Mario Kart DIY Party Decorations

My twin boys have decided to have a Mario Kart Wii party for their 5th birthday. So, since I'm always trying to find ways to make a dollar stretch, I'm making the decorations myself! I thought I would share some of the decorations we're making, since they are SO easy! I homeschool, so I already have tons of construction paper and glue sticks laying around.

First, we made stars. Super easy - yellow paper, scissors, a black marker. We taped some to a string and the rest we used tape balls to stick to the wall, the side of our old projection tv, any place the boys wanted to stick them!

Then, we made mushrooms. This one required red, white, and tan paper, black marker, scissors, and a glue stick. Nothing too involved, see?! I drew my best mushroom on a piece of paper, using a picture I found online as a model. Then, I cut the pieces up that I drew, and used them as templates to cut the red tops and tan faces.

I drew the eyes on with a fat sharpie marker, and used a dip bowl as a template for the white circles. For the edges, I just cut extra circles, glued them to the edge of the mushroom, and cut off the excess and used them again on another mushroom!

I have a happy birthday banner from at least six years ago, and it has justice league squares on it. So, I cover the justice league squares up with whatever we choose to use each year! Last time we used it we covered the squares with basketballs I drew on orange paper. Again, super easy!!

The party we had was just awesome! We played Pin The Mustache On Mario, Mario and Luigi bingo (we found images online and made a 5 square by 5 square card with all the images in different orders - so each kiddo could cover something when we called it!), and of course we played Mario Kart Wii. We found images of all the Mario characters together and printed it out with "Happy Birthday" across the bottom, and put all of the boys' Mario Bros toy characters on the mantle. Who knew we had so many?! And of course I laminated just about everything we made, because I am in love with my new laminator :)

For treat bags we found Mario coloring books to print and put in 4ct crayola packs and a mario pencil (found at party city), and we used these question mark blocks to fill with chocolate coins! We used brown paper lunch bags with a star stapled on the front to hold everything. AWESOME PARTY and we didn't spend one dime!! Even the cake mix was free with coupons! LOL!

* My ideas for next Mario party:
Chomp Chomp pinata
Mario and Luigi cupcake stand
and I want to make a BOO out of a white paper lantern... or white balloons, not sure yet.

Tim Burton's Red Queen DIY costume

My mom is helping me with the sewing, and we're about half done with the Red Queen Costume! I'll keep updating with photos as we complete more. I'm so excited! So far we have made the triangle in the front (since I am so not wearing a corset), and have attached the beads and roses. We used stiff interfacing and gold fabric, and my mom sewed maroon ribbon stripes down the front. We found a ribbon with pearly decorations hanging from it at Joann's, along with some gold ribbon to tie around my arms. Mom's going to make puffy sleeve tops, and she's in the process of making the gold outer skirt and the red underskirt. We're going to gather the skirts (separately of course) and put each on a black waistband, with an elastic loop and a button. That way it's adjustable. I'm using gold fabric and fusible web to cut out the hearts, my mom knows how to do everything! She showed me how to put a silicon ironing mat under the fusible webbing so I could iron on just the gold, then iron the gold hearts once cut onto the black backing, then cut those hearts out. Easy peasy! What we have so far:

For the black top I found a (still had tags) dress at Goodwill that had black lace sleeves and black lace across the top of the dress, and we plan to cut the bottom of the dress off, possibly using part of it to roll netting or stuffing into so the skirt stands out around my waist. We also shopped Goodwills for the gold fabric (shower curtain) and red fabric (tablecloth). I already had a crinelin from last year's Goodwill finds for my princess peach costume, perfect! I found the leggings on leg avenue's website, perfect fit. I watched this how to online for the hair and this for the makeup! Should be interesting, between back combing my hair for the first time and applying makeup (which I never do either), I'll be busy for hours just on my BLOODY BIG HEAD! I'll post pictures of the finished product. * I had an allergic reaction to some of the makeup (and glue for my eyebrows), this was the best I got while staying comfortable!

DIY Spider Wreath

This was by far and away one of the easiest projects I have done for Halloween! I grabbed a grapevine wreath for $4.99 at Michael's and spraypainted it Krylon primer black. I bought three snakes from Walmart, used floral wire and wrapped them onto the wreath, painted them black with the same paint. It looks AWESOME!!! I might add more snakes to it, if I can find smaller ones. Make it look more "icky" :)

The spiders on the door are little clip on plastic ones I found for 20 for a buck, and I hot glued them to little cut up pieces of a magnet off of a used up to-do list. Yes, I'm cheap but I have SO MUCH FUN!!

