This blog was initially created with the intention of writing once a week. On Wednesdays. That has not happened. So, the posts are and will be completely random and this title is now meaningless. I may change it someday, but until that time, remember that Wednesday is for writing.
Of all the parties we've had, the Mary Poppins party was possibly my favorite.
I've always loved Mary Poppins and I was very excited when we drew this movie. However, I was a little concerned because I was fairly certain Jill had never seen Mary Poppins, and if she had, I was fairly certain she never sat through the entirety of Mary Poppins. I've noticed that kids' movies are getting shorter and shorter as kids' attention spans are getting shorter and shorter, but Mary Poppins is a proper, full-length feature film.
Perhaps one of the reasons I loved this particular movie night so much was the decorations. Because Mary Poppins is older and not a princess movie, I couldn't find any awesome paper crafts, so I had to get creative. The first thing I found was directions for making a chimney sweep here. Here's dad modeling our finished product:
Another thing I found, and loved, was this design:
Unfortunately, I couldn't find anything particularly awesome to do with it, so I just printed it out and put it on the table or something equally boring. However, it did give me the idea that I wanted to do something with the silhouettes of Mary and Bert over a skyline. So, I used the following images to cut the silhouettes out of black butcher paper.
Small Fry then used more of the black butcher paper to make a skyline, and we decorated the entrance!
We were very happy with the finished product! So much so that my family left it up for quite some time after the party, and when they finally took it down, Big Lil made an art project out of saving it, so now I have a permanent piece of the Mary Poppins party in my home! Didn't she do a great job of recreating the wall paper at my parents' house?
For dinner we decided to go with a classic English meal of roast beef and roasted vegetables with gravy, and Yorkshire pudding (gluten free of course). I don't know if you're familiar with Yorkshire pudding, but it was the key to making this feel like an English dinner instead of just a plain old roast. They're actually very similar to a roll, but calling them Yorkshire puddings just makes you feel British!
For dessert, we took the lead from two wonderful songs from Mary Poppins. The first was from "Jolly Holiday" (around 3:23).
"Now. then, what would be nice? We'll start with raspberry ice."
And then, of course, we had to have spoonfuls of sugar!
Although we made these in advance, it could have been fun to make them at the party when "A Spoonful of Sugar" comes on. Instead we just ate them when the song came on. In fact, we did a lot of activities during the movie! In order to combat any potential boredom in the six year olds, we had activities peppered throughout the movie.
The first came at the scene when Mary measures Jane and Michael. I secretly gathered the heights of all in attendance (even the dogs) and wrote special messages on a measuring tape for everyone. Frankly, I thought it was a little silly, but it was the biggest hit of all of the activities.
When Mary Poppins measures Jane and Michael, Michael's says "Extremely stubborn and suspicious, and Jane's says "Prone to giggling and not tidying up." Those were a little negative for my tastes, so I did one positive and one potentially negative for each person. Well, sort of. In order of height, our messages were as follows:
The husband: Sleeps a lot; surprisingly funny.
Dad: Extremely handy; grumpy after 9 p.m. (he still hasn't let us live this one down)
Big Lil: Stubborn to a fault; very clean.
Me and Mom: Mary Poppins, practically perfect in every way (we decided we were probably the same height as Mary Poppins)
Small Fry: Full of joy; rarely puts things away.
The Bean: Slightly stubborn; prone to giggle.
The BFF: Somewhat suspicious; puppy magnet.
Penelope: Very sweet; doesn't listen. (This is the Jack Russell.)
Emma: Chews on everything; too cute for her own good. (This is the Dachshund puppy.)
Big Lil seems skeptical about her measurement.
The next game we played was during "Pavement Artist" when Bert is doing chalk drawings on the sidewalk. For this, we used the leftover black butcher paper and sidewalk chalk to let the girls do their own chalk drawings.
Next up was penguin bowling! While Bert was dancing with the penguins, we did a little bowling for penguins! These penguins were made out of empty 2 liter bottles, black spray paint, multi-hued cardstock, and hot glue.
