A "Mike the Knight" Fourth Birthday Party

My adorable Ethan turns four this weekend. He is my little "knight in shining armor" so we decided to have  "Mike the Knight" Birthday party. Ethan loves watching "Mike the Knight" on Nickelodeon.

We invited all of his classmates from preschool, plus several friends from church, and of course family. The result? We ended up having over 60 people RSVP that they would be attending! This was thirty children. So what was originally planned to be a home party, quickly got changed to a party at the park! I was so thankful for a day with nice weather! It was chilly, but clear. March is such a hit or miss month when planning anything outdoors.

I did a lot of the craft work for the party myself, and I also had little help from Oriental Trading and Party City!

Here are the goodies I made for the children. I filled little bags with candy and added a label created with an image I found on Google of Mike the Knight. Simple! The hardest part was cutting out all of those circles, but I do have a little circle cutting tool which helped.

 



 

In addition to the goody bags, all of the girls received a Wizard Wand like the character Evie has on "Mike the Knight." I bought the wands from Oriental Trading.I loved how sparkly they were! http://www.orientaltrading.com/api/search?Ntt=glittery+gold+wands 

 

The boys got inflatable swords that I ordered from Oriental Trading. They loved playing with these during the party! I had a hard time getting some of them to stay inflated though.  I would recommend getting a different kind. Luckily we still had enough for all of the boys at the party.

 

We had separate goody bags for his younger friends. Children ages 2 and under received bags with cookies, cheese-its, fruit snacks, and a sucker.

 

I labeled this basket for the younger aged goody bags after "Squirt" the dragon on "Mike the Knight."

On the day of the party, we loaded up our van and headed to the park to set up. I am so very thankful for all of our friends who helped us get things ready!

 

How precious is this cupcake stand?! I ordered it from Oriental Trading.

http://www.orientaltrading.com/knights-kingdom-cupcake-display-a2-13604762-12-1.fltr?Ntt=knight party

My friend Sara baked the cupcakes and made homemade frosting.

Oh my goodness, they were delicious!

 

We had snacks set up and we served pizza for lunch.

 

The children played knight-themed games. They loved "slaying the dragon!" I found this dragon pinata at www.partycity.com. Advice: When playing with the pinata, I would recommend having the smaller children take their swings before the bigger children.We had several children not get a turn because the pinata busted before we got through the line. Oh well, I think everyone still enjoyed it!

 

I drew this picture of Mike the Knight and the children took turns pinning the feather on Mike the Knight's helmet.

 

I also drew a picture of Trollee onto a project board and cut out a hole for the childen to throw "jam" into Trollee's bucket.

 

It was so nice being at the park for the party. I truly think Ethan's favorite part was just running around in the grass playing swords with his friends!

 

Happy Fourth Birthday Ethan!!

Argh Mateys! "A Jake & the Neverland Pirates" Third Birthday Party

We just celebrated my son's fourth birthday party, and thought I would blog about his last party before I post about this more current one. Last year he wanted all things "Jake" from Disney's "Jake and the Neverland Pirates." So of course we decided to throw him a pirate party!

This was the first big party we had ever had at our home for any of our children. In the past, we had always had parties at different play places. However, I was trying to save money and I knew that with a little craftiness, we could have a ton of pirate fun without even leaving the house.

We decorated the family room with different pictures and balloons with characters from Disney's "Jake and the Neverand Pirate."

 

 

 

 

The chidren started with a treasure hunt!

They dug for small treasures in a pirate ship shaped sand box.

 

 

Then they played a bean bag toss game! Feed Tic Toc Croc!

 

They also played "Pin the hook on Captain Hook."

 

 

Last, the children "walked the plank!" I set up a balance beam in our garage and the children took turns walking across it with a pirate patch over one eye and holding a sword.

 

 

The children put their treasures from the treasure hunt as well as the prizes they earned from the other games into their loot bags. I made these from paper lunch sacks and printed out labels with each child's name.

