Carnival Birthday Party

In between Christmas and New Years Day, Aidan turned 9! 

Last year Mike and I spent some time with him brainstorming ideas for a Carnival-themed birthday party. Unfortunately it wasn't able to happen for his 8th birthday, but one year later we all managed to pull it off.

The party was planned for the afternoon, and Aidan invited about 15 kids. Luckily there were just as many adults on hand to help out.

Auntie Sara worked up the invitations while I pulled together some signs for each of the game stations.

 

Susanna made booklets that contained game tickets for each station and the kids were supposed to try each game once before going back to their favorite ones.

Each kid got a ticket booklet and a container to hold the tickets that they won at each game.

After all the games had been played once, they could start cashing in their tickets for prizes.

In addition to corndogs, juice boxes and chips, Susanna got a new cotton candy machine for the party; Sara was a trooper as she cranked out cone after cone.

 

We had six game stations, including:

The Guessing Game: where the winning guesses took home the jars of candy.

 

A Squirt Gun Shooting Game:  ping pong balls were set up on bottles, and each kid had 10 seconds to squirt as many off as possible. Note the cool labels applied to empty beer and wine bottles.

The Balloon Pop: a classic using darts, balloons and big sheet of plywood.

The Bean Bag Toss: tossing beanbags through holes cut out of plywood.

The Ping Pong Bounce: a tricky one that required some precision. Kids could bounce the balls off the floor or off a small wooden ramp. This was the hardest game, but I was surprised at how many times this one was attempted. 

The Ring Toss: our only purchased game, which included inflatable "posts" and plastic rings to be tossed over each post.


This portion of the party lasted about two hours, which was followed up by eating, presents, and then finally an hour or so of running around outside and getting really muddy and hyped up on sugar. All of the adults "crashed" at about the same time as the kids. Needless to say, we slept well that night.

Handmade Christmas: Moose Head

My brother-in-law is a very hard person to get a gift for. He has what he wants, and he doesn't want much. However, he didn't have a miniature moose head. He does now.

For scale, the wooden plaque is about 4" high. The rest is all wool roving; there are pipe cleaners in the antlers to give them some stability and the eyes are black beads.

In case this seems like a random gift, here's a little background context:
 

This is about 1/10 of his collection, so as you can imagine, the moose head fits right in.

Mount Baker Skiing

As mentioned, Mike and I finally got up to go skiing this year. We were thwarted last year; first in January during our trip to Bend, then again in February when our trip to Mt. Baker was canceled due to too much snow. As a result it's been quite a few years since we've been skiing/snowboarding. With Sara and Bobby in town over Christmas (avid skiers/boarders) and since our nephew Aidan wanted to learn to snowboard, we had plenty of motivation to get up the mountain this year.

On our first trip up we took Aidan with us so that his uncles could give him some lessons on snowboarding.

 Bobby gets Aidan suited up.

 Then shows him how it's done.

Aidan was a great listener and caught on quick.

While Mike and I took the first shift with Aidan on the Daisy Slope, Sara and Bobby took off for some runs.

We switched it up after lunch so that Mike and I could get a couple hours in. And a couple hours was all it took to wear us out.

 Our second day up at Mt. Baker, with several day's rest in between, was a lot of fun, until Mike caught a back edge and ended up on his head. We ended our day in the new Raven's Hut lodge while Mike got his wits back. Thank goodness for helmets.

Handmade Christmas: Leather Bracelets

Earlier this Fall on one of our trips to Hood River I found a bracelet at the Ruddy Duck that perfectly went with my recent tunic purchase. It was $35 though, and I just felt like I could make it for less. Turns out I could, but it required a fair amount of effort. I ended up making two for myself, then two more for my sisters. Sara's is above in red and Susanna's is green.

 

The general materials are 8' - 9' of leather cord cut into 4" - 6" lengths (depends on wrist size and clasp length), cord clamps, small pieces of leather, clasp, heavy duty thread and a strong, yet thin needle. 

The leather strands are clamped together at each end and then the clamp is covered with two pieces of leather. I hand-sewed the leather together, and included a magnetic clasp.

New Year's Eve

This year for New Year's Eve we were still visiting our family, so we got to attend Susanna and Clayton's annual party. It was a lovely affair; everybody brought food and drink (Susanna made some delicious pulled pork) and Susanna had craft activities for the kids (though, I couldn't help myself and I made a sock puppet too!).

Everybody brought a gift for the white elephant gift exchange, as well. Clayton ended up with some lovely Hello Kitty slippers:

Mike got a new t-shirt (I'll try not to be offended):

And Bobby got a new book:

 

The kids even had their own gift exchange, only they brought gifts that were less "white elephant" and more fun! The kids were all happy with their gifts, but there was one stand-out gift that everybody loved: a Rose Art Tattoo Writer (basically a pen that vibrates). Bobby doled out tattoo after tattoo after tattoo...

 

 

Handmade Christmas: Hot Water Bottle & Eye Mask

For Remi and Andrew, new parents to Freya, and struggling with lack of sleep right now, I made a couple of items to help them relax.

The eye pillow is covered with flannel and filled with lavender, flax seed and rice and can be heated in the microwave. The hot water bottle cover is also made of flannel, and fits over a standard-sized hot water bottle. This is another example of second time's a charm: the first cover was made out of corduroy and I accidentally sewed the wrong sides together. I took a break and sewed Freya's Kimono, and realizing that I had leftover fabric, I tried a second attempt at the cover, this time making it fully lined. It's a snug fit, but should keep them cozy!