Our final activity was dancing to "Step in Time" with our chimney sweeper. Some black face markings could have been fun here.
Apparently, the Bean has enjoyed dancing to this song for a LONG time!
I currently have a list of all of the Disney posts I have yet to post. I have a list of all of the movies I still want to do parties for (even though we already went to Disney). I have a list of all of the things I need to grade. I have a list of all of the books I want to read. I have a list of the groceries I need from the store. I have a list of all of the things I want to buy that aren't immediate needs (I really want a shadow box for an art project).
I love lists of things I love: movies, music, food, a combination of all things I love, whatever. I love "to do" lists. I love shopping lists. I love handwritten lists. I love lists in the form of a paragraph or in a standard list form. I love poetry or creative writing in the form a list. I love lists.
I'm also somewhat picky about my lists. Unless the list is a creative list, it must be parallel. There must be a logical order to the list. If the list is handwritten (which it should be), it must also be perfect. That doesn't mean the handwriting must be perfect, just that it must be perfect for the list. A hurried list can have hurried handwriting.
I think it may actually be a little bit of a problem.
Surprisingly, I don't like crossing things off of lists. That makes them too messy. Instead, I have a tendency to rewrite the list. There are usually new things to add at that point anyway.
Many of my lists have a rough draft. I quickly jot down all of the things to go on the list and then neatly put them in the correct order making everything perfectly parallel. If one item is a complete sentence, they all must be complete sentences! I probably spend as much time making lists for Thanksgiving dinner as I do cooking Thanksgiving dinner. I start with a list of possible foods that must be narrowed down to something that's still way too much food. Then I make a list of all of the ingredients in all of the recipes. Then I go through my kitchen and pantry and cross off all of the things I already have. Then I rewrite the ingredient list with only the things I still need. If I have time, I put that list in order based on where the items are in the store. Then I make a timeline list. Sometimes, if I have a lot of time or a lot of grading I'm trying to avoid, I will put every single step of every single recipe into one giant timeline for the day. Most of the time I do a more generalized list: Start the turkey at this time. Peel the potatoes at this time. You have to have the ham in the oven by this time at the latest. And so forth.
I also have a tendency not to look at lists after I make them. Well, until I'm making a newer, revised version of the list or if the list contains recipes I need. They just help me organize my mind. I think. Sometimes I make a list just so I can go, "Yeah, that amount of stuff is doable. I got this." Sometimes (rarely) I actually use the list to make sure I don't forget anything. It used to be that once I wrote it down, I wouldn't forget it (hence my fondness for handwritten lists), but as I am getting older, I do actually have to glance at lists every once in a while.
Well, I'm off to make a list of all of the things I need to do instead of actually doing them!
I'm sorry it's been so long! School has been hectic and there just hasn't been much time for blogging (especially since I'm still having the occasional Disney dinner night), but I am in the midst of a four day ice break from school/work, so it's time for a Finding Nemo party!
Since there is more than one Disney movie that takes place under the sea, I didn't want to go with too much of an underwater/sea creature theme. Instead, I decided to go with an Australian theme because, well, it's in Australia.
In the process, I discovered a few important things:
both Vegemite and Tim Tams are next to impossible to make
both Vegemite and Tim Tams take a while to ship
I decided to forgo the Vegemite (as the process is similar to making beer) and Lamington (since our menu ended up a little dessert heavy) and went with the following menu: meat potato pies, shrimp on the barbie, Anzac biscuits, Tim Tam cake, Peach Melba, and a watermelon shark.
The meat potato pies were basically just stuffed potatoes, but they were quite delicious. There were also a few spices in them that I wouldn't normally put in that sort of dish (nutmeg and cinnamon), but everyone seemed to like them. I felt like shrimp on the barbie, though cliché, was something that we had to have. Once again, there were a lot of flavors I wouldn't have thought to use here, but the shrimp were also delicious. Since the meat potato pies didn't require much of the potato filling, I made mashed potatoes rather than waste the potato, but it was more of a last minute addition than a planned thing.
