Putting Together a Quick & Easy Minecraft Birthday

Earlier this week we celebrated the middle child's birthday.  Where the last few years have gone is a mystery to me!  The night before his birthday we went on a mommy/son date for a haircut, dinner and a little shopping trip to Toys R Us to spend the gift card and birthday money that had arrived in birthday cards that day.  While we were out together I said to him that I didn't think I was ready for him to turn five and asked if he could be four just a little bit longer... he's a smart little guy though, and replied with "How about I be four for the rest of the night?"  Ok.  Guess I can't argue with that...

He is a Minecraft fanatic.  I'm not quite sure how that even came to be, but Minecraft on the iPad, Grandma's computer, playing "real life Minecraft" and watching Minecraft videos on Youtube consume his little (now) five year old life.  I should also mention that he was Steve from Minecraft for Halloween!

He had seen some Youtube videos of different Minecraft themed cakes.  One in particular in the shape of Steve caught his eye and he had me watch it with him multiple times.  Unfortunately for him, my cake skills are severely limited... fortunately for me, Pinterest has a plethora of Minecraft themed birthday ideas and I found a cake that I thought we could replicate AND that would satisfy our blonde birthday boy AKA DanRidesMinecarts. 

This is what we ended up with, I was so happy with how it came out and our birthday boy was pretty excited too!  It was easy to control the portions on this cake, we only needed to have enough for our little immediate family, but you could easily build something similar on a larger scale.  For this cake I used one box of chocolate cake mix, two 6oz packages of blue jello and one batch of Rice Krispie treats (and ended up with leftover "blocks" of each)  I used square pans, either 8x8 or 9x9, to make each component so it would be thicker and more block like than having the batter spread out in a larger sized pan.  I also grabbed a can of green Betty Crocker cupcake frosting, and the star tip was perfect for making the grass on top of the dirt blocks.  I will freely admit that the star of the cake was the little figures we found to put on top.  I was hesitant to fork out $25ish dollars for these guys, but he has played with them every day since his birthday so I've considered them just another one of his gifts.  We found the packaged figures on Amazon, Core Player Survival Pack and the Creeper Pack. 

The one thing I forgot to consider were candles for this awesome cake.  Thankfully the man of the house came to the rescue with the brilliant idea of using matches to represent the Minecraft torches. (I apologize for the crummy picture, but you get the idea)

We also decided to go the Minecraft route with birthday treats for his preschool class.  Again, with the help of Pinterest, we were able to come up with a cute and fairly inexpensive idea.  I like coming up with things that are a little different than the standard store bought, sugar bomb cupcakes.  I bought clear treat bags from the Dollar Tree (they come in packs of 25), a roll of green curling ribbon, a bag of stick pretzels, rolos and new cookies and creme Hershey's Kisses in very diamond-like blue foil.  Too keep these preschool friendly, each treat bag got two of each candy and a handful of pretzels.  The real Minecraft highlight of the treat bags were these free printable tags I found on Pinterest.  We downloaded the ones we wanted to use (diamond, gold & sticks) to a USB drive and took them to the office supply store to be color printed on cardstock.  HERE is the site I found on Pinterest full of great party ideas AND free food printables.

 All in all, I think we pulled off a pretty fun day for our boy!  Without breaking the bank, without spending WEEKS upon WEEKS planning and preparing and still managing to give him a themed birthday to remember.

Happy 5th Birthday DanRidesMinecart!

 

Goal Setting {Week 2}

After my mostly successful first week, I'm using this forum again to gain some accountability for a new week's goals! 

