Harry Potter Birthay Celebration

Missing Harry Potter? 

We are! We went to Universal last fall and we are halfway through the audio books this summer!  Our kids are all fans and we have a couple weeks of mellow, well, mellow for us anyway, so we are going to celebrate Harry Potter's birthday! July 31st is a Monday this year so we will be doing a bit of it during the day while hubby is at work and the biggest Potter fan is at football camp.  

I've got a scavenger hunt for after lunch. 

I just picked up some horcrux and other Harry Potter inspired items. Some we already had, it doesn't have to be expensive! 

A plastic snake, a goblet, an old book, a necklace, a wand, a piece of silvery fabric left over from a project, I really like the little plastic animals because our little one loves them. You can find a  Badger, Griffin, or a Raven. I found a little tri wizard cup, a lavender unicorn horn, Nevil will probably need help finding his toad a few times, and the bones of an Acromantula. 

We do some harder clues and some that are easier because we have a bit of age range for our Potter fans. 

I don't love butterbeer to drink because it's too sweet. This year we are either going to make butter beer fudge or butterbeer caramel corn, I will be winging that, if it turns out I will share :) 

After visiting the 3 Broomsticks at Universal Studios and having THE best roasted chicken ever, seriously the best, I am pretty sure we can do something like that with baby potatoes that is easy enough for our middles to do a lot of the work, they love to help!  We also have an owl muffin pan and they can make some corn bread or something in them. 

I will pick up some dry ice for the table and goodies for snack mix to make for movie watching! 

Here are some other things we have done in the past, none are to hard! 

What do you do to celebrate?

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Back to School Fairy '13

It's almost that time! Time for the Back to School Fairy to stop by and leave a little treat and note for kids who are off to school in a week and a half!

 

I have concentrated on reminding them to be good students and good friends at school. This year will be the same but I think the fairy might need to remind them to help their mama after school one of the days!

 

As much as I really wanted to could have blown our Back to School Budget for the Back to School Fairy, I didn't!  Kept things really pretty mild but things I know they either needed or wanted.

 

Carsyn got a dress, the only dress I bought her for Back to School, a shirt for Ramsey

 

A couple little Legos I already had on hand, some hair glitter, new toothbrushes
And they each got a box of granola bars, those are a real treat for our kids, they don't get them often.
And Finnley has a Starbucks gift card for his first day of Preschool!

 Couple other little things, nothing too major but they will like them!

 

I know this tradition isn't for everyone and some people would rather just give the kids something from them and not the Back to School Fairy, but we started with the Back to School Fairy and I love that our kids remember it and ask about it throughout the year.

 

Check out past years here!

Who else is doing this, or something similar?
 

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Peanut Butter Day!!

Is January 24th, just a few days away. Luckily pb isn't too hard to incorporate into our day. I'm sure we will have PBnJ's for lunch and maybe I will make some PB cookies!

Or maybe some PB fudge!

But other than that I am not planning too much!
If I have to stop at the grocery store I might let the kids make a small container of the DIY peanut butter, they would probably like that!
Are y'all planning anything for National Peanut Butter Day?

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January 23rd is National PIE Day!

YUM! Not only are pies tasty but they are so charming and simple, considering most aren't too many ingredients. They are cute and always make me feel giggly. I think anything with a pie on it is special!

The American Pie Council had this on their site, I thought it was cute!

"Why is National Pie Day celebrated on Jan. 23 or 1/23? 

Because celebrating the wholesome goodness of pie is as easy as 1-2-3."   

And here is some suggestions they have for celebrating

Other ways to celebration National Pie Day:

• Share the ultimate "comfort food" by giving the gift of pie to a local "hometown hero". Stop by your local police or fire department and let these local heros know that you appreciate all they do for your community.
• If pie making is not in your schedule, stop by your favorite pie shop or grocery store and bring home a gift of love and joy for the whole family. The coldest of January days will be warmed by a special pie dessert.
• Indulge your co-workers with a gift of pie.
• Reach out to new neighbors that you might not have met yet - it says you're thoughtful. Stay awhile to get to know each other and fill them in about the neighborhood.
• Say thank you with a pie. Has someone done a special favor for you? Acknowledge the favor with the gift of pie.
• Spend time with you children and make a pie together. You'll make great memories and your children will be so proud to serve the pie for dessert.

All of those sound like great ideas! Here are some things we are thinking of doing.

I made a hair clippy for my little miss a couple years ago.

 Smoosh will for sure be wearing it that day!

seriously one of my faves! 

And pie is so easy! You could do a breakfast pie, lunch pie, dinner pie and snack and dessert pies if you reallllly wanted to celebrate the entire day!

For breakfast, I think we will do a variation of these

But instead of little pockets I think I will use the mini pie maker! These look amazing!

You could also do mini quiche, those count as pie right?!