As I've mentioned previously, when I do these parties, I do them gluten free. So, I took this Anzac biscuit recipe and replaced the regular flour with our gluten free flour mix. I also didn't have rolled oats, so I used steel cut oats instead. Both substitutions equaled super crunchy Anzac sheets rather than biscuits. They still tasted quite good, but I really want to try them again following the actual recipe to see what they're supposed to be like.
Our dessert spread was quite impressive. The most impressive, by far, was the watermelon shark. This shark was done in honor of Bruce.
So, for dessert we had a watermelon shark, Peach Melba, and a Tim Tam cake. That site with the watermelon shark has fantastic step-by-step instructions on making a watermelon shark, and although I wouldn't go so far as to say it was easy, it wasn't that hard. Definitely worth the trouble for the reaction of the Bean. Peach Melba is pretty basic and the combination is quite delicious. As far as the Tim Tam cake goes, Tim Tam are crunchy chocolate cookies with a soft chocolatey middle that are then dipped in chocolate, from what I understand, so this cake was supposed to look like a Tim Tam and even taste like one minus the crunch. The recipe actually mentions getting some Tim Tams and crumbling them on or into one of the layers, but since I was trying to avoid having to get real Tim Tams, I skipped that step.
As it turns out, there isn't really a lot of notable music in Finding Nemo, but there are some instrumental pieces that will set the mood if you would like to have music while eating.
I had a difficult time finding ideas for games online, so I made my own game called Finding Nemo! First, I painted a bunch of clown fish on some card stock, and then cut them out. But only one of the fish was Nemo with his gimpy fin (the rest were based on Marlin).
Can you tell which one is Nemo?
Then, I sent the family out of the room, put a piece of tape on each fish, taped the fish to the bottom of some chairs, and set the chairs up like you would for musical chairs. Unlike musical chairs, everyone playing had a chair. So, when the music stopped, everyone sat down, checked the fish, and the person that found Nemo won! The Bean and her BFF loved this game, so we had to play it again and again. Each time I would just make them leave the room and rearrange the fish. This is about the fifth time we played:
For our craft, we decided to make our own Squishy!
We ended up using bottles of Hubert's lemonade because we thought the bottles were pretty, but I would recommend a bigger bottle so your Squishy has more space to swim. The Bean got a little aggravated with the cutting of the plastic bag (it was kind of tedious), but in the end she loved her Squishy and thought it was very cool.
Well, I suppose that sums up our adventures in Australia, and we'll see you again next time for a trip to Cherry Tree Lane!
Well, another Wednesday or two have come and gone, so I thought this Wednesday would be an ideal time to get back to it.
Our next Disney night was The Sword in the Stone! I don't think the Bean had ever seen The Sword in the Stone, so she wasn't particularly excited about this one. In fact, I heard a rumor that she may have gone to her Papaw and pretended that she hadn't already drawn a movie with her JG so we could do a different movie. The second movie she drew was Aladdin, but she got in a little bit of trouble for the trickery, so we stuck with The Sword in the Stone. After the kerfuffle, I felt as though I would have to make The Sword in the Stone awesome so she wouldn't wish we were doing Aladdin instead. However, considering how awesome The Sword in the Stone is on its own, that wasn't hard to do.
We went with a rustic dinner based primarily on the following image from The Sword in the Stone.
Here, Sir Kay is eating what I can only presume is a turkey leg, so we had turkey legs and rustic vegetables. The turkey legs were surprisingly easy because they are sold in a package at Kroger, and all I did was wrap them in aluminum foil and heat them in the oven. I didn't add any seasoning or anything, and they were delicious. For the rustic vegetables, I just chopped up a bunch of veggies (potatoes, sweet potatoes, carrots, squash, zuccini, tomatoes, and onions); tossed them with chopped garlic, olive oil, salt, pepper, and Cavender's; and roasted them in the oven until they were soft, stirring occasionally so they wouldn't stick too much. It was a very simple, but very delicious meal.