Baking Soda and Vinegar Fun Experiment

Today the kids made "magic in a cup" as they called it! This was a really fun experiment. I had seen it many times online, and decided the twins were finally old enough to do it. Big Kid thought it was cool, but the twins were just amazed and were very disappointed when we ran out of spoons! 

I put a drop of food coloring on each spoon, then covered the spoons in baking soda (sodium bicarbonate). 

Then I partially filled little cups with water (plain H2O) or vinegar (acetic acid) and moved the cups around so we couldn't tell which was vinegar and which was water. They don't need much liquid in them, really! The boys got to pick a spoon and mix it into the liquid in the cup. Some were "magic" and others weren't :) This one here was definitely magic! The cups with water turned colors because of the food coloring, but the cups with vinegar made colored foam and erupted out of the cups. 

It's a double replacement reaction. The acetic acid reacts with the sodium bicarbonate to form carbonic acid, which is very unstable. The carbonic acid immediately comes apart into carbon dioxide and water, a decomposition reaction. The bubbles are the carbon dioxide being released! CO2 is heavier than the air so it pours out of the cup down the sides. You're left with a colorful solution of sodium acetate and water! It was fun to mix the colors when we were done too, as my four year olds figured out :)

Brownie Pops done easy!

I wanted to try brownie or cake pops for our annual Halloween party. I read some horror stories about how these are those mythical recipes that only Martha Stewart can make look good, but I figured why not - I am a pretty good baker, I could take my best shot! I did, and they turned out very tasty and not so bad looking!

I used a regular old box of brownie mix, and baked it for three minutes under the recommended time. I let them cool enough to touch, and cut the edges away in a 9x13 pan. I scooped up the warm brownies and smooshed them into balls in my hand, spraying my hand with Pam from time to time. I put the balled brownies in the fridge overnight, and the next day I melted my candy wafers in the microwave in a mug, and I CAN'T SAY THIS ENOUGH - dip your sticks in melted candy and shove them into the brownie pops AND LET THAT HARDEN. If you skip that step (as I initially started to) your brownie balls will fall off your stick and get lost in your melted candy! Once your sticks are "stuck" in the brownie balls, go ahead and dip them in the mugs of melted candy. I chose white for ghosts and green for goblins.

The white was great, because the candy sort of pooled at the bottom when I put them on wax paper, so they looked like ghosts once I put the faces on. The green ones were just blobs of green lollipop with chocolate inside, but they were all gone at the end of our party anyway! I tried drizzling melted dark chocolate over the cooled dipped pops, and they looked awesome. I just didn't leave myself enough time to melt chocolate, load it into my frosting bag and drizzle each pop individually. Next time ;)

I wanted to post this because after I read all the other bloggers' posts where they failed miserably at this, I felt like I couldn't do it. Well I did. They don't in fact look like something Martha Stewart created, but they worked and I was proud of what I did. Maybe they'll look better next year!

Winterizing our house

We are seeing a hard frost every morning now, which means to me it's time to winterize the house. I can't stand feeling a cold breeze sitting INSIDE my house with all the windows and doors shut, I just feel like I should be warm inside and it feels like money just pours out our heat vents when cold air comes in unwanted! So I do a few things to try to help prevent cold coming in. I thought sharing what we do could help others, since I was online researching forever when we first bought our house, trying to find ways to better insulate this, weatherstrip that...

I have eclipse brand thermal curtains. I bought mine a few years ago and boy have they helped. I close them at night and keep them open in the afternoon, to let the warming sun in. I have levolor brand thermal shades on every window facing west on our house, to help cut the summer sun baking our house all afternoon. That seems to help in the winter as well, even if it's just a barrier to cold. We install small bubble wrap in every window we don't need to see out of in the cold weather. Seriously, it really helps. We have double hung windows, from '95, and they are just awful. Spray a little water on the window and place bubble wrap (bubble side to the window) and bam, you have an instant layer of insulation on those freezing cold windows! This is our first year trying out the Mortite brand caulking rope. It's sort of like clay, and I stuffed it into the edges of all of our downstairs windows, where the windows meet the frame. I have aluminum windows, and every one is crooked. Thank you lovely builders. Since I don't have $20,000 to replace the 26 windows in our home, I instead seal them shut through the cold weather. It works for us! I will say I put the Mortite in and the bubble wrap up yesterday, and felt a huge difference coming downstairs this morning. Yesterday I froze, today it's pretty nice, and the temperature has been 36 to 37 both mornings! I feel victorious ;)

