Harry Potter Party - the wash up

Today we had a Harry Potter party for Oliver and 9 of his friends.  I've mentioned before the many amazing Harry Potter parties on the intranet.  This probably wasn't one of them, but here are a few good parts of the party.  By the time the party happened at 4pm storms had surrounded Canberra and the rain came and went, came and went. We did potions inside but luckily were able to go outside to play quidditch.
I did a lot of research on how on earth we were going to play muggle quidditch, without broomsticks and flying.  In the end I used ideas from all over the place to come up with what I think are very cool rules... though perhaps not that Harry Potter-ish.

We had 2 goals rather than 6

The main difference between my quidditch and the real quidditch is that the golden snitch is a person.  In order to determine who would be the golden snitch I hid (ferrero rocher) golden snitches in the garden with one that had 'S' all over it.  The person who found that one became the golden snitch and got to wear this fantastic gold bowler hat.  Their job was to avoid being caught and there were 'safe' areas they could run to.  I had a few other rules that I might post another time in more detail but the main thing was that there was also a person from each side who could throw water balloons at the opponents.  But only their legs, if they hit any other part of the body they were out for one minute.  It was 36 degrees so no one really complained about the water balloons!

I was going to make robes for everyone, but I didn't.  Instead everyone got to wear a house badge to identify what team they were on.  We changed positions regularly.  To be honest everyone just ran around and focussed too much on the water balloons, so that didn't really work so well.. but I still think it was a good set of rules.

After Quidditch we were going to do the pinata.  I had great plans for this dementor pinata.  The boys were going to have to do the patronus charm and shout 'Expecto Patronum' while they whacked the dementor.  I had made this pretty sturdy and was looking forward to 15 minutes of dementor whacking. Unfortunately the rain had weakened the pinata and by the time I returned with said 'whacking stick' one of the boys had already pulled the dementor down and the boys were like vultures scraping out it's insides for loot.  For a short moment, my happiness had been sucked from me, just like a real dementor!

All wasn't lost.. there was cake!  Originally I was going to do a golden snitch cake, but instead on walking into the cake shop to get the ball mould, Oliver saw a skull cake tin and declared that he wanted a 'dark mark' cake.  A glittering green skull with a snake protuding from it's mouth. I put a picture next to it for this photo just so I'd remember what I was trying to create. It's wrong isn't it! I suppose I'll be able to reuse this when he Oliver goes into his heavy metal phase!!!  Yep, it's pretty dodgy, but the boys liked it.  Gross!

 

And here are the contents of the party bag: A Honeydukes sampler.  Yep, sugar overload! The Standard Book of Spells I got from etsy. 

children parties and sponge painting

On Sunday, we have Elliot's 4th birthday Robot Party.  I love lo-fi craft and I love having a party for my boys.  It's a toss up who's more into the party - them or me.  Well obviously they are because they are thinking about all the presents, but I love it as well.  Well, I love the planning that is,  a few weeks out I'm all about the party and doing the invites. Come closer to the time, I get myself all worked up and stressed.  And I hate the cake. I have too much pride to actually outsource the making of it, so I stress and stress about it. Having said that I know I only have a couple of years when I can get away with lo-fi birthday parties before the boys become all 'OH MUUUUM!!!' on me, so I'm making the most of it.
One of my favourite lo fi crafty things for a kids party is sponge painting.
Last year Elliot had a dinosaur party and earlier this year Oliver had lego star wars party and I pulled out a bit of sponge painting for both of them ... and would you believe I have managed to squeeze out a bit of sponge work for the Robot party on Sunday.
My piece de resistance is the AT AT walker from Star Wars that we did for Oliver's party bags this year using cut up sponges.  I then revisited the sponges for a tshirt for a friend of Oliver's who was moving to New York.  I love this I think it is so cute.

For Elliot last year, we sponge painted both the invites and the bags for his dinosaur party based on an idea from this book.

So for the Robot party, I have sponge painted rectangles onto tshirts and the children can then draw robots using the painted on shapes.  I'll see how it goes and you might see pictures of this - if it is successful!
I'd really like to work out how to do freezer paper stenciling one day as it looks much neater. But for now I'm all about the sponge.

KCWC Day 1

Day 1: 5pm - 6pm.
It's a public holiday today so while normally this time would be out of bounds for sewing the easy (no school no work) day allowed for a steal of this timeslot.