 

 

 

A pirate party would not be complete without "Fish and Chips" (aka goldfish and chips)! We served the snacks out of beach pails. We also served pizza and cupcakes.

 

The children loved drinking out of their special Jake cups my friend snagged for me off the Target dollar aisle! We served them Crocodile Blood to drink...

aka Red Kool Aid!

 

I would definitely say our first "home" party was a success!

Happy third birthday Ethan!

 We love you!

The "D 6:7" Challenge

A little over a year ago, I was given a book by the Preschool Minister at my church. I am on the Preschool Committee, and she gave this book to all of the committee members as a challenge to read and consider applying what we learned to our families.

The book was called, "Family Worship In the Bible, In History, & In Your Home" by Donald S. Whitney. (http://www.amazon.com/Family-Worship-Bible-History-Your/dp/0978523806/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1393726386&sr=8-1&keywords=Donald+S.+Whitney+%22Family+Worship%22)

It was a small book,with only 56 pages to read. I remember thinking, "Oh great... Homework" during the meeting when the books were handed out. However, it was a pretty small book so I figured I could handle it.

I am so glad I decided to give this book a chance! It absolutely gave me a renewed since of purpose in shepherding my children. Deuteronomy 6:4-9 says this,

Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength. These commandments that I give you today are to be upon your hearts. Impress them on your children. Talk about them when you sit at home and when you walk along the road, when you lie down and when you get up. Tie them as symbols on your hands and bind them on your foreheads. Write them on your doorframes of your houses and on your gates.

Ever since becoming a parent over six years ago, I have loved this verse. I feel that my parents did a beautiful job of impressing the gospel and a love for Jesus on me and each of my sisters. Talking about things of the Lord came very natural for us as we went about our days. As I grew older, that ease and confidence I had developed about talking about Christ was such a blessing as I developed friendships and eventually moved away to college. Certainly, my parents laid a strong foundation of faith on my life that I continue to carry with me long after my days of moving away from home. My desire is for me and my husband to do the same for my three children.

However, as much as I loved the verse above, as much as I loved the Lord, as much as I loved my children - I still thought to myself nearly every night as my head hit the pillow, "Wow, there was so much more I wanted to do with them today." Meaning, that while our days were full with tasks and activities, there was so much more that I wanted to teach them, but instead was so caught up with getting through the day that I lost sight of those "teachable moments." I did take every opportunity when I was at the park with the kids or even just driving down the road to point out things in nature that God had made. We talked about how they were unique and special because God had made them that way. However, at the end of the day I still felt that I could have taught them so much more. At the end of my children's lives, it is not going to matter how early I taught them to read, to tie their shoes, or potty trained them. All that will matter are things that have eternal worth. So while all of those other things are essential and good - what I really wanted to be more intentional about was teaching them more about God's Word and who He is, with the prayer that God would put a love for Him  and a desire to follow Him in their hearts.

So, back to the "Family Worship" book. I read it and was blown away with how dated the content seemed. The author wrote with a perspective that sounded so "old fashioned" to me. I realized it's because the idea of family worship time is so different than our current culture! However, as I continued to read, I realized that while it may seem like a dated idea, it was actually quite relevant and exactly what I was looking for in my quest to being more intentional with my children in regards to teaching them about the gospel.

The book talks a lot about how in earlier generations, there was a lot less corporate worship like we have now. Families had worship services in their homes. Now most Christians attend churches and many parents seem to rely on the Sunday School teachers and other ministers within the church to be the sole teachers of the gospel to their children. I truly desire for me and my husband to be the first teachers of the things of Christ to our kids. The book breaks down different aspects of worship and encourages the readers to apply this in their own family worship time. Some of these aspects include:

• prayer
• scripture reading
• music

After I finished reading the book, I sat down with my husband and shared what I had learned. He agreed that we needed to be much more intentional with teaching the kids. So we decided to start having a family worship time. Friends, let me assure you that we started small. We decided to incorporate our worship time as the children were getting into bed each night. At first, we just started to say a nightly prayer with them. Most nights Don led the prayer time and began by asking them what they wanted to pray about. Don would pray and then we encouraged the children to say their own prayer. After we had consistently had prayers each night, we added in scripture readings. My kids were ages 5 and 3 at this time, so their attention spans were not very long! We found that the "Day by Day Bible" by Eira Reeves offered a good length and content for our children's attention spans and understanding. (http://www.amazon.com/Day-Bible-Devotions-Reading-Children/dp/1565635213/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1393728746&sr=8-2&keywords=Day+by+Day+Bible+Eira+Reeves).