I sat down with my coffee this morning (anyone else's favorite time of the day?) and came up with the following list:

Goals for the week of March 10-16

1) Drink 4+ glasses of water each day

2) Focus on real food - No fast food or gorging on junk snacks

3) Dannon's Birthday!  (Wrap gifts, make cake)

4) Follow week 2 of 4 Weeks to a More Organized Home challenge

5) Wake up with alarm

6) Sell $85 worth of stuff and pay natural gas bill

7) Consignment sale prep

You'll notice my first two goals... I have felt pretty crummy over the last few days and I'm attributing that to not being aware of my water intake AND splurging on junk that wasn't in our budget and didn't agree much with my body.  The crap food I consumed over the weekend included a late night Dairy Queen snack of chicken strips & fries, Mt Dew, cheese cake complete with cherry pie filling, pizza, donuts and multiple Cadbury Creme Eggs.  I tend to go through periods of zero impulse control, and then I pay for it massively.  Enough is enough!  Its one thing to have a treat (or fulfill a pregnancy craving... thats where the Cadbury eggs came into play) occasionally, but I need to do a better job of cutting myself off.

I wrote "Consignment sale prep" as a goal for the week, and I'm not quite sure how I'm going to measure that.  I'm consigning at my second Super Kids Resale next month and I've got a lot to do between now and then to get ready!  There is definitely work involved in being a consignor at these types of sales, but its really something that I look forward to.  I have fun volunteering during the sale, I LOVE shopping the sale and I really love the check that comes a few weeks after the sale.  The income from the sale will be very beneficial to us this year, but I'm also at a bit of a disadvantage with our desire to leave the gender of our baby unknown until birth.  IF we knew we were having a girl, there are a lot of baby boy items I could tag for the sale and if we knew the gender I would also be able to stock up on clothes and other items we're needing for baby at a great discount.  But... since thats not the case, I will come up with a list of items that we're needing that can be gender neutral and I'm sure I'll find more than a few good bargains during the sale!

Week 1 Review & Unplugging Success!

I sat down on Monday morning and wrote out a list of 6 goals for the week, I will admit that I didn't follow through on ALL of them, but nonetheless I am happy with what was accomplished over the course of the last week.  Here is the recap:

Goals for the week of March 3-9

1) Follow 4 Weeks to a More Organized Home plan

2) Sell $50-100 worth of items

3) Attend family night @ headstart on Tuesday

4) Get fabric & make Minecraft Steve pillow for Dannon's birthday

5) Get up each morning with the alarm

6) Yoga x2, Just Dance x1

My biggest feat was following along with the daily tasks associated with the 4 Weeks to a More Organized Home challenge.  Its kind of a no brainer that household chores are easier when you stay on top of things, but I have a habit of NOT staying on top of things which results in a massive house cleaning attempt when the motivation does hit.  I'm slowly becoming the type of person who does a little bit every day in order to keep things manageable, and to avoid the hit-by-a-tornado style of  "decorating!"  The tasks for the week included a 15 minute quick pick up of living areas, cleaning out the purse/diaper bag and getting rid of 7 things on Monday, a 15 minute quick clean of the kitchen, cleaning out the refrigerator and finding another 7 things to get rid of on Tuesday, a 15 minute quick clean of the master bedroom, ANOTHER 7 things and cleaning out the freezer (the one task I didn't feel was necessary to our home this week) on Wednesday, a 15 minute quick clean of the master bath, cleaning underneath beds and furniture, and yes, you guessed it... 7 more things on Thursday and finally cleaning the couch (vacuuming under cushions, spot cleaning and washing all the covers) on Friday.  

I was able to do each of these special cleaning tasks in addition to the other 5-7 things on my daily to do list.  There were a few days that I procrastinated the things on the list, but at the end of the day, it felt great to follow through! I love knowing that if I devote 15 minutes to a quick clean I can get most of the needed things done in one specific room (NOT including our bedroom which will require more than one 15 minute interval!)

The next goal for the week that I was able to cross off was selling $50-100 worth of items!  Between the local facebook buy/sell group that I am part of and one item sold on ebay I was able to make about $72 this week.  Its not close to closing the income deficit we're experiencing since my ex husband stopped paying his court ordered child support, but every little bit helps.  I applied $40 of my sales to our natural gas bill and spent the rest on a few things we needed to pick up at the grocery store and Target.

