend it. My husband and I started this a few years ago with our family and it has been a huge success. Game Night is a great way to bond, stay involved and just have some silly time with the kids. Let down your hair and show them that not every night is about chores and homework and being to bed on time. That little something to look forward to together. The plan was so simple. My boys go to their father's house for visitation every other weekend so we decided to play our games every other Friday night when we have them. First, we have a sit-down-at-the-table dinner together and then we rotate who's turn it is to pick which game we enjoy for the evening. There are four of us so that means we each get to choose what we are going to play about every eight weeks. On every tenth game night we go out and purchase a new game for our collection, which adds up to around two games a year. That Game Night does not count as any one's turn since we play the new game instead. Next Friday night will be our seventieth Game Night! In the summer time we do not get to play every other week because the schedule gets very busy. There are lots of baseball games and practices, extra visitations with the boys' father, at least one week of summer camp at F.P.Y.C. and sleepovers dispersed here and there. We have to be a bit more flexible in the summers.

The games we play are mostly board games. We try to keep the video games to a minimum, maybe for special occasions. Any game goes. I can think of only one time we had to say no to a game choice. It was when I was about eight months pregnant with our daughter and my eleven year son old came out holding Twister in his hands. I'm sure you can understand why we had to veto that choice. No hard feelings.

This Christmas we made sure to get a few toddler friendly games back into the house. Our daughter actually turned two today and we are going to start adding her into the family fun whenever possible. I think the best way to do it will be to play a small game with her right after dinner and then when she goes off to bed we can move on to the big kid game for the evening. I can't wait to get her involved in all the fun.

Usually it is just our family playing but we do have guests join us every once in a while. I feel it is important to keep the Fridays mostly just us so that there are no distractions keeping our focus from the children, seeing as this was the whole point to begin with. It is nice to be able to share our experience with others though. For example, we had not been able to hang out with some very good friends of our in quite a while. We had been saving a couple bottles of Saki we had received as a gift years ago and specifically wanted to share them with these particular friends. We were able to make a night of it. I made homemade stir fry and they brought over some sushi. The kids were able to try new things and we were allowed to catch up with our friends. It was a great time for everyone. I was very impressed to see my boys actually try the sushi. So cool.

I love building these memories together. I don't want to take these nights we share for granted. As the kids grow up and become busy with their own activities and friends, we may have to make some changes. I know this already and am giving myself ample time to mentally prepare. I will keep the tradition going for our family as long as possible. It has been so great for us. I am hoping to still be having a form of Game Night even after the kids move out, move on and begin their own families. I am sure it will not be every other week but still something we can do whenever we can. Who knows, maybe my children will have enjoyed it enough to incorporate it into their own households many years from now. That would fell pretty good. That would make me very happy.