I convinced the urchins to choose costumes that went together this year. First time ever! And the real reason was because my niece and nephew were also being Star Wars characters and the nerd in me needed this portrait to happen:
Princess Leia Organa, Padmé Amidala, Anakin Skywalker, and Luke Skywalker
I hope you and your family had a very Happy Halloween. You can see our previous Halloweens here:
First grade and fourth grade, it’s really hard to believe.
Over the weekend we had a little party because….
And Mr. Soon-to-be-Six decided this year he wanted to have a lego birthday party. So that photo was the front of the invitation with the party details on the back. I’ve been keeping a Pinterest board to keep track of all the great ideas for lego parties on the web. When the kids arrived we had them work on some lego coloring sheets and dot-to-dots I printed from the lego site. I had a few different ones so they could do more than one while the other guests arrived.
After everyone arrived we had lunch. Tristan requested mini hamburgers (sliders) and those tiny hot dogs wrapped in bread (pigs in a blanket). We also had pirate’s booty and mini cheese crackers. I used a plastic green tablecloth from the party store and a runner of bubble wrap painted green to look like lego baseplate. The only other decoration on the table was the giant lego minifigure head. I had been wanting to get one and amazingly I found one at Target the day before the party, on sale even. In the sweets department we had an awesome lego cake that Papa made by making a really big sheet cake and topping it with six cupcakes to look like a giant yellow lego. Candy legos from the store were in a lego pick-a-brick container and we also had lego chocolates we made in a silicone mold.
After lunch we split the kids among three tables and had them start building. I had purchased bags of bulk legos from the lego store. First we asked them to build a house and awarded prizes — series 5 minifigures — to the best house at each table. Then we asked them to build boats and did the same thing with the prizes. After that we had them each build an animal and they got to keep the animal they built.
Then it was time for Happy Birthday and cake! After everyone finished their cake we let them go back to building until their parents arrived to pick them up. As his friends left Tristan gave each of them a favor that consisted of a small lego building set — that I also got on sale — sugar cookies I made to look like legos packaged in a cute lego box, and two chocolate minifigures that Papa made using silicone molds. I found a lego font to use for the tags.
Hey there! Happy September! Did you all have a nice summer? We did although it was a short one that seemed to have a lot of commitments. All that snow we’ve been getting the last few years prompted our county to start school a bit earlier this year so the urchins have been back at it for a week already. We have a third grader and a kindergartener, I can hardly believe it. I know better to make promises but maybe, just maybe my blogging mojo will come back with the school year.
If the sugarplum fairy ever visits this is where she’ll be hanging out, I’m sure. The dining room is definitely the land of sweets.
Today I’ll be showing you our living room. This is our fancy room so it has the fancy tree. That means it’s filled with mostly glass ornaments and other ornaments I don’t want to find broken/ruined. We have another tree in the family room that is much more homespun looking. But in the living room I try to keep it elegant.
Hello and welcome to the urchin home. So glad you guys stopped by to see us. I decorate the porch with my childhood sled, a grapevine wreath, a vintage red lawn chair, a lot of pinecones, and some rusty jingle bells. The large pinecones are from sugar pines and the smaller pinecones are the cinnamon scented ones. Their scent would be way too much in the house but on the porch it’s rather nice. The bells are oversized and rusty.
I try to keep the entryway fairly simple when I decorate for the holidays. We have one cabinet in there and I don’t like the top of it to be cluttered with decorations, I do enough cluttering of it daily with my keys and mail. The little pillow hangs from a front closet doorknob and says “star bright… Christmas light” and has the year Papa and I were married on it. The snowman sits at the bottom of the stairs right next to the living room which is where we’re headed tomorrow.
Please be sure to drop by these friends who will also be showing off their holiday homes this week:
If you’d like to join the tour just post some photos to your blog or flickr and let me know so I can add you to the list.
I was recently talking with Grace about holiday decorating and I told her I would take a photo of a little vignette I always do on our front porch for her to see. It got me thinking about holiday homes and how much inspiration can come from seeing what other people do. Now don’t get me wrong, the images in magazines are really magical at this time of year but they often seem unattainable too. I certainly don’t have the budget or skills to create one of those kind of rooms. And honestly, I don’t want my home to feel like a magazine, especially at this home-y, cozy time of year. So this week I’ll be giving a little holiday home tour of the urchin house and I’m hoping you might want to join in. I’ll be posting every day but you can post as little or as much as you like. Let me know and I’ll make a list so we can all be inspired by each other’s holiday homes.
I hope everyone had a wonderful Thanksgiving holiday. We’ve been busy in the urchin house these last weeks and Thanksgiving day was a welcome calm. But here’s December and I am feeling so inspired to make this the merriest of Christmases. I have some things planned for this joyful month but I feel like that can’t start until we do some catching up, so here’s what we’ve been up to:
Lots of other things happened since we’ve chatted last but those are the highlights. So what have you guys been up to?
For the beauty of the skies,
For the love which from our birth
Over and around us lies,
Lord of all, to thee we raise
This our hymn of grateful praise.
Wishing you a day when your blessings are too great to be counted.
mama urchin 