Our children absolutely embraced and came to expect and look forward to this time each evening! On nights that we were putting them down a little late we would think about skipping our family worship time, but the children would beg and not go to sleep without first "reading the Bible."

A few months after implementing our family worship time, we decided to add music. Friends, this is so simple! It can mean something as basic as singing "Jesus Loves Me" one time. I think this has become my children's favorite part of our worship time. For months, my three year old sang "The Lord's Army" every night for his song. His new favorite is "Awesome God" and he shouts out the chorus of the song several times in a row. It's precious!

Now, I know many of you reading this may be thinking, who has time for that at the end of the day??? Let me tell you, our family worship time typically only lasts about ten minutes each night. It is not something that has to be overwhelming and unattainable!

I encourage you to check out the "Family Worship" book and pray about starting a family worship time with your children if you have not done so already. I truly believe it is one of, if not the one, best investment you can make into the life of your children.

Be Mine, Valentine!

Wow, I have been wanting to blog for months now! And if the busy-ness of keeping up with my three kiddos wasn't what was keeping me from posting, then it was my temperamental computer. :-/ So I am going to give it by best effort to update my blog with some of the craftiness that has been going on in the Baldwin Household! Several blogs were started but left without being published due to my computer acting up, so I am going to be working backwards a bit to get caught up!


Valentines Day was a few weeks ago and I tried to get everything done early for my children's valentines for their school friends and teachers. Interestingly enough, because of snow my children only went to school one day the week of Valentines Day. Therefore, their parties were postponed to the following week. I was still glad to have them ready to go though!


I stuffed fun little candy bags for the students. Both Hannah and Ethan helped me stuff the bags, but Ethan ate more chocolate hearts than he stuffed I believe!


Here is what Ethan's Valentines looked like:

 

Here is what Hannah's Valentine's looked like:

 

For the teachers, I tried to think of something that could be functional, but also a sweet treat. I decided on tumblers from The Dollar Tree. Everyone loves to have extra tumblers! We filled the tumblers with Hershey Hugs and a Kool Aid packet. The tag on the cup read, "Lots of Hugs for a Super "Kool" Teacher."

So much fun! I love an excuse to be crafty!

Fabulous Family Fall Days in North Georgia

This morning was a beautiful, crisp Fall morning here in North Georgia. I do believe October may be my favorite month of the year. Pumpkin patches, hayrides, apple farms, cool mornings, I love it all! We started a few fall traditions when Hannah was a baby that we have kept up for the past five years. My husband, children, and I all look forward to our annual visits to Burt's Pumpkin Patch in Dawsonville and to the apple houses in Ellijay.

 

Last weekend was our annual trip up to the mountains for our fun-filled day of Fall fun. We had a great time. Now the reality of it is, that we were making this trip with our six month old baby.... oh, and our potty training three year old (these places just have port-a-potties)...and oh yeah, our beautiful, but emotional six year old. So the day had its ups and it had its downs. But overall, it was a wonderful day that was full of happy memories.

 

 

This is my Ethan posing in front of the pumpkins. Look at that happy face!

 

This is my precious Hannah. You would never know from her smile in this shot that three minutes later she would be pouting and telling me that, "Today I just don't feel like smiling Mommy." Great.

 

And this is Joshua. I don't think the pumpkins made a great first impression...

 

He decided that the mulch was pretty cool though. Awesome.