The dessert was a little more exciting. As mentioned previously in this blog, I make an awesome gluten-free carrot cake, so I went back to the carrot cake cupcakes for this dessert. However, instead of using the traditional cream cheese icing, I made a regular cream cheese icing (it contains MUCH more powdered sugar as well as few other things like shortening) and used black food coloring for a good gray color. Then, I melted a bit of white chocolate and bit of milk chocolate, colored the white chocolate with the black food coloring, and made chocolate swords! Viola! Your very own (delicious) sword in a stone!
Instead of doing a craft for The Sword in the Stone, we did two activities based on scenes from the movie. In one of the first scenes where the Wart really gets to experience magic, Merlin turns him into a fish! So our first game was a fishing game. The first step to making the game was getting the fish. I made one of the fish look like Merlin and another look like Wart, but the rest were just random fish (or objects you might accidentally catch while fishing). I just drew the fish with crayons (and the help of my Big Lil' who did the random fish), cut them out, and attached magnets to the back. For the actual fishing poles, we just attached string to a stick, and then put a paper clip on the end of the string. Then Small Fry set up a tarp (she wanted it to be blue, like water) and sat behind the tarp while the Bean and her BFF went fishing. The paper clip wasn't quite enough metal to really attract the magnets, so Small Fry had to help out occasionally, but the girls loved it anyway.
The second activity was based on the scene where Merlin and Wart turn into squirrels! Just like little squirrels, Small Fry hid little nuts (which in our case were just brown beads we found at Walmart) all over the house, and then our little squirrels had to go find them. Since neither one of the girls had seen the movie, we watched, and then after it got to the scene where Merlin and Wart turn into fish, we did the fishing game, and then after the squirrel scene, we did the squirrel game. Both of the girls had noticed beads all over the house, so they were very impatient about waiting for the squirrel scene. Once it was time to go on an acorn hunt, they were running through the house like that crazy squirrel from Ice Age looking for those nuts.
We didn't really have winners or losers in either of these games. Instead, Big Lil' made adorable fish full of candy for everybody, and everybody was a winner! I don't know exactly how she did the fish (she made it look incredibly easy though) and I couldn't really get a good picture of them, but you can trust me when I say they were awesome.
In the end, I think the Bean decided that she liked The Sword in the Stone after all!
Well folks, today is my birthday! The big 29! This will be the last year of my twenties! I'm very excited both to still be in my twenties and to be nearing my thirties, which I think will be good to me. However, I've been thinking about making a 30 before 30 list for some time now, and it seems like if I don't do it now I won't have time to do anything on the list! So, here is a list of 30 things I hope to do before I turn 30 in exactly 365 days.
1. Get at least one set of papers graded by the next class period.
2. Turn midterm grades in with everything graded and early for at least one class.
3. Finish the Phi Theta Kappa Honors in Action Project.
4. Read 20 books that I want to read.
5. Read 5 non-fiction books.
6. Organize the files on my home computer, work computer, jump drive, and Dropbox so I don't have to look in all the places to find what I need.
7. Go to Disney World!
8. Redecorate my living room, bedroom, and/or bathroom.
9. Get a full time job with benefits or get into a PhD program.
10. Take guitar or piano lessons.
11. Get my piano professionally tuned.
12. Have my whole house clean (closets, attic, and all) all at one time, even if only for a moment.
13. Teach my puppy a trick.
14. Get new glasses.
15. Read a book to Jill.
16. Go to the Catching Fire midnight premiere in full costume.
17. Finish a cross-stitch project.
18. Finish making a sweater.
19. Make a Disney movie night/Disney trip scrapbook.
20. Volunteer for a good cause.
21. Make a perfect lasagna from scratch.
22. Make a piece of artwork I'm proud of to hang in my house.
23. Regulate my blood pressure.
24. Complete a Coursera course.
25. Go to a cooking class
26. Pay off a credit card or some other form of debt.
27. Take my car in for regular oil changes.
28. Have a garage sale.
29. Write letters to loved ones.
30. Develop my relationship with God.
Well, I don't know if all of these are feasible, but I'll keep you updated!