I will probably try some version of chicken pot pie but in the mini pie maker, cause it is SO easy to use and the kids will eat anything that comes out of it! But these look really good too!

I will probably do Shepard's pie for dinner but if not these will be a good snack! 

And dessert options!

Cupcakes

Pie

Shoofly Pie

Or mini 

And really isn't a PIZZA a pie?! So maybe I won't do ALL of these and I'll take the easy route for one of them!

And don't forget pie pops!

cute counting project!

And this is SUPER cute, kinda overkill for JUST pie day but it is adorable!

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National Popcorn Day

is January 19th!

Fun and simple and inexpensive!  There are so many versions of popcorn you can make~

Kettle

Ourbestbites.com

Chocolate

Colored

Caramel

Popcorn Balls

and the list goes on of course!

I think we will string some popcorn up for the birds!

If you need a dessert or treat for that day, check out these adorable cupcakes!

Or these seriously cute popcorn cake pops! (These might have to make an appearance at a Baseball party coming up!)

cakecentral.com

What are y'all doing for National Popcorn Day?

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National BIRD day AND National Whipped Cream day?!

EEK, I really didn't want to share EVERY National Day. So I had to decide between these 2 for January 5th!

For the Birds! 

I think our poor birds are probably starving out there, I have been bad and haven't been keeping up on the feeders. So first we need to make some kind of fun craft that will also feed these poor birds!

You could go all extreme like they did HERE and make one of these!

Or keep it a little bit more simple and do the old PB in a pine cone rolled in birdseed.

Or the in between like these

And I love birds, more so than bird food, there are some SWEET coloring pages

You could make snack time "bird food" with some apples, dried cranberries or raisins, sunflower seed kernels and if your REAL adventurous, you could make these. I don't know if I could, I get kinda nauseous just looking at the Jello Worms from Theidearoom.net!

The kids would love it though!  I will probably go a little easier and make these for dinner

these little pasta "nests" are adorable! And they come this way, here is a package of them 

I will probably make a meatball "egg" for their little nests!

And if its a day I feel like making a treat these are adorable and a pretty basic shape

Whooo's going to celebrate National Bird Day?

If birds aren't your thing, maybe Angry Birds are?

Or Owls? They're birds too!

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January 3rd, National Chocolate Covered Cherry Day!

Yes, in case you didn't know January 3rd is National Chocolate Covered Cherry Day!

What are you doing to celebrate? I had no idea this holiday existed, or honestly, WHY it does. But whatever, I am a big fan of everyday being a celebration, so I am hoping to share some more of these strange but fun National "Holidays" and some fun treats or crafts or both!

So the obvious would be to make some chocolate covered cherries with/for the kids! The image above has the details from here.

But there are also SO many other ways you could celebrate!

Easiest way? These

And I just found cherry MnM's yesterday at the grocery store!

These look amazing!

Chocolate covered cherry whoopie pies!!

And a coloring page, cause who doesn't love a free coloring page?!

And if your still wanting to celebrate after the kids are in bed..

Chocolate Covered Cherry Martini!

Find the recipe HERE!

And January 4th is National Spaghetti Day. I did some fun stuff for that last year.. check it out here

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It's almost time!

To start those Advent calendars!

We have a little ginger bread house one that we put little things in, it's this one.

But we also got a couple new ones this year at the Lego Store! They had 2 different Advent Calendars this year, a Lego City one



And a Lego Star Wars one

The kids don't know about these yet, they will be SO excited!

And Pinerest has SOO many cute ones!

This one is a free printable!

SO many cute ones, and lots are DIY! Check out the rest on my Christmas Pin Board HERE!

What do y'all use?

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More Elf Stuff

This year Cookie (our Elf) is bringing the kids some Elf Pajamas and an initial ornament to tell them he/she missed them (and because they need some Christmas jammies)!

These are the Pajamas Cookie is bringing

They are from Crazy8 but are mostly sold out (18-24month is left online). The stores might have some still. I Cookie just thought the kids would love some Elf jammies. These came out in the end of Summer, picked them up then, not knowing that Pottery Barn was going to have seriously cute stuff, check these out!

And a sweet little set of matching DISHES?! So cute!

I can't wait to see what else comes out with Elf on it!

Does your Elf bring anything for the kids?



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Elf On The Shelf!!

We got ours last year, the kids LOVED it! Ours is named Cookie, and last year we didn't do much with it, moved it every night, read the book. Nothing like what some other awesome families are doing! Can't wait for the visit this year!

Pinterest (of course) has all kinds of amazing ideas!

Found all these via Pinterest!

This Flickr page! Such cute ideas, like this one

This site has 101 ideas!

This family has a Elf named Melvin and they share his adventures, cute ideas like

And I have a bunch more saved on Pinterest, where I am sure I will be adding more and more, find my Christmas board HERE.

When does your Elf come out to play? 

What's your Elf's name?

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