Last year we replaced our patio doors with sliding glass doors, and that made all the difference in the world to our temperatures downstairs. The patio doors were old, crooked, and leaked terribly. $600 later our sliders are more air tight than we could have dreamed of! We also put in new weather stripping on the two exterior doors, and put in new sweeps on the bottom. The front door is so crooked (frame as well) that until we can replace it I keep it locked tight all winter and hang a quilt over the entire frame. It's ghetto but helps. We put in a storm door, it helps a little, but cold still pours in over the top, side and bottom of the door. Again, awesome builders!

We have gone through the entire house using Great Stuff and sealed all the gaps around pipes, vents, etc. coming in from the outside. Last year we also realized there was cold air POURING in under our mopboards on every exterior wall. So I got sick of freezing cold feet and pulled the rugs back a little, sprayed Great Stuff under the mopboards to seal it tight, and put the rugs back when it dried. I had to cut the excess off, and if you look hard it does look trashy, but I tell you what my feet stay warm. Why the heck would the walls leak cold air under the mopboards?!!

Hopefully I have inspired someone to stay a little warmer this year, maybe save a few dollars on their heating bills. Our big project we are trying to get to before the new year is insulating our eaves. Our bonus room is over our garage, and has slanted ceilings. Some idiot created little "cubbies" of sorts where the ceilings got too low, and never insulated the cubbies. At all. So the walls of the room are uninsulated, and part of the ceiling is uninsulated. It's about 40 outside right now, and I guarantee that room isn't warmer than 50 right now. We might as well leave a window open in there, it has the same effect! So we bought two rolls of insulation, and plan to install it this month. I really hope we have time to get it done!!!

How to make Mario and Luigi hats

I am going to send you to an amazingly easy how to on someone else's blog, because it's so perfect! Took my mom minutes to do using scrap fleece she already had at home and my twins think she's superwoman for making them. Just awesome!!! Anyone wanting to make Mario Bros hats needs to see this!!!

*we used actual iron on letters from the craft store for the M and L on the hats. We just put a few stitches in them (no ironing!) and they have hung on through four months of play so far! The hats are surprisingly durable :)

Princess Peach Crown DIY!

Yep, I have decided what I want to dress up as for our Halloween party this year. I'm going to be Princess Peach from Mario Bros! The twins helped me decide, and find my costume. They want to be Mario and Luigi from Mario Kart, and thought I would make a great princess. How fun is that?! I hit up the local Goodwill stores and a few thrift shops before finally finding a perfect pink dress, and a crinelin (that's what it's called right? that puffy slip thing that goes under long skirts to make them poofy), total cost so far is $11.76 for the dress and $5.35 for the slip thingy. The dress is sleeveless, but I'm not a cosplayer so who cares if it's not exactly the dress Peach wears. I sure don't! The fact that the twins think it's the perfect Peach dress is enough for me :) I made the chest jewel using half of a Christmas ornament kit from Michael's, spraypainted the inside blue and hot glued it to an oval cut out of sparkly fun foam. I hung it with clear craft line as a necklace. I spray painted two ping pong balls the same blue, and put silver wire in them with a loop to hook to earrings. My mom offered to make the boys hats instead of buying baseball hats, yay! My mom ROCKS!

My Princess Peach crown, made out of fun foam!!! I just grabbed a few sheets of gold glittery fun foam, and cut out the shape of the crown. It was sticky on one side, so I stuck the top half of the foam sheet to the bottom half after I cut it out - making the crown sparkly on the inside and outside, and in the process it became very sturdy! A few hot glued jewels (bought everything at Michael's for under $6) and voila! Thing One and Two have crowns too, they were so impressed with mine they needed "prince hats". I love it!!! Super easy!!!

Play sand!!

