Playdate: Little Leprechauns St. Patrick's Day Playdate

 I have so many things to post about, but finding twenty minutes to blog has been a struggle. We've had a full schedule in March and April and I hope to give you a glimpse of some of the fun.

Typically, when spring rolls around, I tend to focus on all things Easter in my decorating, playdates, and parties. My home is usually filled with bunnies, chicks and pastels and I love it. This year, however, I decided to mix things up and go green for St. Patrick's Day. I hosted a Little Leprechauns playdate at our home.

 It was a morning playdate, so I went light on the snacks and purchased Shamrock Cookies from a locally owner bakery, Heitzman Bakery. I typically go with Loft House Cookies, but the selection at our local Kroger was pretty slim and these were still yummy and festive.

When planning a Playdate, I like to develop activity stations that are not only age appropriate, but high interest for the little ones. Plus, if the kiddos are happy, then the mommas get chat and hang out, and let's be real... that is at least 50% of why we go to Playdates! This station I called "Create a Sticker Scene." Preschoolers and toddles LOVE stickers so this station was a favorite.

I pulled out some green cardstock that I had in our home office and placed it on our kitchen table. I had picked up some fun St. Patrick's Day themed puffy stickers at the Dollar Tree and I tossed them in a basket along with some crayons. I've found that puffy stickers work best because little hands can easily peel them off the backing.

 

The second station, was a simple "Play-Doh Play Station." To make it fit into the holiday theme, I used green Play-Doh and kneaded nontoxic gold glitter into it to make it sparkle. In the past I've made my own Play-Doh and there are some great recipes out there, but a few months ago, I discovered that Wal-Mart stores sell Play-Doh for fifty cents a can. You can grab a variety of colors, or in my case, load up on 10 cans of green. Not only did it only cost me $5, it also saved me time and cream of tartar (seriously, the homemade Play-Doh recipes always clean me out of cream of tartar!)

 

The final station was a fun "Photo Booth Station." This was my favorite. To create your own at-home photo booth, all you need is a couple of yards of fabric, something to hang it on, fun themed props, and a digital camera. I use a portable double clothes rack that I had in the basement to hang the fabric and then use duct tape to tape the fabric to the bar.  You could always tape your fabric straight to the wall, but I'm afraid of it pulling the paint off during the removal process and I don't want to have to touch up my walls. The fabric that I used for this photo booth was originally used for my son's Mickey Mouse themed birthday party a few years ago and it was perfect.

 

All of the photo props came from the Dollar Tree and I borrowed the green tub from our front bathroom. It usually stores my son's bath toys.

To tie in the St. Patrick's Day theme in the entry way, I pinned some fun sparkly shamrocks to our repurposed shutters that act as a seasonal display for photos, cards, or L's artwork.

We had a great time and ended up with some super cute photos of everyone from the photo booth that we shared via email and Facebook with the group.

Playdate: Reindeer Games

Last week, I hosted a festive playdate featuring Santa's antler-adorned friends, the Magic Reindeer. I had big plans for this playdate, but it was scaled down due to the fact that I was being overly ambitious. With Christmas less than two weeks away, and another themed birthday party on the horizon I just didn't have the time (or energy!) Still, I think the Reindeer Games playdate was super cute and all who attended had a great time.

The inspiration for this playdate came from my desire to make "Magic Reindeer Food" with my son. Back in my days as an elementary teacher, a fellow teacher had her students create little bags of oats mixed with glitter with a tag that told the student to sprinkle the magic mixture on their lawn on Christmas Eve to attract Santa's Reindeer. Everyone knows that Reindeer love oats (and glitter!) so they are bound to spot the sparkles and smell the oats from high up in the air and lead Santa's sleigh straight to the source, your house!

I placed some instant oats, some honey bunches of oats cereal (for variety),and a few small canisters of glitter into a serving dish. I added some clear plastic ribbon tie bags (which are actually Wilton lollipop bags) for the kids to use to hold their finished product. These were all items I already had in my pantry and in my craft bins!

In addition to their Magic Reindeer Food, each little one was given a glittery antler visor, a reindeer rubber ducky (both from Oriental Trading), and an adorable felt reindeer pull string bag (found in the Target Dollar Spot) as their favors. 

I had planned on making a few reindeer themed games to go along with my theme, but after looking at the attendee list, I realized that several of the kiddos were two and under and some of my ideas might be best used next year when they have another year under their belts. I opted instead to use a simple inflatable reindeer antler toss game (purchased from Oriental Trading.)

To add an additional activity and create a fun take home item, I set up a reindeer thumbprint ornament making station. These turned out to be adorable and super easy to make. Each ornament kit came individually packaged with clear directions (from Oriental Trading.) The only thing that wasn't included in the kits were some sort of adhesive to attach the reindeer google eyes. Luckily, I had some glue dots on hand from another project, so the problem was solved.

I brought our green playroom table and chairs up from the basement playroom and set up a Play-Doh station with Christmas shaped cookie cutters, rollers and other tools. I decided to use only white Play-Doh from our stash since it was kind of wintery (snowy) looking and we were having the playdate in our main living room. While we have hardwood floors throughout the area, we also have a light beige area rug and wasn't in the mood to pick smashed brightly colored Play-Doh pieces out of the fibers over the weekend. Luckily, things didn't get too out of hand and the mess stayed on or near the table.

 

Check out these cuties in their reindeer antlers. So cute!

 

 

 May the your Magic Reindeer Food attract Dasher, Dancer, Prancer, Vixen, Comet, Cupid, Donner, Blitzen, and of course, Rudolph. Happy Holidays!

 

Playdate: If You Give a Pig a Pancake Playdate

I'm relatively active in a local "Mommy and Me" playgroup. It not only provides my son with an outlet that is semi-structured to test out his budding social skills, but it also provides me with some time to connect with other moms with similar aged little ones. The group is run through www.meetup.com and is very active. Membership requires attendance of at least two daytime events a month and paying yearly membership dues. Our group calendar is packed full of events and there are plenty of opportunities to get together between park playdates, festivals, and other scheduled in-home playdates.

Personally, I prefer in-home playdates to the more public events. I generally feel more relaxed and able to actually chat with the other moms while the kiddos play together. About once a month, I host a themed playdate in our home. Most recently, my theme was "If You Give a Pig a Pancake" based on the popular children's book by Laura Numeroff.

 

We did a read aloud of our book, If You Give a Pig a Pancake. I made mini pancakes on our griddle and everyone was invited to add toppings to their pancakes to suite their taste. I included bananas, strawberries, blueberries, syrup, chocolate syrup, and whipped cream. It was a huge hit, but  I was so busy snacking and chatting that I completely forgot to take photos during the playdate. Oops! Here are a few I snapped before our guests arrived and the fun began.

 

Normally, during the warmer months, we set up our playdates outdoors on our patio. We have a great outdoor couch and it makes for a great space, but at the last minute, I decided to move our playdate inside due to the crazy humidity and heat. Instead, of using our downstairs playroom (which is generally perfect for playdates), I opted to keep the food upstairs and brought up a few baskets of toys into our family room to keep the playdate clean up at a minimum.

 

I also added some board books on the ottoman so that any kiddos who wanted to continue to read/ look at books would have the option to do so.

 

It didn't seem like I brought a lot of toys up for our playdate, but once all the bins were emptied, toys covered the floor. My little guy couldn't wait for everyone to arrive and started playing and digging through the bins shortly after this picture was taken.