"Raindrops on Roses..."

These are a few of our favorite things!

DANCE! 

Cue the jazz hands! Zoe's dance started up again! She was SOOO ready for it to start again this semester! Grace's began last week, but since Zoe's is on Mondays and last week Monday was a holiday, Zoe had to wait until this week. Not only did she get to have class this week, but THEY GOT TO TRY ON THEIR RECITAL OUTFITS!!! Cute!

 SOCCER! 

Grace, Cian and Zoe are all playing indoor soccer this winter. This is our first time having indoor games. In the years past we had indoor clinic with skills and short scrimmages.

 PIRATES!

 Arrgh! The kids saw a production of "How I Became a Pirate." I LOVE this show! Cian and I had been before, but Grace and Zoe hadn't seen it. They all loved it! The kids got to take a photo with Jeremy Jacobs (the boy in the book and musical who becomes a pirate) and 2 of the pirates. Zoe was a little too scared of them to get in the photo.

 BOOKS! 

Ellison got her first TAG JR. for Christmas and is enjoying playing with it. You place it on the board books and it will read the story or say something about whatever picture you place it on. Very smart invention!

 

 ART!

The kids are really enjoying their new art class. I'm really glad we enrolled them in it! This week they did Chinese lanterns for the upcoming Chinese New Year. This was Cian's.

 TIME WITH FAMILY

One of the best things about homeschooling has just been time together with my kids. This is Zoe and a mini shopping cart. Even the ordinary can be special.

Aarrr Matey!

Pirates!

During our week on Hawaii last week, I found a cute little pirate map on the geography of Hawaii on enchantedlearning.com and the kids had fun working on it.

 SOOO, I decided to work on one for them for fun around our house and this is what they did:

I made them a map with directions to hidden treasures

Ellison wanted to be included in the fun adventure so....

When she went and got her Explorer Backpack!

The map gave them directions to follow to find each hidden treasure. Here they are on their adventure:

 

 

The final treasure- frozen gogurts! Yum!

Aloha

Each week we cover a different state and if I can, I match it up to Zoe's preschool Letter of the Week. Last week we were on letter H, so you guessed it, HAWAII time!

If I didn't still have all my picture albums, keepsakes, photos and more still in boxes (yep, it has been 6 months since we moved and I still have boxes!), I would have tried to find photos of our honeymoon in Hawaii to show the kids. We even have a video of us in a helicopter over a volcano!

Here are some things we did do for Hawaii:

We made a Hawaiian dessert:

We made leis:

We had our own little luau party with Hawaiian food, okay, kind of Hawaiian food, lol:

Zoe's Pinkalicious Birthday Party

PINK, PINK, PINK!

Pinkalicious is a book by Victoria and Elizabeth Kann and one of Zoe's favorites. It was the theme she chose for her 4th birthday party. Basically, a girl named Pinkalicious eats sooo many pink cupcakes that she turns PINK! 

I actually used Pinterest to plan most of this party! There are sooo many ideas out there!

I have photographed all the fun things we did at her party- so this will be a couple blog posts!

THE DECORATIONS:

Signs for the door & window

Wands 

I made these wands to look like Pinkalicious' from the book. I took wooden dowel rods and painted them with acrylic paint. Then I used gold foam to make the stars, foam glue to glue them together and ribbon for the streamers.

 This was the table at the front door. When the guests arrived it had the wands for each guest to take one. It also had the copy of the book Pinkalicious and a cute photo of Zoe (the birthday girl) with her face on a Pinkalicious photo. You can pinkafy yourself too! Click here.

 Balloons from Oriental Trading Co.

Notice the pink theme yet, lol!

Pinkalicious & her book

I made a banner for the fireplace with scrapbook paper with Z-O-E on them. Pink- of course.

I guess I got a little Willy Wonka on this one, but when I saw these PINK Christmas trees on clearance at Walmart I couldn't resist! I added pink heart suckers as the decorations. The guests got to take one with them in their goodie bag when they left.

THE FOOD

Well, of course, everything was PINK! I had made pink covered pretzels and pink sparkle marshmallow pops. I also bought some Valentine's Day candy since it's already in the stores. I got pink candy corn, pink heart suckers, pink Hershey Kisses, pink marshmallow strawberries and pink cream wafers. 

PINK SNACK TABLE

  

To drink- PINK lemonaid or Pinkalicious water bottles.

 These cute labels were something I found for free on another website: www.733blog.com

THE NEXT BLOG POST:

Read more on her party! Cupcakes, Pinkalicious games and more!

Pinkalicious Pink-tastic Cupcakes & Party Games

Zoe's Pinkalicious Birthday Party Continued:

THE CUPCAKES:

I ordered PINKALICIOUS cupcakes from a local bakery. I asked them to try and make them look like the ones in the book. I think they turned out PINK-tastic! They were strawberry cupcakes so even the cupcakes were pink too!

THE PARTY- GAMES AND MORE

The guests- we invited 12 little friends of Zoe's. Half of the girls invited were sick :-( 

It was a small party, but super fun! We did invite only girls to this, but since I have one son and three daughters we didn't want to leave the Birthday Girl's brother out...... he got to play the part of Pinkalicious' brother PETER! I made a sticker and stuck it to one of his blue baseball caps:

THE PARTY

I had some pinkalicious printables for the girls to do when they arrived while all the guests got there. 

Once all the girls arrived they made crowns like Pinkalicious!

 The girls put on their crowns and I read Pinkalicious to them.

THE GAMES 

I had planned a couple little party games for the kids to play. While eating their pink snacks, they played BINGO (also found free on pinterest from kidscraps.com.) I printed the cards from that site and then I bought PINK pez for the piece markers. 

We also did a game of PIN the CHERRY ON THE CUPCAKE.

The birthday girl in her Pinkalicious outfit and wings

Finally, they played MUSICAL THRONES like in another Pinkalicious book.