 

So I really wanted a picture of all three of my kids together and smiling at the pumpkin patch. This is basically an impossible task I decided. We got about 50 shots that looked like the above photo.

 

Ok, finally I settled on this. I mean, what can you do? Lol.

 

After our morning in Dawsonville, we headed up to Ellijay to visit the apple houses (apple donuts, apple cider, apple pies, picking apples, yum, yum, yum!).

 

We got stuck in a ton of traffic and the potty training three year old just could not wait. He had his first experience peeing in a cup. In a moving car. Oh my goodness, I just became "that mom." Wow, I will never judge again! Haha. He was pretty proud of himself though! Don said that Ethan was one step closer to becoming a man. Ethan beamed. Great.

 

We eventually made it to BJ Reece's Apple Orchard where we picked a bushel of apples.

 

Yes, I can always pick up a bag of apples at Publix at my weekly grocery visits, but I can't get cute shots like this at Publix (I think I may get some strange looks if I whip out my DSLR in the produce aisle as my kids pick apples off the shelf, agreed?).

We got home a little later than anticipated, tired, and dirty from a day outside. Sometimes outings like this may seem intimidating or overwhelming to try to conquer with young children. My advice: Do it anyway. The time will pass anyway and I want my children to remember the adventures we had together even when they are young rather than waiting until they are older. Yes, there may be some added challenges. But those will be the memories that you will look back on and laugh the hardest.

For those of you who live near North Georgia, here are a few places I would recommend that you make a part of your family's Fall traditions:

• Burt's Pumpkin Patch, Dawsonville, GA (Pick Pumpkins, Ride Hayride)
• Pick Apples in Ellijay (BJ Reece's, Hillcrest Farms, R & A Orchards are some of our favorites).
• Eat apple donuts at Hillcrest Farms!
• Get apple cider from an apple house.
• Try a delicious apple pie from R & A Orchards.
• Let your child drink out of an apple sipper cup at R & A Orchards or Hillcrest Farms.
• Spend time at a petting zoo at BJ Reece's or Hillcrest Farms.
• Do a corn maze (During the Day!!).

This year I also went with my daughter on a field trip to Jaemor Farms in Alto, GA. This was my first time to this farm, but it was great, and I would highly recommend it to people living nearby. There was a HUGE pumpkin patch, a hayride, a beehive, apple orchard, a super slide, duck races, etc. Truly fun for the whole family.

 

Happy Fall, Y'all!

Operation Christmas Child: A Lesson in Giving

 

 

This weekend my two oldest children (ages 6 and 3) started celebrating Christmas a little early... I wanted my children to pack shoeboxes for Operation Christmas Child, a ministry of Samaritan's Purse. My children have never known what it means to need anything and not be able to get it, nor have they ever experienced a Christmas morning where their stockings weren't overflowing and gifts spilling out from underneath the tree. My love language is definitely giving gifts, but even though I enjoy lavishing my children with treats, I also know that it is important to teach them the blessing of giving and not always receiving. I thought this shoebox project would be a great opportunity to teach them just that.

 

So off we went to the $1 store so we could get the most bang for our buck when it came to filling these gift boxes. We purchased several small toys that would fit in a small box (you don't have to use a shoebox; you can use a small storage box instead if you prefer).  

 

 

We also put in small toiletry items: mild soap, washcloths, toothpaste, hand wipes, and a toothbrush.

 

We put art supplies in each box as well.

 

Once the boxes were packed, I wrote a short note on an index card and enclosed a picture of my child in the appropriate box. My son made a box for a three-year-old boy and my daughter made a box for a six-year-old girl.

 

To print your shoebox labels and get more information, go to: http://www.samaritanspurse.org/operation-christmas-child/pack-a-shoe-box/

 

National Collection Week is November 18-25 2013!

 

Last night we prayed for the children who would receive these gift and this morning we brought our boxes to church, which is also a collection site for Operation Christmas Child. 

