My daughter recently turned 14 and she planned a birthday party filled with color.  It started with the girls throwing balloons filled with paint at an art canvas to create a picture together.  Then we headed across the street to the park for some great fun.  I ordered Holi Powder and the girls set up interesting photos and then had a giant fight.  Color filled the air and all of their faces.  After that we set up the game Twister with shaving cream on the circles.  The Twister game didn’t last long as it turned into a huge shaving cream fight.  The girls were covered with color and shaving cream so everyone had to rinse off before going on a scavenger hunt, eating cake and ice cream and snuggling up to watch a movie.  I highly recommend this teen party if you don’t mind lots of laughing, screaming and a giant mess….oh, and epic memories!

We have had fun creating our Christmas card the last few years.  My favorite one was in 2013 when we used a big chalkboard at our house that served as our background.  Here is the before and after….

Before

After

This year we went across the street to the school and my daughter and I drew the scene and positioned everyone.  Unfortunately the sun turned out to be an issue and we had limited options so I had to do quite a bit more editing to capture our snowball fight.  Here is the before and after…

Before

After

Merry Christmas!  Let your creativity shine…

Every summer at our house we decide on a theme for the summer and do our own Sander’s summer camp, which just means we make a summer schedule and are intentional about how we spend the summer with our kids.  As my kids have gotten older, the theme keeps getting more simple.  They have their own lives, goals, interests and fairly easily entertain themselves now that they are tween/teens.  This summer we decided on the theme of “Pick Two.”  Here’s what it looks like….

I am looking forward to what my kids come up with and in August we will have a little family night to show what we have worked on over the summer.  My projects are focused on eating healthy and simplifying our home!  What are you planning on working on this summer?  Pick two!

Every year when the kids were little my friend, Brooke, and I would throw a Halloween party.  This year, even though our kids are getting older, we decided to revisit the old days and have a little fun…

Even highschoolers will eat a donut off a string…afterall it is a donut and you get to eat it!

A Halloween party just wouldn’t  be complete without bobbing for apples…

At every party I’ve ever had we have always thrown water balloons at targets on the fence.  For Halloween, it’s pictures of ghosts, spiders, skeletons, etc.  This year, the targets were knocked down fast and Dad became the new target…

We tried a new game this year, find the grape in the plate of whip cream.  It was a big hit…

We also had a fun craft, decorating mini pumpkins.  The creativity flowed: a ghost, a black cat, a gorilla and a dinosaur…

We ended our party by watching a Halloween episode of Spongebob…

Here’s a few throwback photos from years past…

This was our theme for our Sanders Summer Camp this year.  Here was the idea behind it…

Once we came up with our summer theme, we brainstormed ideas that would support that theme throughout the summer.  I put together a flip book for my kids with different things that we were going to do together and assignments that we were giving them.  Here’s what the book looked like and the other pages we included….

It was a really fun theme that let us try lots of different ideas.  We didn’t get to everything on all these cards, but we can keep going throughout the year!  I’ll share some of our ideas that we have done during previous summers in the weeks to come!  

I bought a giant ball at Target on clearance during the Winter months.  I wasn’t sure if my kids were too big for it, but it turned out to be some of the best entertainment of the summer.  Of course, it only lasted a few days before one of the sections popped.  My kids exclaimed, “let’s order another one!”  Take a look at the fun….