Saturday, January 25, 2014

Thankful Tree #2

I posted about our Thankful Tree last year here.  We had fun doing it again this year.  This is how the tree turned out this time...

To preserve our thankfulness I pulled all of the words off the leaves and stuck them to a piece of card stock as a simple collage.  Now we can keep them from year to year.  It was fun to see what had changed in a year's time and what had stayed the same.  We certainly have so many things to be thankful for!

Football Birthday Party

We have been enjoying a great football season this year, so it was no surprise when my oldest asked for a football party for his eighth birthday.
Invites: 

"Thanks for coming to my party" cups.  It helped a lot to do this party during football season- I was able to source most things at Wal-mart.  Like these plastic party cups.  The flame footballs came from Oriental Trading.  Personalized name pennants were made from scrapbook papers and attached to glow sticks.  The cups also held football playing cards I "scored" in the Target dollar section, Denver Bronco tattoos from Bed, Bath and Beyond,  and foil wrapped chocolate footballs.
 

The spread:  I started with generic football colors green, white and brown, but used plenty of blue and orange because we are Broncos fans around here!

Plates, napkins, paper bowls, cupcake wrappers all from Wal-mart...
 


I used a football themed card stock sticker pack from my local scrapbook store to dress up the cupcakes and individual cake for I...
 

Yum! Chocolate covered strawberry footballs.  I think I ate half of these by myself...
 

We served store-bought pre-made cheese pizzas and added pepperoni footballs before baking...
 
 Soup cans covered with scrapbook paper for utensil holders...
 
Plastic yard line bunting and table cloths were all from Wal-mart.  I pulled anything football related from I's room for the party including this ceramic piggy bank (I think this was another Target dollar section find) and I displayed his new Broncos poster...


We were hoping to spend most of the party playing football outside, but it was snowing the day of the party. :(  So we ended up in the garage again.  My husband kept the kids entertained by making a quick  football obstacle course- run through the tires, tackle the punching bag, catch a perfectly thrown spiral.  All the kids got to put their Peyton Manning skills to test trying to throw through shapes cut out of a tarp.  I also broke down and bought a helmet shaped pinata from Target.  And I vowed No Pinatas! this year.
Disclaimer #1- my garage is never this clean...
 
 
Disclaimer #2- I have told my daughter that the orange and white skirt goes with her blue Bronco jersey, not the pink shirt.  And nothing goes with purple Crocs and black socks.  She just likes to do her own thing.

 
So football fun was had by all, even in the garage.  And our Broncos are heading to the SUPERBOWL (woo-hoo!!) so I am recycling everything for our Superbowl party. Yah!