For some reason I found the sewing against the clock (my own rule mind you) pretty stressful - like I was in some crazy race to get things cut and sewn (I regret greatly the fact that I didn't have something already cut out.. having something already started may have helped calm me down) but I cooled down and got the pants cut out, back pockets sewn on and the front pockets started.  Not bad for an hour  - which went so super quickly.  Without the imposed one hour limit I could see myself trying to get them finished tonight but I stuck to my commitment and it was tools down at 6.
So, no finished objects but a good start and when I asked Oliver whether he was going to wear these pants he said "I know I'm going to love them".  Well that's one of us!

Making potions

Oliver had a friend over this morning who showed my boys something I probably should have shown them years ago (although I will say that it was all about water restrictions and not my aversion to the mess). Turning the hose on in the garden and making big puddles.  Really big puddles.  Shocking isn't it.  My childhood is full of mud pie making, running through the sprinkler and other hose related adventures. Well since the friend left, Oliver and Elliot have been busy outside 'making potions'. (Yes, there is a bit of a Harry Potter moment happening in the house). It is hard for me not to say "stop you are making a big mess and wasting water" and "I just vacuumed and now you are treading mud everywhere"..but you know what.  This is a good thing.  They are playing together and doing something fun and creative. And it is outside!  I think it is very hard in this day to get kids to do that. Well it is for my kids. They have so much immediate and inside entertainment. And Ben and I are both pretty keen on our indoor interests (like sewing obviously). But it is a beautiful sunny almost spring day so they should be outside.  This is a proud mummy moment. 

The potions brewing in the sun

Costumes

One of the reasons I started to sew was because of the constant array of costumes that seemed to be required: birthday parties, book week, going down the supermarket ....  Book week is this week coming up and kindly the teachers have given us a week's notice. I'm hoping to convince Oliver to wear one of the costumes that I have already made him in the past.  Here is a selection of my favourite ones.
This one is easily the most popular:  Jay from Lego Ninjago.  Worn many many many times.

This is Anakin Skywalker from Star Wars.  This was made for book week last year (gosh Oliver looks so young here and it's only last year)

And this one, which was a one off - was for a 4 year old's Monster Scarecrow party.  He is only 3 here. The 'straw' is actually wool from spotlight which was really soft but perfect.  

He is still umming and aaahing about this year.  Fingers crossed it is a variation on a theme that we already have covered!!  The costume run hasn't started in as much enthusiasm for Elliot.. but it's just a matter of time.

chicken pox

chicken with chicken pox

Oliver woke up this morning with lots of spots..  There have been notes coming home from his school and Elliot's preschool advising us of a growing number of chicken pox cases.. so I suspected what the cause of these spots might be.   We trotted off to the weekend Dr who confirmed my diagnosis.  All those children and Oliver are immunised, so I suppose it's just one of those things.  Here's hoping for a mild case - and that Elliot and Ben (who is due to have his operation 28 May) don't get it! Oh and I don't want it either thanks!!!

Makes me smile

This photo was taken at the wedding we went to the other week in Dubbo.  The boys are mine and the little girl is the same age as Oliver.  It makes me laugh as Oliver, as usual has lego in hand and Elliot is cheeky Mr High Pants with his squashed hat.

mothers day

Mother's day present from Oliver.  

I love this and may be whipping up a few of these flowers myself for others.

let's swap days

 "Do you want to swap days?" are words that put the fear into me.  My day off, especially in school holidays is pretty precious so when asked by another mum if I want to take her children on my day off, for her to then taken mine on her day.. I reluctantly agree knowing that the kids  probably have a lot of fun on these days.  

So, the day started with the mandatory lego strewn everywhere, loud shouting and cushions being thrown everywhere.   We did sit down and do a bit of painting and mask making.  Big thanks to this site:  http://www.abirdandabean.com/2012/01/cute-owl-craft.html for the owl idea... though the big boys didn't finish theirs as they lathered them in so much 'toxic paint' that they weren't dry enough to finish in time.  

I love how the two littlies chose one big eye and one little eye for their owls.  The gold one is mine with the excess glue!   And E -holding his, the perfect host still in his pj's!

By 2pm when it all got too much - I took them to one of those hideous indoor play centres and we all 'whee'd away the rest of the day going up and down the big slide. 

what I liked about today..

A couple of weeks ago I saw these speech bubble white boards at 'smiggle' and decided to get one each for  O and E.  I made them both draw a picture of themselves and then we stuck the whiteboard above it on the big wall in the playroom.  The plan (!) was to have them each day put something up that they enjoyed during the day.  We must get back to it as I have let it slip..!  These are ones I captured from O: "I like mathematics" (with a Christmas theme!) and "I like playing at school" (with a number of Ninjago characters joining in!)