Butterfly Birthday Bash Late Over

I posted about the late over invitations here.

This party was a late over birthday for a 10 year old girl.

Once the girls started arriving, I had them start decorating a pillow case.  I had a peace sign, a butterfly and a dragonfly stamp along with fabric paint and foam paint brushes.  I decided the color for each stamp so I didn't have to keep washing and drying the stamps.  This made things go a little smoother.  :)  I let the girls use the paint (it's in a squirt bottle) and write their names on their pillow.  Some went a little crazy and squirted a little too heavily (it just made it a little more difficult for their parents at pickup.

Next we played a game called pass the present.  I used two different color wrapping papers and wrapped a little surprise for them.  When the music stopped, whoever had the present got to unwrap one layer of wrapping paper.  The present was a small sheet of tattoos.  My niece was helping so she was tatting while the rest of the girls played the game.

We then had pizza and cake.

Instead of cakes, we made cupcakes.  Well, Bella made them.  She used green frosting as the base, white chocolate covered pretzels as the wings and M&M's as the body.  She wanted Hello Kitty on her butterfly.

We moved on to play another game called Move to the Right.  I found this game idea here.  This turned out to be a blast!  You have a list that you read from, all of the girls are sitting on the floor in a circle.  When you read off a line:  Move over one spot if you like Christmas.  If someone doesn't move (they don't like Christmas?) then you sit on their lap.  It gets to a point where there are A LOT of girls sitting on one girls lap.  This time that person was my niece, ha ha!

I gave each girl a composition notebook and let them use duct tape to decorate their books.  We peeled the top layer of the book off so it wouldn't show through when the tape was applied.  The girls had so much fun doing this that they just wanted to write in their notebooks!  I let them take their time with their note books.

We moved onto freeze dance and the limbo.  Both fun activities for them to do and a way to burn off some of their extra energy.

They started to wind down a bit and we put in the movie (Bella's choice was, "Into the Woods."  Other ideas?  Princess Bride, Maleficent, Despicable Me, Ella Enchanted, Cinderella.  They had popcorn, pretzels and gold fish crackers (along with bottled water) while watching the movie.

The goody bag had lotion (Butterfly Flower from Bath and Body Works), hair ties, erasers (small pack that had butterfly, dragonfly, lady bug and bumble bee).

Girl Scout Junior Meeting - Thanksgiving Craft Pine Cone Turkey

Better late than never, right?

We started our meeting off writing Thank You letters to the Mayor.  Our last meeting was a tour of the Village Hall for our Inside Government Patch.

We did our Pledge, Promise, Law and Attendance and then we started our craft, Pine Cone Turkeys.

Supplies Needed:
Pine cones*
orange pipe cleaners, cut in half
orange foam, cut into small squares
red felt, small rectangle
2 pom poms
google eyes
feathers (we used five-six per pine cone)
glue
scissors
hot glue gun (to be used by Leader)

*pine cones are fun to collect when you go on a hike.  This gives the girls something to look for and you can use them in future crafts.

We tried to have the girls do some of this on  their own but we realized that some of the items would not stick to the pine cone with regular craft glue.  Therefore, the hot glue guns were brought out and warmed up.

We handed out the supplies and told the girls to cut out a beak from the orange foam.  I already cut the gobbler out for them.  It really isn't difficult for them to do, just cut it uneven (and rounded).

The girls then glued the google eyes onto the pom poms.  We used the hot glue gun to glue the pom poms onto the pine cone.  (The glue will work for the rest...but some of the girls wanted theirs hot glued to make sure it stayed all together)

We then glued the feathers into the back of the pine cone (trying to make sure that it fans out like a turkey).

We twisted the orange pipe cleaners  to make legs.  They can either be glued on or twisted onto the bottom of the pine cone (I think we just twisted them).

And you're done.  Believe it or not, this did take awhile.  There were only two of us leaders with two glue guns.  The girls were patient and had a blast making the turkeys.

Happy Thanksgiving!

I was in the kitchen baking pies (see yesterday's post).  When I FINALLY finished I decided to whip up a batch of Home made Lotion.  I got to the part where I whipped it up using my blender and I stopped, leaving it on the kitchen counter.  I had to go upstairs and get my empty glass jars.  When I came back into the kitchen, I see RT licking his fingers.  I said, I hope you didn't lick that, it's my lotion.  He made a face, ran to the sink and started rinsing his mouth out.  RT thought it was a frosting for the pies that I had made earlier.  I told him that he would live...it's just natural butters and oils.  < I think I would rather lick this lotion than a store bought lotion.

I did tell him that if he liked it, I could whip up a separate batch just for him.

Pie Crust Recipe

You can't make pie without a crust!

I posted a recipe the other day on Home made Pumpkin Pie and thought I should post a pie crust recipe.  This is my go to pie crust recipe taken from the Better Homes and Gardens Cookbook.