 

While we were at the $1 store yesterday, I wanted my children to have happy hearts the entire time and not desire to have all of the toys to keep for themselves. My oldest did pretty well... She did ask for a few items and I had to remind her that we were there to shop for another child that day. My three year old did not take correction quite so smoothly... He was screaming and throwing a tantrum in the middle of The Dollar Tree for all of the other customers to see. For any of you momma's out there reading this blog, you know the feeling (or if you don't yet, you will!) of having a child having a meltdown in the middle of a store. Not Fun. But I did feel it was an incredible teaching opportunity to continue to repeat to Ethan that he could ask for these items that he was picking out for Christmas and perhaps he would receive them, but on this day we were Christmas shopping for another child. He did not really like that response, but oh well... maybe he will do better next time. I think we will plan to do it again next year!

 

Hannah's Mermaid Birthday Party

This weekend we celebrated my firstborn child's sixth birthday. She loves all things "The Little Mermaid" these days, so we went with a Mermaid theme. Because several of her close friends are little boys, we included them by making it a Mermaid and Pirate Party.

 

We had lots of goodies for both girls and boys!

The girls received "Mermaid Treats" with their goody bags: fairy wands and starfish headbands. I made these headbands with supplies I found at Hobby Lobby.

The boys received foam swords and pirate hats with their goody bags. I found these items at Hobby Lobby as well.

The children played games at the party including Pin the Starfish in Ariel's Hair. I drew a picture of Ariel and cut out pink starfish out of cardstock for the children to put in her hair. Other games we played included Pass the Seashell (like Hot Potato), Sea Shell Relay Race, and Mermaid Freeze Dance.

This was definitely one of the highlights of the party... My beautiful redheaded cousin dressed up as mermaid and read a story to the children and posed for pictures. She was a natural! I found this costume on Ebay. The book she read to the children was "Mermaid Sister" by Mary Ann Fraser. Such a cute story!

I used cardstock to make a birthday banner and cut up plastic table clothes into streamers to make a colorful backdrop. I hung the "streamers" to a shower curtain rod that we hung in the doorway.

This was an afternoon party that was not at a meal time. We served goldfish crackers, cupcakes cookies, ice-cream, and juice. The juice boxes were kept cool in the treasure chest which was actually a Styrofoam cooler that I painted to look like a treasure chest. I topped the homemade cupcakes with adorable Ariel and Flounder cupcake toppers that I found on Partycity.com.

I made sand dollar cookies by baking sugar cookies and then frosting them with white frosting and adding almond pieces. They turned out delicious!

Here is a closer shot of the treasure chest. I hung some plastic costume jewelry over the side to add to the look.

It was an unseasonably warm day for October, so I decided to set up a table on the back deck for overflow in case it got too crowded inside the house during the party. I decorated the table with a blue tablecloth and a silver platter that I picked up at Discount Dollar. I sprinkled on some sand from the kids' sand box and added a few shells that I picked up Hobby Lobby. I thought it added a nice touch!

I painted a sign that read, "Hannah's Mermaid Lagoon" that I placed by the front door. We set up a bubble machine by the door also to create a fun atmosphere as the children came to the door for the party and to set the mood for being "under the sea."

I created photo props for both the Pirates and the Mermaids. For the pirates, I drew a body and hat of a pirate on an Elmer's White Foam Board and cut out a space for the children to put their head and one hand. This is one of my son's posing as a pirate. Adorable!

For the girls, I created a "sea shell" backdrop using a white board and set a small chair in front for the girls to sit on.

 

So every birthday girl needs a fabulous themed outfit to make her day complete! I love the purple starfish hair clip we purchased off Etsy http://www.etsy.com/listing/100791091/ariel-the-little-mermaid-starfish-hair?ref=shop_home_feat and I purchased this absolutely precious customized shirt and tutu from NatalisPalace on Etsy http://www.etsy.com/listing/158674857/ariel-little-mermaid-birthday-tutu-set?ref=shop_home_active 

I thought they turned out perfect!

 

We had a great day! Happy sixth birthday my sweet Hannah! May all your wishes come true, my love!