Archive for the ‘Uncategorized’ Category

Chrissieeric.com Moved!

Monday, October 1st, 2018

Here’s the link until I get around to redirecting… https://chrissie-wainright.squarespace.com/

Donovan’s 6th Birthday! Skylanders!

Monday, September 11th, 2017

Donovan’s Skylander Birthday Party

This year Donovan really wanted to play Skylanders for his party.  And he didn’t want a Skylanders theme, with lots of people and games inspired by skylanders, he wanted to play the actual video game with a few close friends, ideally as a sleepover.  Since his friends from school are a little too young to sleep over yet, we decided to do his party in two parts.  He had Carson and Barrett come over in the evening for video games and a sleepover, and had his friends Hatcher and Trip over in the morning to play Skylanders.  Since his party was so simple, we got a new X-box to replace the one that kept dying in the middle of the game, and got the Superchargers for the x-box and Supercharger racing game for the Wii that’s been in our closet for five years.  Eric picked up a bunch of guys off E-bay and Donovan was THRILLED!  It was such a good idea of Eric’s to wait to get a game until it had been out for a few years, you can get them so much cheaper and our kids don’t care that it isn’t the latest version.what is matched betting

Superchargers Surprise! DZ was so excited with all the guys he got!!!! He especially likes Splat and Stealth Elf =)

Decorations =) The masks were handy! And DZ suggested we decorate the birthday poster with Skylanders stickers.

I arranged his Skylanders by type on this shelf… we had never done this before so I had no idea his collection was this extensive!!!! Thanks Carson and Barrett =)

For his birthday treat, of course Donovan chose donuts!  We got them in the shape of the Life, Air, and Water elements.   Yummy as always and so cute!

Stealth Elf Goes Pop (Ring Pops)

Whirlwind Rainbows and Pop Fizz’s potion bits

DZ loved Chop Chop Chips =)

Donovan had a blast with both parties.  I set up a candy table and got little Skylander lunch boxes for the kids to fill with treats.  It just seemed like junk food and video games go really well together.  I tried to have a variety of things, and Serenity helped me out making labels and giving the food Skylander names.  I put out slightly different candies in the evening, so Carson got his favorite Reese’s peanut butter cups, which made him very excited.

Donovan had fun introducing Hatcher and Trip to Skylanders.  I don’t think they had played video games quite as much, or at least not Skylanders, so they learned a lot about it very quickly.

The evening party was very different from the morning party.  When Barrett and Carson get together they play rough!  They chased each other around the house in Skylander costumes attacking with foam swords, and DZ was fascinated!  They had a pillow fight too!  He had fun playing with them too.  I had made a portal out of one of our big floor pillows and some cardboard, and the kids all took pictures in Skylander costumes.  I got Donovan a Spyro jacket, which doubled as a costume, and also SnapShot and Wallop costumes from Party City.  The kids were so cute in them!  I accidentally ordered them in boys sizes instead of little kid sizes, so they were really big!  I had to shorten them so DZ could wear them at all, but that means they fit his cousins too!  Oh, they sat on the portal to play the game some too which was cute =)

Donovan loved his presents.  He got a cool new lego set from Carson that he put together with me and loved.  He was crazy excited about his present from Barrett.  Jen ordered him a new Skylanders lunch box and thermos.  He was screaming and jumping up and down.  Later, Amazon asked Jen for a review of those products and she said she just didn’t know how to translate DZ’s reaction to them =) lol!

As expected, falling asleep didn’t happen quickly or easily, but everyone had fun even the next day, so it went as well as can be expected =)  They all slept on beds and couches and watched some Inspector Gadget.  We all went to the pool and the kids had a blast swimming with their cousins the next day.

 

Prism Break

Gil Grunt

Fishing!

 

Serenity’s Moana Birthday Party!

Tuesday, June 13th, 2017

 

 

 

Serenity’s Moana Party!

Serenity’s initial idea for her birthday was to have a nature party, with a hammock, outdoor scavenger hunts, and other fun outdoor ideas that didn’t seem like a great idea for July.  Plus, our July is crazy with travel and a family reunion, so we decided to have her birthday with her friends in May!  As we started planning though, she thought it would be fun to paint rocks like the Heart of Te Fiti from Moana, and suddenly her party was Moana themed!  She wanted a scavenger hunt to find the Heart of Te Fiti, and to paint rocks for necklaces, and most of all, a sleepover!  We also thought it would be fun to sing the music and learn to dance the hula.  Actually, Serenity’s only seen the movie twice, what she really loves about Moana is the music.  We have the soundtrack and we listened to it in the car all spring!