Pastry for Single Crust Pie

1 1/4 cups flour
1/4 tsp salt
1/3 cup shortening*
3-4 Tbsp cold water

Mix flour and salt together in a bowl.  Cut in shortening till pieces are the size of small peas.
Sprinkle 1 TBSP of water over part of the mixture;  gently toss with a fork.  Push to side of bowl and repeat till all is moistened.  Form dough into a ball.
On a lightly floured surface, flatten dough with hands.  Roll dough from center to edges, forming a circle about 12" in diameter.  Wrap pastry around rolling pin.  Unroll onto a 9" pie plate.
Trim to 1/2" beyond edge of pie plate; fold under extra pastry.  Bake as directed in recipe.

*I use Coconut oil.

Homemade Pumpkin Pie from a regular Pumpkin

You're probably wondering, "Why?"

We had an extra pumpkin this year.  I bought three pumpkins and only two were carved.  The leftover pumpkin was large, and I thought, "Why not?"  I would hate to see it go to waste.  

I found a recipe on how to cook a regular carving pumpkin HERE and thought I would give it a try.  I love pumpkin pie, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin muffins, pumpkin...OK, let's just say, I love pumpkin. 

I think the most time consuming part was removing the seeds and scraping the pumpkin.  Well, it wasn't that bad.  I cut the pumpkin open, which made it easier to remove the seeds.  Waiting for the pumpkin to cook also took awhile.  I would recommend having another chore to do while waiting for the pumpkin to cook.

Click on the link to get instructions on how to cook down your pumpkin.

I decided to clean out my pumpkin and chop it into pieces and pop it into some boiling water.  This method took awhile but it allowed me some time to let the cooked pieces cool a bit before removing the skin so I didn't burn my fingers off.   Once the outer skin was off I put it in a strainer (colander?) and pressed out some of the water.  From there I took the cooked pumpkin and put it in the food processor.   After awhile, I realized that this might be an all day project.  I mean, if you are going to go through all of the trouble to cook down a pumpkin, you have to make pumpkin pie.  Looking at all of the cooked pumpkin I realized I would have to make at least two pumpkin pies and still have enough pumpkin left over to make two more pies.

Here is the Pumpkin Pie recipe:

1 cup sugar

1.5 tsp ground cinnamon

1 tsp ground cloves

1 tsp ground allspice

1/2 tsp ground ginger

1/2 tsp salt

3 large eggs

3 cups cooked pumpkin

1 12oz can evaporated milk

Mix together and pour into pie crust. (I make a home made pie crust)

Bake for 15 minutes at 450 degrees F.

Bake an additional 50-60 minutes at 350 degrees F.

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I do have to say that this was an all day project.  It really makes me appreciate canned pumpkin..and the fact that I don't live in the 1800's and have to stand around the stove all day making lunch/dinner. Although it was time consuming, I have to admit that it was delicious!  I made two pies and there was one and a quarter pies left after a few hours.  I think it was a hit!  Plus, I have two bags of extra pumpkin in the freezer so I can make two more pies!

Need a crust recipe for your pumpkin pie?  Check out this Pie Crust recipe and this Graham Cracker Crust recipe.

Have you ever cooked a pumpkin down and made pumpkin pie?

Tooth Fairy

Score another point for the Tooth Fairy!

Bella had another tooth fall out and the Tooth Fairy remembered to visit!

Two teeth down and one to go!  She's got this!

Inside Government : Girl Scout Junior Badge

Steps:
1.  Decide what being an active citizen means to you
2.  Go inside government
3.  Look into laws
4.  Report on the issues
5.  Get involved in government


We broke this badge up into two meetings.  Our meetings are one hour long with no snack.

Our first meeting we talked about laws and what laws affected them on their way to the meeting.  Did they have to drive at a certain speed?  Were there traffic lights or stop signs that they had to obey?  We then talked a little about some of the wacky laws that are on the books.  There are a few listed in the Girl Scout Junior Manual.  I did a little research online and found a few more silly laws to share with the girls.

We then told the girls that we would be getting a tour of city hall by our mayor.  We asked the girls to come up with a question for the mayor.  We had them write the question on a note card and went through them so we did not have a duplicate question.  We collected the cards so we would have them for our tour.

During our tour we were going to have a mock government meeting.  The girls were divided into two groups and had to come up with valid points for their topic.  The topic was:  Homework vs. No Homework.  We had the girls write down their points on a card and collected them for their presentation in front of the mayor.


Meeting #2

We went on a tour of our town's city hall with the Mayor as our tour guide.  He gave the girls some information on what the day to day is like for our village, including the duties of a Mayor.  The tour of our village hall included safety features that were added (bullet proof glass, emergency button in the board room, etc.).  The Mayor had fascinating information on the population of our town, the large corporations that are based here and some of the odd laws that the town had on the books.  The girls were able to ask the Mayor the question that they prepared at the last meeting.  The Mayor had us run a mock government meeting.  Our topic was extending the school year to all year school.  He had half of the girls vote for all round school while the other half voted against.  The town clerk (one of our girls) counted the votes and said it was a tie.  The Village Attorney (one of our girls) called for the Mayor (one of our girls) to make a decision.   The Mayor told the acting Mayor how to make her decision by talking about both sides and then making the decision.  He also said that when making these decisions you have your friends (the people that you made happy with your decision) and the people that are unhappy with your decision.

I think it turned out to be a very informative tour.  Glad we did it.