Our guests for the evening chose Lady and the Tramp for their Disney dinner. Since I didn't have much advance notice, this wasn't as elaborate as some, but we still had fun.
Obviously, we had to have spaghetti and meatballs for dinner, and there is no better recipe for spaghetti and meatballs out there than the Pioneer Woman's recipe. Seriously. This recipe is amazing. It's one of two bookmarked pages on my phone (the other is my school's LMS) because I make it frequently enough that I need it handy. Soon I will have made it enough that I will have it memorized. We also had cheesy garlic bread, I just mix some garlic in with really soft (but not melted) butter, spread it thickly on sandwich bread, sprinkle on fresh parsley if I have any, and then smother it in cheese. Mozerella, colby jack, mexican blend, just whatever we have on hand. It always comes out wonderfully. Then, because it's just the perfect side for an Italian meal and dad had lots of homegrown tomatoes (yum!), we had a salad with our Tangy Tomato dressing.
This seems like as good a time as any to share the Tangy Tomato recipe. Now, we call it Tangy Tomato because it's based on the Tangy Tomato dressing at Outback Steakhouse, but I personally like this dressing significantly more than the dressing at Outback. It's got a nice kick to it that, as my dad says, just really gets your mouth ready for the rest of the meal.
Tangy Tomato Salad Dressing
Ingredients:
2/3 cup ketchup
1/3 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
1/4 cup white vinegar
1/8 teaspoon paprika
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon onion powder
1 pinch thyme
dash salt
2 Tablespoons olive oil
Mix all ingredients excluding olive oil in a medium saucepan. Slowly whisk in olive oil while bringing to a boil.
Upon reaching a boil, reduce heat and simmer uncovered 5 minutes, whisking the whole time to keep the oil from separating.
Cover until cool and refrigerate.
I was always a ranch dressing girl, but this is definitely my new favorite. I wish I could carry it around with me for use at restaurants!
For dessert we had homemade ice cream with an amazing hot fudge sauce. I don't actually know the homemade ice cream recipe because my mom has it in her head, and I left it to her. As far as the hot fudge, this is my brother-in-law's secret recipe, and I was only very recently allowed in on the secret, so I better not share it!
This dessert didn't really have anything to do with the movie, it just sounded delicious. Frankly, I haven't really watched Lady and the Tramp quite as many times as I've watched most Disney movies, so I was kind of short on ideas. This was true for an activity and craft as well. Our guests (two of my Aunt, the Cake Lady's, granddaughters) were also a little bit older than the Bean, so I wasn't sure they would be as in to an activity as the Bean usually is. So, we didn't have an activity for the night, but we did have a craft planned.
Mom actually already had this and was going to use it as a headband, but we thought we could do necklaces like Lady's collar in the movie. Mom had a really cool braiding technique, but we couldn't really get anyone interested in the craft, so we just watched the movie instead.
Disney Family had more super cute printables for Lady and the Tramp, and they did not disappoint.
I used the printables I found on this site for Toy Story as well, and I still can't believe how cute they turned out! I'm sure it uses a lot of ink, but I happen to have a few extra color ink cartridges because I use colored ink so rarely, so I haven't been bothered by that. They also take some pretty precise cutting, but this is the kind of thing I really enjoy doing. I don't know if you could tell.
Although I'm not as familiar with the movie, I am a huge fan of the music from Lady in the Tramp. "Bella Notte." "He's a Tramp," and "The Siamese Cat Song" are true Disney greats. Peggy Lee was something else!
We're having so much fun with these Disney movie nights and we've actually already had three more! I hope you're enjoying reading about them as much as I'm enjoying planning, throwing, and writing about them!