Since we were going to dance to the music, I thought it would be fun to have costumes!  I started trying to paint sarongs for the girls, but eventually ended up with a very simple wrap skirt made from muslin fabric painted with flowers.  I left the selvage edge to give it a little bit of the fringe feel that Moana’s skirt has.  That was going to be it, but then I found orange tank tops on clearance at Old Navy for just two dollars each that were PERFECT!  It was awesome.  The girls were so cute in their costumes, with little plumeria hair flowers!  They had a blast the night of the party, yelling, “Come on Moanas!” and changing the lyrics of the song from “I am Moana” to “We are MOANAS!”  So funny and adorable =)  And the boat Dad built in the yard was adorable for pictures, and they all played on it too.  Maia’s been using it all week, and telling everyone her Papa built a REAL boat =)

We are MOANAS! And DZ is Maui =)

The hammock! Serenity originally wanted a nature party in the yard, and we thought it was the perfect time to get a hammock at last. It was still a good idea for Moana =)

 

All the costumes were hung and ready for the girls when they arrived!

Dressed as Maui for Serenity’s Moana Party

The week of the party I started to get nervous because there was some severe weather in the forecast.  We have an in-ground tornado shelter, so we would have been safe, but I was not excited by the idea of getting ten children into it in the middle of the night.  We had a tornado drill in the afternoon just so they would be familiar with the shelter, but fortunately all the bad weather missed us.  We only got an hour of rain even, and no hail!  So lucky!!!!

We got to have our scavenger hunt for the Heart of Te Fiti outdoors after all.  I painted 30 rocks with glow-in-the-dark paint, and the swirl pattern.  They LOVED finding the rocks!  Everyone got three to keep, and there were a few extras that they found hours later.

We found the Heart of Te Fiti! Plus some rocks with bioluminescent algae =)

We are MOANAS! And DZ is Maui =)

We also had a necklace painting craft.  Originally they were going to paint rocks, but we decided the wooden pendants would feel better to wear.  They knotted cord to add white beads like Moana’s necklace that she got from her grandmother to hold the heart of Te-Fiti.  They were really cute!

For food, we got donuts in the shape of the Heart of Te-Fiti.  OK Country Donuts are our birthday tradition, so delicious and they make just about any shape you could want!  I made Kalua pork, we had Hawaiian roles, and lots of tropical fruit.  Pineapple, mango, watermelon.  Mmmm.  I also got chicken nuggets.  So technically we ate Hei Hei and Pua…  shhhh.   I bought coconut cups for the girls to drink from… and then I bought juice boxes.  So I turned the coconut cups into Kakamora decorations, which turned out to be a good thing because the lids did not want to stay on.

Heart of Te Fiti Donuts =)

Moana is funny!

We watched the movie too and I got snuggles from a happy birthday girl =)

The sleepover went really well!  I decorated the room upstairs to look like an ocean, and I hardly had to buy anything!  It turns out I own a LOT of blue bedding and fabric, I just got a few more blue pillowcases to finish it off.  We reused pvc pipe that was from previous projects, the photo backdrop from her third party and the Kid Wash dad built a few years back.  Easy and awesome!  I had bought some of the blue projection Christmas lights on clearance, thinking I’d add them to our Christmas decorations this year.  They made it look so awesome!  Like you were really sleeping in the ocean.  Add an ocean soundtrack and it was just right.

Serenity thought the painting of Bahari Bay from last year’s Animal Jam party was perfect for this year, the colors are a lot like the Realm of Monsters. So I hung it on the door to the new Ocean Room. =)

Testing out the new Ocean Room =)

We set up a nice assortment of legos and put out Maia’s Moana set.  The girls spent quite a bit of time playing that too.  And Serenity got Exploding Kittens as a gift from Abby and they played that late into the night.  We had invited seven girls, although only five stayed the whole night, I was really happy with how well they got along.  I hope their class manages to stay kind to each other through the middle school years. =)

In the morning, the girls had cinnamon rolls, Tamatoa slime, and Fishing to look forward to!  Fishing off the boat Papa built was so much fun!

 

Because of the storm, Moana’s canoe got blown off course, but she joined us for breakfast the next day!  She taught the girls some hula moves, and sang with them, and painted their faces.  It was the perfect finish to Serenity’s Moana sleepover 9th birthday!

Moana did some face painting after the dancing