St. Patrick's Day Party

For our St. Patrick's Day dinner party we had shamrock cheese bread, ravioli, pasta with pesto, green vegetables, Lucky Charm cookies, Irish cheesecake, and rainbow smoothies. 

Each layer of smoothie was made with frozen fruit, Greek yogurt, and orange juice.

Red: Frozen strawberries, one banana

Orange: Banana, fresh orange

Yellow: Banana and pineapple

Green: Banana, pineapple, and spinach

Blue: Banana, pineapple, spinach, and some blue food gel

Purple: Blueberries and banana

We love to do the Skittle experiment. We arranged the Skittles on the plate and poured water in the middle until the water reached the Skittles. Then the colors spread out. 

Academy Award Party

For our Academy Award party last year, we came up with food items that matched some of the movie nominees. That worked pretty well, so did the same thing this year. 

The one thing that is not tied to a movie is our traditional red carpet brownies. 

The movie/food line-up:

Belfast: Potato Pancakes

Coda: Fried Chicken

Don't Look Up: Asteroids (We baked mashed potatoes that we shaped into our own asteroid shapes and added craters) 

West Side Story: Ropa Vieja and gummy sharks

Cruella: Black and white cookies and a black/white/red trifle in a cocktail glass

Luca: Bowtie pasta

Licorice Pizza: fondant record 

King Richard: Gatorade

Encanto: Arepas

The Lost Daughter: orange peel rind snake

We got out the red carpet and trophy photo board. 

Pi Day Celebration

 March 14th is Pi Day. We celebrate Pi Day every year by eating circular foods and by doing some pi equations or crafts. This year we had cheese bread with a pepperoni pi symbol, mini circular protein pancakes, blueberries, cucumbers, cheese and crackers, and of course, pie. 

Rachel helped out by cutting the cheese into circles. 

We also did the Buffon's Needle experiment. That was really interesting and a lot of fun. 

Mario Day Party

We had a great time at our annual Mario Day party. This year I added the Mario cardboard play set and the Mario Kart track. We also put together some Mario Legos, had a Mario Kart tournament, and played Mario Slugger on the Wii. 

Some of the food we had...

We also did our annual question box piñatas. We filled them with candy and the kids jumped up and the tissue paper broke, dropping the candy over the kids' heads. 

 

Mario Kart Cardboard Track

McDonald's was giving out Mario Kart toys, and it was Mario Day on Mar. 10, so we decided to create our own Moo Moo Meadows Mario Kart track out of cardboard. (The majority of the track is shoe box lids. I hot glued them all together. Then I drew on a random track, painted the outside green, and outlined the track with Sharpie. We had some cows and fence pieces and other farm pieces from old toys the kids had. I made a few cardboard ramps, question boxes, and a windmill to complete the track. 

 

Read Across America Party

For National Read Across America Day, we matched our dinner to some of our favorite children's books. 

We had tacos for Dragons Love Tacos, pizza for Pizza Mouse and Curious George Makes Pizza, fruit and cheese with holes in them for Hungry Caterpillar, vegetable for Peter Rabbit, blueberries for Blueberries for Sal, green eggs for Green Eggs and Ham, strawberry and banana sticks for Cat in the Hat, ice cream for Should I Share my Ice Cream, and Cookies for If You Give a Mouse a Cookie. We also made a Chicka Chicka Boom Boom tree out of a banana, spinach, and pie crust letters. 

We also made Oobleck out of cornstarch and water. 

Mardi Gras Party 2022

For dinner we had dirty rice, Cajun chicken tenders, and French fries. We also put together some green, yellow, and purple Jell-O trifles. 

We made masks out of cardstock. I just free-hand cut these. 

And of course we had our traditional King Cake! 

 

Cardboard Mario Playset

We decided to create a Mario playset out of cardboard for our annual Mario Day party this week. I used three shoe boxes to create the three stories. I used construction paper to cover the boxes and create a background. I bought some green cups from the dollar store to make the tunnels, added some foam cutouts of clouds and hills, and created the other 3-D pieces from cardboard and a foam block. The mini characters can even go down through the tunnels (toilet and paper towel rolls painted). I had some Mario coins that I added to the foam blocks as well and made the flag pole out of a dowel rod. The castle is just painted on the background of the top layer. 

I hot glued the layers together after I cut holes in the boxes to run the tunnels through.