Lets talk about Family Night at Dannon's school!  It was totally worth sitting through a presentation that was mostly done in Spanish, to see how happy Dannon was to have us all there.  They fed us all an amazing meal of tostadas and all three of the kiddos got to play in the classroom.  It was a nice way to break up the sometimes monotonous feel of our weeknights without spending a dime.  We'll definitely plan on attending next month too!

The last weekly goal I was able to cross of the list was getting up each morning with the alarm.  I guess if I'm being TECHNICAL I should admit that I hit snooze once or twice... but each morning I was out of bed before 7am and it just feels better to get a start on the day, instead of the day starting without me.

Now for the weekly goals I didn't complete:
Exercising and making a Minecraft pillow for Dannon's birthday.
I've got no real, valid excuses for not exercising a minimum of 3 times.  I just didn't do it.
As for the pillow... I ended up ordering about $25 worth of Minecraft miniatures to use as decorations on Dannon's birthday "cake."  I am crossing my fingers that he will love the idea I came up with (thank you, Pinterest!) and we're sure the little figures will provide hours and hours of play.  There just wasn't anything left in the birthday budget to buy fabric for the pillow project.  It will go on the back burner though and definitely will be completed sometime.  Maybe he'll get a Minecraft quilt and pillow for Christmas if he is still obsessed in a few months.

The last thing I wanted to touch on for this post was our success at unplugging for 24 (turned 36) hours this weekend.  We are a family that has a habit of being entirely too wrapped up in our gadgets (ahem, boys...) and social media (guilty as charged.)  Bob shared with me an article he read on cnn.com about the National Day of Unplugging and we decided to participate.  I'm happy to report that it wasn't as hard as I thought it might be and in fact, its something I want to incorporate on a regular basis!  There were a few times that Dannon asked about his iPad, and a few times I though "oh, I should post this on facebook" or "I need to remember to look this up..." but I discovered that a lot of the time I spend online is just wasted time and it takes my focus away from my family and my home commitments.  I wish the weather would have cooperated so we could have gone outside to play catch or another fun family activity outdoors, but in true pacific northwest fashion it was rainy.  We used our time to get a few things done around the house, rest and recharge and watch movies together.  We questioned at the beginning of our unplugged time what that really meant for us and how we would apply it, and we decided that tv and movies were acceptable, individual usage was not.  It was a nice break, but I was definitely happy to hop on Facebook and check my email this morning while I was drinking my cup of coffee :)   

My Project for the Month of March

I started this year with the thought of having one thing I would focus on each month.  In January my focus was to begin eliminating clutter, in February I loosely followed my goal of setting an alarm and getting up at 6:30 each morning and now for March I will be following along with one of my favorite bloggers,  Money Saving Mom, and her 4 Weeks to a More Organized Home. 

You can find her first post on the project here, which includes the first day's "assignment" and a sign up to receive the free e-book she has written to go along with the project.

Today's "assignment" includes getting dressed, writing out 5-10 goals for the week, create/follow a morning routine, 15 minute quick pick up, finding 7 items to get rid of and cleaning out your purse/diaper bag. 

Since I'm a stay at homer, and regularly bite off more than I can chew and get frustrated later when I don't follow through to the fullest extent, I appreciate that she has a complete list of suggested things for the day, and one highlighted task to make sure you accomplish. 

I wanted to share my list of goals for the week, I have found that its easier for me to stay accountable when I put myself out there! 

Goals for the week of March 3-9

1) Follow 4 Weeks to a More Organized Home plan

2) Sell $50-100 worth of items

3) Attend family night @ headstart on Tuesday

4) Get fabric & make Minecraft Steve pillow for Dannon's birthday

5) Get up each morning with the alarm

6) Yoga x2, Just Dance x1

I plan on checking in through my blog later in the week to update with my progress.  Please let me know if you will be joining this month's project, its always encouraging to tackle something like this with a friend (or two!)