I picked up a bag of blue crayola play sand from a freecycler, that had never been opened but was left outside and was very wet. I baked it on cookie sheets in the oven at 200 degrees until it all dried out, which was an all day affair for a 20lb bag! It was worth it, crayola play sand is just about the best out there. Yesterday we took the boys out back and let them play in the sand, with shovels, sifters and buckets we found on summer clearance sales ;) They had such a great time! It was a bit nerve wracking watching them to make sure they didn't flick sand into each other's still healing eyes, but they had such a great time it was worth it. I had completely forgotten we always had a sand table in our room when I taught pre-k! We just dunked into their little swimming pool once we were done, and all the sand came right off outside. Much better than rinsing off into our tub!

Does your washing machine smell musty?

Mine sure did, every time I opened my laundry closet the entire little room stunk like mildew. It was so noticeable that I pulled both the washer and dryer out, to see if water had leaked or something had died! Nope, just a huge pile of dryer sheets, lint, hangers, and a tank top I wore to paint the house a year or so ago. I poked around online and read that a few other people had the same smelly washer after a few years of use, and they suggested running two cups of white vinegar through the washer with hot water, and nothing else in it. While it went against every "be green, conserve water" vein in my body, I did it - and voila! No more smelly laundry closet! I mean that room smells wonderful!!! I do still wonder why my washer started stinking after three or four years of almost daily use... ha!

How to clean sterling silver at home

Yesterday I picked up some really nice silver serving platters from a freecycler, who funny enough turned out to be Big Kid's chess teacher from his public school days! Anyway - the silver was extremely tarnished, and I didn't have any silver polish. I read an article online that mentioned the chemical reaction between boiling water, aluminum foil, salt and baking soda. I took an aluminum roasting pan and poured boiling water in it with the salt and soda, and put the first small piece of silver in it. It didn't look like anything was happening for the first two minutes, then suddenly all of the tarnish disappeared right before my eyes!!! Seriously, it's awesome to watch. So I put all the pieces in one at a time, and they all came out almost completely free of any tarnish! A few spots I had to rub off with a clean cloth, but I was just floored with the results. I'll do my best to post the before and after photos properly, I have a hard time getting two photos on one post :)

Easter Doodle Pro?

Happy Easter!! We had a great day, hope you did too!! Egg hunts, family, good laughs, and Steak and Shake for milkshakes and fries for a fun afternoon snack!! The boys love the experience of sitting in the restaurant dipping fries in ketchup, wearing the hats they colored, slurping banana milkshakes. I just love being able to eat gluten free fries and cheese sauce ;) Ok, the banana milkshakes are really good too!

We spent the morning trying to figure out how to erase the egg shaped "doodle pro" (will always be a magnadoodle to me) since they don't have the slidey thing down the side... and after finally finding the answer in a review of the product on amazon we figured out you use the back of the pen and rub the backside of the screen to erase it. Could they have maybe PUT THAT BIT ON THE PACKAGE??? Yep, my mother and I sat together this morning looking at each other like the world had finally turned on us. We were thankful for the internet this morning, we never would have figured it out otherwise!!!

Shades CAN make a difference!

I went to Lowe's to buy one shade for one of our front windows, and found an entire shelf system full of levelor shades on clearance - and I mean clearance! I ended up getting new shades for every window in the front of our house, and paid $33 for 12 shades and $12 for all the mounting brackets. We were able to take the insulating blanket out of the playroom window finally, and I splurged and bought the fan shade for the half circle window too!! Now every window out front has the same shade on it, it looks so uniform and NICE!!! I have really been wanting to do this not just for looks, but because our house bakes in the sun all afternoon it gets really really hot. Putting up the room darkening shades has effectively blocked most of the heat coming from the windows, the front rooms are now so much cooler, on both floors! BONUS!!!

Thank you, Lowe's! This is the first time I have gone to Lowe's for anything - we live down south so Home Depot and Lowe's are right across the street from each other, literally. I like the behr paint from Home Depot, so it just became our store by default. Guess I'm a cheater now ;)

Creating a model DNA double helix

I was so proud of Big Kid, he did this one just about on his own! I had to help with some wiring issues, but this is his work!! He even knew the names of the adenine, cytosine, guanine and thymine! I was so proud, he was even using the saying I taught him to remember how they combine - "DNA is where it's AT". The A and T always attach, leaving the C and G to attach. Science was my "thing" in school, it's fun to see my child taking an interest at all! He hasn't liked science much unless I was chemically altering something, preferably at a rapid loud explosive rate.