Boo-ing!

Tomorrow is October 1st, so that means it's officially time to get ready for Halloween. Not that we haven't been doing a little bit of that already, but now I don't have to feel like I'm jumping the gun!

Besides decorating the house, and trick-or-treating, one of our favorite Halloween traditions is Boo-ing. I'm sure y'all have heard of it before, its basically ding-dong-ditching, but in a nice way. You leave a fun halloween treat, and instructions that they have to keep the boo-ing going. 

My kids look forward to this every year, and we have so much fun with it!

These are the boo printables I made last year, and will probably use them again this year as well. Except, now that I'm sharing them, it might be obvious who they came from...maybe I'll have to get creative and do something new!

Enjoy these, just click on the collection picture below and it'll take you to the download page for all the printables pictured, then just print and have fun with the kidlets!

Peyton's Ice Cream parlor

I realized as I was looking back through my blog that I forgot to post something pretty important. I do have four children, and threw each of them a birthday party within a 2.5 month period. I don't know if it was pure exhaustion from doing them all or what, but I didn't post about miss Peytons party, or the fact that she turned 5 over 2.5 months ago! Sorry about that Peyton. The funny thing is this is one of my favorite parties ever!

For our sweet girl, we had to have a sweet party, and ice cream fit the bill perfectly!

Lots of sweets and toppings and pink yumminess!

I got little containers for all the toppings, painted them and then made little tags to go on them.

I love me some cake pops, so I had to make these when I saw them, they're mini ice cream pops. Made just like cake pops, but stuck on a mini ice cream cone and topped with chocolate. so good!

To stick with the neopolitan theme, we had three flavors of milk in their own custom little bottles.

And a super yummy, and tall neopolitan chocolate cake.

I have found these little swing top bottles everywhere and am in love with them, they're perfect for so many things, including holding caramel and chocolate.

A little custom sign for Peyton

The invite was the inspiration for the whole event, so perfect!

There were cute little labeled buckets for all three ice cream flavors, filled with ice to keep it all cold.

I saw the waffle cones filled with fruit on pinterest and it was a perfect addition to this sweet party.

We played a little sundae relay outside before we dug into the sweet stuff.

First they had to run the bowl down to the table

Then add some ice cream

and some caramel sauce

then strawberry sauce

Then everyones favorite was the sprinkles. They had to wear them on their head, attached to a headband and pour it into the bowl without using their hands.

Halli was very determined

Then using their mouths, they added a cherry on top.

So much fun!

The kids sat around after and poured more sprinkles cause they loved that so much.

Most of them missed the bowl completely.

Then it was time to go in and partake of the goodness! Someone loved the cherries!

Peyton had fallen off the trampoline, and wasn't in a very good mood, even while blowing out her candles.

We love this sweet girl so much, and I can't believe she's 5 and growing up so fast!

Happy super late birthday sweet girl!

McKay Madness

This past weekend, the Williams sister-in-laws all got together to throw our other sister-in-law, Jamie, a baby shower. Actually, it was a co-ed shower, so it was for her and her hubby. Since their having their first boy, we did a basketball theme, and if I do say so myself, I thought it all went quite well.

There were yummy cupcakes, salads, hoagies, fruit, nuggets, and even wings. We had boys there, so we wanted to be prepared with the food. Everything was blue and orange, the blue was in honor of Greg's favorite college team, Duke. We also played a couple of fun games, a diaper toss, and a free throw contest. Luckily, Kevin's parents have a half court basketball court right in their yard, it was the perfect setting.

I think Jamie enjoyed it, and we tried to throw in some fun girlie stuff for her, but I suppose she had better get used to having some of the boy stuff around, right? It was tons of fun to put together, what can I say, I'm a sucker for parties!

Some of the food, and the picture I made for McKay's room. If you can't tell, that's a picture of Jamie's belly, "painted" to look like a basketball.

Here's a close up of the photo, what do ya think? Does the paint look real? I had to work on photoshop for a bit to make it look alright, kinda fun what you can do with a little editing!

Look at these two! Britt and Brett, so excited for their very own tickets to the shower! :) I made tickets that we handed out to everyone, and then we did a drawing. If we drew your number, you got a chance to make a freethrow, and if you did, you won a prize. Now if I had really been on top of it, I would have sent the tickets to them with the invite.

The fun basketball centerpieces for the tables.

Some of the drinks, we removed all the labels and added a customized "McKay" label. We had water and orange and blue gatorade, yum yum!

A close up of the tickets

And some more food, can't beat a great buffet, right?

The McKay pennant.

We had tons of fun doing this, and now we just can't wait to meet the little guy!

Baptism book

About two months ago, my daughter was baptised. We're LDS and our children get baptised when they turn 8 if they choose to. It's such a great time, and there are so many things that we want our children to be able to remember about this moment, but they're still pretty young. There's alot about my baptism that I don't remember, and I wanted to do whatever I could to help Halli remember hers.

My friend had a great idea to create a baptism book, that friends and family could sign, and where the kids could write down their own memories of the day. Such a wonderful idea, I was totally on board!

So, that's what I did, just made a cute little book for her to keep. I love a great personalized keepsake that is filled with love from everyone who is a part of your life! Hopefully she'll really appreciate it.:)

I've also left some spaces to add pictures from the big day so that everything is in one place for her.

I absolutely love reading what she wrote about how she felt that day! Love how kids think!

Shutterfly House Party

So, have you ever heard of houseparty.com? It's a pretty cool website where you can apply to host house parties for certain products or companies. It's pretty cool really, and I hear you get some pretty fun party favors from the companies.

I've obviously never been chosen to host a house party before....until now that is!!:)

I love me some shutterfly photobooks, and when I saw that they were going to be doing a house party, I signed up pretty quick, and YAY for me, I was one of a mere 3000 people who were chosen. I think that was the majority, but I don't really know how many applied.

But I'll pretend that I'm one of a special few, cause it's more fun that way!

Anywhoo, I get to plan a little party for some friends, and we all get a free photobook, pretty fancy right?

I'm slightly excited, and I hope it's as fun as I think it's going to be.

If you've ever been lucky enough to host one of these babies, feel free to let me know what to expect, I have no idea how this thing is all supposed to play out! But yay for getting to learn!

Halloween Bash

I've wanted to do a halloween party for quite awhile. A few years really. Every year I'll buy a few things, thinking that maybe this year, I'll actually get around to it.

But Halloween is at the end of a very long summer, where I have four kids birthday parties I've just done, and I'm usually beat after that.

Well, this year, I pulled out all of my pre-purchased supplies, and there were ALOT of them, and styled this little shindig.

Nothing too fancy, but fun, and festive and perfect for the little munchkins.

for family night one evening, we all sat down and decorated our haunted house...it didn't turn out too well, but the kids had a blast decorating it.

We also had fun coming up with spooky names for the treats, gotta love some creative minds!

Bonus, the kids learned some new vocabulary, like what decomposing means. Always a helpful word, am I right?:)

See these beauties. That's what the party was based around. I REALLY wanted to make these fun drink labels for these gorgeous swing top bottles I found at TJMaxx the other day.

Who doesn't need a halloween banner to bring in the haunting mood?

All-in-all, this was so fun to put together, and it can all be found in my etsy shop. Well, almost all of it. the gem of the party, the bottle labels, can't be bought. Nope, if you want those puppies, there's only one place to get them, and bonus, they're FREE!

Just head on over to Hopscotch Studios facebook page and go to the download link of the side. It can only be found there, so snag it quick before it's gone!